Tuesday, 29 September 2009
Olives Update
I looked it up. You have to soak them in salt water for six months, then transfer them to a mix of vinegar and salt water which can be flavoured with herbs, garlic, etc, etc.
Rio Guadiana
We’ve not been socialising much for the last few days, which is a relief for my liver, although after a week or two of being joined at the hip to Andy with no-one else to play with, I start to rebel against the shackledom. This morning I insisted on dinghying ashore on my own and doing the shopping while Andy mended the starter switch on the Yanmar.
I rowed to Spain, as the bread is better from that side. The Portuguese bread up here is construction quality. However, the beer is cheaper at the bars on the Portugal side. It’s jolly handy being able to go either side of the Rio, depending on what you want and what time it is. We’re anchored about 20 miles up the Rio Guadiana, which is part of the boundary between the aforementioned countries.
It’s very peaceful and simple and just lovely up here. The sides of the river are overhung with bamboo, pomegranate trees and weeping willows and beyond the banks the hills roll away for miles and miles on each side. There is very little traffic noise; just the gentle clanging of the bells on the sheep and cattle which graze on the banks, except close to the hour when the church bells in Sanlucár (Spain) start to chime, say, ten o’clock, then the ones in Alcoutim (Portugal) start to chime nine, then the other church on the Spanish side starts up, then the other one in Portugal... At 5.15pm today, Andy said, “I’ve only just had a cup of tea and I was thinking of having a beer. Silly me, it’s only just gone 5.” He has his watch set to Portuguese time. “But in Spain in quarter past six!” I said. So we had some olives and a glass of Vino Tinto. There are olive trees all over the place here, just laden with the little green darlings. I’d like to find out what you have to do to them to be able to eat them, though. They are very bitter and utterly unpalatable if you try one straight from the tree. (Note to self, Google it next time we’re on the wifi in the Biblioteca.) We have been eating delicious sweet figs straight from the trees and lots of almonds picked up from the ground beneath the trees. Nearly all the pomegranates, though, have split open and are dry and sour as there’s been no rain here since May.
We’ve been exploring on foot and by bike along the side of the river and over the hills. You wouldn’t believe what a time warp it is once you get away from the coastal towns. It really hasn’t changed very much in centuries, except that most of the little fincas are empty and derelict. The landscape is the same and the same people are sitting around the village bars. There are donkeys hobbled which are still used for transport and ploughing and beautiful horses, ridden in ancient looking saddles with leather stirrups. I’m trying to find someone who’ll let me ride their horse, as there don’t seem to be any riding schools round here.
Anchoring in the river is a bit of a hit and miss affair, as the currents run very strongly at the height of the ebb and flow of the tide, and sometimes the wind gets up. Boats regularly shift, sometimes quite alarmingly. A couple of hours after we anchored the first time we suddenly found ourselves shooting backwards downstream at a terrific rate and managed to get the engine going just before we crashed into another anchored yacht. We’ve had to move twice, but now seem to be well stuck into a nice patch of mud. We also only swim off the boat at slack tide for fear of being swept away! The water is not at all cold, although it is a bit muddy. We’ve become more brazen about swimming in the nude, as otherwise your cossie gets too dirty! It doesn’t matter about us, as we’re brown anyway! We can also have a hot shower from our solar bag afterwards. It’s still very hot in the day here, but cooler at night now that the sun is setting earlier.
There are people living in boats here who came for a couple of days to have a look and have stayed for years. Some have moved ashore. Many of the usual single blokes in their boats. There are a few English families living in the old fincas, without electricity, using a boat to get to the shops. Not that there are many shops. There are two food shops each side and a couple of bars. There is one ironmongery sort of a shop on the Portuguese side. There’s a fish van that calls, a bread van and a butcher’s van. I saw someone selling clothes from a van today.
In a couple of days we shall motor back down to the mouth of the river and put into the marina at Vila Real de Santo Antonio as we’re flying to UK for a visit. I’m not looking forward to being back in the town. After Culatra we had a few days in Ayamonte and were both in culture shock with the traffic and noise and just the amount of stuff there is in even the small towns that we can manage to live quite happily without. Up here in the hills, sometimes all you can hear is the sound of the insects happily buzzing about their business, and at night, to the accompaniment of the cicadas, the view of the stars is just astonishing without the light-pollution. We can see the Milky Way quite clearly. Still, it has to be done. I miss my girls and little Esmé is growing up. We also have a long list of stuff we need for the boat which we can’t get here.
We shall explore further along this coast, the Costa de Luz, when we return for our first winter aboard.
I rowed to Spain, as the bread is better from that side. The Portuguese bread up here is construction quality. However, the beer is cheaper at the bars on the Portugal side. It’s jolly handy being able to go either side of the Rio, depending on what you want and what time it is. We’re anchored about 20 miles up the Rio Guadiana, which is part of the boundary between the aforementioned countries.
