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After my adventures in El Chorro I retired to Malaga for a day and then headed west across Spain to the Portuguese border.

Portugal Feb ' 99

Nickjenkins
2003-11-20 11:59:56

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The Algrave and Lisbon

Monday, 08 Feb 1999 06:29:51 PST

After my adventures in El Chorro I retired to Malaga for a day and then headed west across Spain to the Portuguese border.

I arrived in Faro that night, the capital of the southern portion of Portugal known as the Algarve. The Algarve is the sunshine coast of Portugal and is fairly evenly divided between large tourist developments and tiny fishing villages.

There I learned my first important lesson about Portugal. Portugal is not just a funny bit of Spain where they speak a different language and woe betide the misguided foreigner that implies such a link. Portugal is a tiny corner of Europe that has been apparently passed by in the larger sphere of EU unity. The trains here don't run on time, the people are generally poor but very friendly and things are just a little dilapidated.

Having said that it was most definitely the friendliest place I have been so far (which might be related to the former - the more money people get the more uptight they seem to be). A lot of the people speak English and they all seem cheerful and happy to see you. The food is also excellent, simple but cheap and delivered in large portions. At one stage however I thought my accent must be particularly bad since I would order a steak sandwich and it would arrive as a chicken sandwich. After a while I realised my English was fine and that the Portugese put milk-white veal in their "steak sandes". If only everyone did!

Faro is more a tourist resort than a small fishing village. It is dominated by a large marina filled with the gleaming phallic floating palaces of the rich and German. The bus station where I arrived however was slightly less salubrious and reminded me of the hangar scene at the end of "Casablanca".

At the bus station I was greeted by a little man who, though ...