Early check-out together with late check-in at our new accommodation in Sagres gave us the opportunity to explore yet another coastal village, Portimão. Coastal village was wrong, we thought it were a coastal village but it turned out to be a city of almost 40,000 inhabitants. Once there we realize that we parked at the beach but then what? It was a really nice beach like all the other beaches we have seen here on the Algarve coast but our idea of walking in yet another cozy center, narrow alleys and walkways, sitting at a coffee shop or two kind of ran out of steam as we never found any “real” center, on the other hand we found many abandoned houses, semi-modern concrete complexes and homeless people/alkis.
I realize that I had not done my research properly and I am convinced that Portimão has more to offer but at the moment it is at the bottom of the list of nice places in Portugal and we drove away as fast as we got there.
Now we are in Sagres which is as far southwest as you can get in Portugal and probably the whole of Europe? This is the exact opposite of everything we have experienced so far in Portugal and we read somewhere that you either love or hate Sagres. It is small, according to Wikipedia the village has 2000 inhabitants and there is not a fish restaurant as far as the eye can see, instead vegan cafes and surf shops dominate. Here they have signs everywhere that camping is prohibited but still one camper van after another stands in a row and we are not talking about luxury motorhomes, no here are the so-called tin houses where the contents (surfboards) are probably worth more than the cars. Here are all the signs, menus and it almost feels like everyone is starting to speak English instead of Portuguese. You go here simply to surf, watch birds and just take it easy, you either love it or you hate it.
What we’re going to do here is a good question, but we’ll take the days as they come and so far I have to say that I love the calm breeze and hippie atmosphere that surrounds the village.
