Driving over Oranges
Before I go any further, I must say this internet caff has the best keyboards I have ever seen: the mini– Virtually Indestructible Keyboard!
The clouds that shroud all of Northern Europe had lifted once the plane was in Portugese airspace and this morning I am gently baking in the sun shining from a powderblue sky while people-watching from a café on the cobbled pavement.
Consider his: Faro is an Easyjet destination, barely 2.5h flight from Gatwick. So why do we not get out more for our weekends? Why do the Brits insist on shivering and sniffling under a leaden sky for the entire autum and winter—when Europe is our backyard and the Med and Algarve are but a short hop away? Book early, or use a flight promotion, and the excercise will cost little more than a Friday night pub session!
As other travellers stroll into the café, I no longer feel like the palest person in Portugal. I never was, of course, there were other Brits on the flight, and my feeling of abandonment slowly lifts. It is time to make my way to the station.
I sit on a bench by the platform, watching a couple of storks fly, when there is an announcement. Some people walk across the track and I realise that I am at the wrong platform. But that’s fine because there is no bench at platform 2, let alone in the shade, so I actually look cool as I stroll across. Maybe I’m adjusting to the local pace of life. In the doorway of the train, an old man strikes up a cigarette and smiles at me. We talk and get as far as establishing that we are both headed for Lagos (the endof the line). I need to get an ear for the language. People here are incredibly friendly and will talk to you – even at the airport another passenger was trying to give me directions though I couldn’t understand him and I didn’t need any – and it would be really good to say something back in resonse.
So we trundle off through the summery landscape. An Easyjet plane climbs into the sky as the train heads west, past orange groves – of course it is the season now so freshly squeezed sumo de laranja is definitely on the breakfast menu – past the monumental Estado de Algarve, past whitewashed bijou villas with terracotta roofs and ornamental chimneys, past gnarled pines and almong trees growing in the sandy gravel and beds of reeds as tall as houses.
As promised by the guidebook, as we approach Lagos there are touts. The first approaches me in the train: a middle-aged woman with permed hair, ajeans-jacket and lipstick on her chipped teeth. She couldn’t have been nicer or more polite.
Lagos station is nowhere near the city centre. I drag my backpack along the busy street in the midday heat. The ‘tourismo’ is closed, there are no bus timetables, the guidebook’s map is worse than useless and I fear that I have gone the wrong way for the last twenty minutes. No wonder the third tout gets me! A small, gentle man who must have been in his eighties. I tell him I want to go to the campsite as I have very little money. “10 Euros,” he says. 10 Euros? Some campsites listed online cost more than that! He shows me the direction to the campismo (I had been heading the right way) but I am already sold. He has to make a living, it is out of season and it is time to get my ear for the language, isn’t it? Well, now is my chance.
“Senhora?” he asks (I think): “or senhorina?”
“Oh, Senhora!” I try to think for the word for ‘husband’: ” –married!”
“Ah!” he excaims: ” ‘merican!”
I let it hang. There is apparently another ‘Senhor ‘Merican’ staying in the house.
So here I am: a pretty little room in the ancient city centre. There is a big bowl of an ashtray on the table, but I don’t think I should smoke here. I have to be in by ten, the Senhora has to get up early, but that is all fine by me(!) I’ll smoke out of the window overlooking the pretty street. It will probably not be as tranquil as the man has assured me, it is lined with cafés & bars and there are chrismas lights strung between the tiny old houses, but as I hand over a 20 Euro bill and Senhora asks disappointedly whether I will only stay one night I find myself say “nao, dos!” They need the business ad I need to stay in one plae for a while. This is probably how it will go across Portugal. My accommodation ceiling hovers aound 10 Euros but it isn’t feasible to get by much cheaper and I am not cheap enough to go to the campsite and take business away from these nice people just to save a few cents (centimes?)—at least not quite yet.
Tags: Portugal, Tag Index
Denni