It’s very peaceful and simple and just lovely up here. The sides of the river are overhung with bamboo, pomegranate trees and weeping willows and beyond the banks the hills roll away for miles and miles on each side. There is very little traffic noise; just the gentle clanging of the bells on the sheep and cattle which graze on the banks, except close to the hour when the church bells in Sanlucár (Spain) start to chime, say, ten o’clock, then the ones in Alcoutim (Portugal) start to chime nine, then the other church on the Spanish side starts up, then the other one in Portugal... At 5.15pm today, Andy said, “I’ve only just had a cup of tea and I was thinking of having a beer. Silly me, it’s only just gone 5.” He has his watch set to Portuguese time. “But in Spain in quarter past six!” I said. So we had some olives and a glass of Vino Tinto. There are olive trees all over the place here, just laden with the little green darlings. I’d like to find out what you have to do to them to be able to eat them, though. They are very bitter and utterly unpalatable if you try one straight from the tree. (Note to self, Google it next time we’re on the wifi in the Biblioteca.) We have been eating delicious sweet figs straight from the trees and lots of almonds picked up from the ground beneath the trees. Nearly all the pomegranates, though, have split open and are dry and sour as there’s been no rain here since May.
We’ve been exploring on foot and by bike along the side of the river and over the hills. You wouldn’t believe what a time warp it is once you get away from the coastal towns. It really hasn’t changed very much in centuries, except that most of the little fincas are empty and derelict. The landscape is the same and the same people are sitting around the village bars. There are donkeys hobbled which are still used for transport and ploughing and beautiful horses, ridden in ancient looking saddles with leather stirrups. I’m trying to find someone who’ll let me ride their horse, as there don’t seem to be any riding schools round here.
Anchoring in the river is a bit of a hit and miss affair, as the currents run very strongly at the height of the ebb and flow of the tide, and sometimes the wind gets up. Boats regularly shift, sometimes quite alarmingly. A couple of hours after we anchored the first time we suddenly found ourselves shooting backwards downstream at a terrific rate and managed to get the engine going just before we crashed into another anchored yacht. We’ve had to move twice, but now seem to be well stuck into a nice patch of mud. We also only swim off the boat at slack tide for fear of being swept away! The water is not at all cold, although it is a bit muddy. We’ve become more brazen about swimming in the nude, as otherwise your cossie gets too dirty! It doesn’t matter about us, as we’re brown anyway! We can also have a hot shower from our solar bag afterwards. It’s still very hot in the day here, but cooler at night now that the sun is setting earlier.
There are people living in boats here who came for a couple of days to have a look and have stayed for years. Some have moved ashore. Many of the usual single blokes in their boats. There are a few English families living in the old fincas, without electricity, using a boat to get to the shops. Not that there are many shops. There are two food shops each side and a couple of bars. There is one ironmongery sort of a shop on the Portuguese side. There’s a fish van that calls, a bread van and a butcher’s van. I saw someone selling clothes from a van today.
In a couple of days we shall motor back down to the mouth of the river and put into the marina at Vila Real de Santo Antonio as we’re flying to UK for a visit. I’m not looking forward to being back in the town. After Culatra we had a few days in Ayamonte and were both in culture shock with the traffic and noise and just the amount of stuff there is in even the small towns that we can manage to live quite happily without. Up here in the hills, sometimes all you can hear is the sound of the insects happily buzzing about their business, and at night, to the accompaniment of the cicadas, the view of the stars is just astonishing without the light-pollution. We can see the Milky Way quite clearly. Still, it has to be done. I miss my girls and little Esmé is growing up. We also have a long list of stuff we need for the boat which we can’t get here.
We shall explore further along this coast, the Costa de Luz, when we return for our first winter aboard.
Tuesday, 1 September 2009
Culatra - little Carriacou in Europe!
I’m glad I came now. This place is wonderful. The sea, although not as warm as that in the Caribbean, is at least not cold. We’ve been swimming every day off an almost empty beach. Miles of sand, clear clean water, and it doesn’t freeze your whatsits off. But first I have to tell you about all the stuff we’ve done before we got here.
Sines (pronounced Sinch) was a lovely little town on Portugal’s west coast. We liked it there, but the sea wasn’t warm enough for us and it suffered from the Atlantic fog. We also didn’t get much sleep because of the bands playing nearly all night, very very loud, because, guess what? They were having a fiesta. This time it was Our Lady of Somewhere, or the Virgin of somesuch.
Shalini, Heymede and Fair Joanda, three British boats with whom we had socialised on and off since the Rias, turned up and we drank several jugs of sangria – a dangerous and seductive drink. It tastes benign, but this just leads one on to buy another jugfull. Oh dear.
