We’ve been quite busy over the last 2 weeks. We took a bus trip down to Vila Real, the town at the mouth of the river on the Portuguese side; catching the bus at 7.45am! Luckily it was Portuguese timing so really 8.45 as we work to Spanish time. The area around here is wonderful – surprisingly hilly and many of the valleys have been flooded to make reservoirs which at the moment are still pretty full. It’s quite strange to see a large deep blue reservoir out of one side of the bus and a village in the valley on the other side as we go over (or nearly) over the dam! We had a great day and took a trip and back across the river to Ayamonte (Spanish town where we had moored in the marina last October) by the ferry ,did some shopping on both sides of the river and generally just wandered around and stopping for the odd coffee and beer!. The journey is about an hour and a half and we got back at about 6.45 Portuguese (7.45 Spanish) so it was quite a long – but thoroughly enjoyable day. Last weekend, there was an Islamic Festival in Mertola, a town upriver from us; with a souk (street market) and music in the evening. Well actually night would be more correct as it didn’t start until 10.00pm Portuguese and finished at about 2.30am!!! (11.00 start and 3.30 finish on our timimg!!). Rogerio at the Riverside Tavern arranged for a mini-bus to operate a bit of a shuttle service: Chris had been to Mertola before and wanted to show me the town so we took advantage of this to go to the festival and to see the town and castle Mertola was originally a Roman mining town and has been used for mining off and on ever since. It has an old castle overlooking the river and VERY steep old cobbly roads!!. It was PACKED. All the streets were covered over with silks and cottons and lined with stalls to make it feel like a souk. Here everyone had to move and stop at the same time which meant we could not see that much but as Chris said, we hope to go to Morocco soon so we can see lots of similar things there! As the music was starting so late we decided not to stay for it. We were told it was excellent but it was Portuguese music not really our taste! Time is moving on here and many people are leaving, Kari and Spike moved off to go the Azores, Maura and Paul were taking their boat back to Ireland as they need to work to earn some more money and Roy has moved down to near Faro to collect some friends who are sailing with him for a while and he may decide to carry on once they return. It is likely that we will also be leaving soon – our new generator arrived on Friday and we are testing it now and it is running very soundly. It’s Tony’s 65 birthday next week so we will be having a meal with them and then and there’s a bit of a party at another friends place next Sunday – a house warming for her and maybe a leaving party for us!!! Providing the weather forecast is favourable, of course!! |
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March 2014
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