We planned to leave early one morning to make the long trip round Cabo São Vicente (the Land’s End of the Iberian Peninsula) only to be beset by the FOG. We waited for another couple of days, which was good, as we got to see the rescue services and harbour officials showing off what they could do. They created an “oil” slick of popcorn, then put booms in place and a big scoopy thing on the front of a boat and “hovered” it up – well, most of it, anyway. Then we went ashore and followed the procession as they brought a statue of the Virgin out of the church and carried it on high, in a solemn procession, with the Priest and marching bands and a choir, and Uncle Tom Cobbley, through the streets (for quite some way) stopping to pray from time to time, then they loaded her onto a stinky fishing boat, all decorated (as were most of the fishing boats) with flags and palm leaves and flowers, and everyone piled onto boats (carrying coolboxes full of beer!) and paraded her around the harbour. There was much jollity and drinking and hooting of horns.
We eventually set off and managed to round “the cape”. It did remind us of our first long voyage in Sally when we brought her from Holyhead to Poole. After 50 odd hours at sea (the last 12 of which had been horrendous), we rounded Longships Light at Land’s End at dawn and got into Newlyn, the little fishing harbour, where I was never so glad before or since to tie up and have a cup of tea. It wasn’t so bad rounding S. Vicente – we were in teeshirts and shorts all day, but Baleeira did remind us of Newlyn. Just a little fishing harbour, nothing to encourage the yachtsmen at all, least of all the price of beer in the local bars - €2.50 for a 33cl bottle of Sagres! Also we were unable to find a supply of fresh water. Talk about the hunter/gatherers – we spend most of our life looking for available taps, fresh veg, bread, and from time to time, Camping Gaz bottles. The Pilot Book says that you can get water from the place where they sell diesel to the fishing boats. Well, you can’t. I asked the dive shop, who had a hose running out all over the floor and they said no. I accidentally wandered into the Doca da Peixa (literally fish dock, I think, but it’s where the fish are sold on the quay) and, using international sign language, ascertained from a minion that I could fill up my container from the tap marked Agua Potavel. When I came back with my other containers, I was met by the man in the blue official shirt with Doca da Peixa embroidered on his heart, and was told in no uncertain stream of Portuguese invective that I couldn’t have water and what did I think I was doing wandering in there in the first place, damn cheek. I couldn’t understand a word of what he said, but he made himself pretty clear, all the same. I smiled and got on my bike.
Portimão, east of Lagos, in the heart of the Algarve tourist development, must have been a stunning place once upon a time, and would be again if you could get rid of the tourists and the accompanying annoyances, like ribs towing squealing teenagers on bananas and the dreaded jetskitoes. Whoever invented those, eh? Still, we had a pleasant stay, and the violent wash from the speeding fishing boats, all wanting to be the first ones in with their catch to get the best prices, was much more annoying than the tourists. I was actually thrown off my seat onto the floor of the cockpit one day when the combined wash from a fishing boat and the “pirate” ship that takes trippers out to see the caves hit Sally at anchor. It was also an hour in the dinghy up the river to the nearest Pingo Doce (a really good Portuguese supermarket) and back, still having to ride the wash from the fishing boats, ribs, pirate ships, ferries, navy ships, etc. We never got back dry. It was an art keeping the bread dry.
There was a really nice bar on the beach, though, on the Ferragudo side, which is less developed, with lots of sofas and floor cushions. Very relaxing. I tried the Cataplana, which is a very nice kind of fish stew. We had some good walks along the cliffs and looked into the caves. That coast line has a most interesting geology. Quite majestic. While we were in Portimão we were accompanied by a fleet of huge international racing yachts from all over the world competing in the Audi Med Cup. Wow. They made us look puny. It did mean that there was very loud music every night, as the crews all had to party, party, party. We’re used to it now.
But here we’ve found a haven. It’s like a Caribbean island. We’re anchored off Culatra, which is a small island (really a big pile of sand) in the lagoon where the rivers from Faro and Olhão meet. There are no cliffs here, it is sand dunes. It is part of a designated Nature Reserve and seems to be immune to those that build tourist developments. The beaches are used, but you only have to walk little way to get a large stretch to yourself and many people seem to enjoy swimming and sunbathing as nature intended. It’s a lovely freedom to be able to swim naked. Oh, and the best thing is, it’s cheap. The beer in the bars here is only 80 cents! We’re hanging around here for a while before we move on to explore the Rio Guadiana, the boundary, then we’ll be back in Spain.
Sines (pronounced Sinch) was a lovely little town on Portugal’s west coast. We liked it there, but the sea wasn’t warm enough for us and it suffered from the Atlantic fog. We also didn’t get much sleep because of the bands playing nearly all night, very very loud, because, guess what? They were having a fiesta. This time it was Our Lady of Somewhere, or the Virgin of somesuch.
Shalini, Heymede and Fair Joanda, three British boats with whom we had socialised on and off since the Rias, turned up and we drank several jugs of sangria – a dangerous and seductive drink. It tastes benign, but this just leads one on to buy another jugfull. Oh dear.
We planned to leave early one morning to make the long trip round Cabo São Vicente (the Land’s End of the Iberian Peninsula) only to be beset by the FOG. We waited for another couple of days, which was good, as we got to see the rescue services and harbour officials showing off what they could do. They created an “oil” slick of popcorn, then put booms in place and a big scoopy thing on the front of a boat and “hovered” it up – well, most of it, anyway. Then we went ashore and followed the procession as they brought a statue of the Virgin out of the church and carried it on high, in a solemn procession, with the Priest and marching bands and a choir, and Uncle Tom Cobbley, through the streets (for quite some way) stopping to pray from time to time, then they loaded her onto a stinky fishing boat, all decorated (as were most of the fishing boats) with flags and palm leaves and flowers, and everyone piled onto boats (carrying coolboxes full of beer!) and paraded her around the harbour. There was much jollity and drinking and hooting of horns.
We eventually set off and managed to round “the cape”. It did remind us of our first long voyage in Sally when we brought her from Holyhead to Poole. After 50 odd hours at sea (the last 12 of which had been horrendous), we rounded Longships Light at Land’s End at dawn and got into Newlyn, the little fishing harbour, where I was never so glad before or since to tie up and have a cup of tea. It wasn’t so bad rounding S. Vicente – we were in teeshirts and shorts all day, but Baleeira did remind us of Newlyn. Just a little fishing harbour, nothing to encourage the yachtsmen at all, least of all the price of beer in the local bars - €2.50 for a 33cl bottle of Sagres! Also we were unable to find a supply of fresh water. Talk about the hunter/gatherers – we spend most of our life looking for available taps, fresh veg, bread, and from time to time, Camping Gaz bottles. The Pilot Book says that you can get water from the place where they sell diesel to the fishing boats. Well, you can’t. I asked the dive shop, who had a hose running out all over the floor and they said no. I accidentally wandered into the Doca da Peixa (literally fish dock, I think, but it’s where the fish are sold on the quay) and, using international sign language, ascertained from a minion that I could fill up my container from the tap marked Agua Potavel. When I came back with my other containers, I was met by the man in the blue official shirt with Doca da Peixa embroidered on his heart, and was told in no uncertain stream of Portuguese invective that I couldn’t have water and what did I think I was doing wandering in there in the first place, damn cheek. I couldn’t understand a word of what he said, but he made himself pretty clear, all the same. I smiled and got on my bike.
Portimão, east of Lagos, in the heart of the Algarve tourist development, must have been a stunning place once upon a time, and would be again if you could get rid of the tourists and the accompanying annoyances, like ribs towing squealing teenagers on bananas and the dreaded jetskitoes. Whoever invented those, eh? Still, we had a pleasant stay, and the violent wash from the speeding fishing boats, all wanting to be the first ones in with their catch to get the best prices, was much more annoying than the tourists. I was actually thrown off my seat onto the floor of the cockpit one day when the combined wash from a fishing boat and the “pirate” ship that takes trippers out to see the caves hit Sally at anchor. It was also an hour in the dinghy up the river to the nearest Pingo Doce (a really good Portuguese supermarket) and back, still having to ride the wash from the fishing boats, ribs, pirate ships, ferries, navy ships, etc. We never got back dry. It was an art keeping the bread dry.
There was a really nice bar on the beach, though, on the Ferragudo side, which is less developed, with lots of sofas and floor cushions. Very relaxing. I tried the Cataplana, which is a very nice kind of fish stew. We had some good walks along the cliffs and looked into the caves. That coast line has a most interesting geology. Quite majestic. While we were in Portimão we were accompanied by a fleet of huge international racing yachts from all over the world competing in the Audi Med Cup. Wow. They made us look puny. It did mean that there was very loud music every night, as the crews all had to party, party, party. We’re used to it now.
But here we’ve found a haven. It’s like a Caribbean island. We’re anchored off Culatra, which is a small island (really a big pile of sand) in the lagoon where the rivers from Faro and Olhão meet. There are no cliffs here, it is sand dunes. It is part of a designated Nature Reserve and seems to be immune to those that build tourist developments. The beaches are used, but you only have to walk little way to get a large stretch to yourself and many people seem to enjoy swimming and sunbathing as nature intended. It’s a lovely freedom to be able to swim naked. Oh, and the best thing is, it’s cheap. The beer in the bars here is only 80 cents! We’re hanging around here for a while before we move on to explore the Rio Guadiana, the boundary, then we’ll be back in Spain.
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