"Portugal" a Portugal Travel Page by africaking

All in all, this country was by far the most pleasant that I have been to in a very long time.

It reminded me a little of South Africa, the scenery was amazing and the people on the most part were pleasant and helpful.

I did kind of feel we were in a police state as there were police for nearly everything you could think of and they seemed to be everywhere. Needless to say we did feel 100% safe anywhere we went, and we did go to some very rough looking areas.

I sailed with my family in a 32ft yacht from U.K. to Gibraltar and this was one of the many stops we had, in fact we were held up in Lisbon for 3 weeks due to bad weather, we were also held up in Seixal a few miles up the Lisbon river, the weather at this time was bad the winds were about 40-50 miles per hours, needless to say we had troubles staying in one spot, our anchor draged about 4 times which nearly led to us being grounded, so we ended up putting THREE anchors out.

We eventualy had the chance to move so we headed towards the marina, which was lovely as we hadn't had a shower in about a week. We also had the chance to explore a bit and saw a few museums and the local area.

This place certainly was the most memorable. As we were heading down the coast of Portugal we decided to stop at this place before we rounded the cape, but we heard that gaining entry into the river was troublesome due to waves crashing on the entrance(the sea bed was rather high at the entrance).

We did want to try to contact someone to guide us in, but there was no radio contact to anyone at this place, luckily for us and the Potuguese people, we spotted some people in a 9ft long fishing dingy, they seemed to be rowing which seemed a little starnge as they were a way off the shore.

We decided to take a closer look to see if they could give us directions on entering the river safely, it turns out they were more happy to see us, because they had been rowing for 3 hours to get to shore(the engine broke down on them) they were in their 70's and had been swept out to see and had no flares or radio with them and we were the only vessel within 40 miles of them at the time.

We tied them up to our yacht and they tried to explain how to enter the river(their english was not great, but at least they could speak it)On entering the river we must have hit the bottom about 8 times and believe me the whole boat thudded and shook, it was shear luck we made it through.

We spent over a week at this place as we had to wait for a high tide to take us back out, but during this time the Portuguese couple invited us for a home cooked meal, which was fantastic as well as a meal out at a local restaurant and a goodbye lunch befor we left, they drove us to local villages and to see the sights, they did all this to show their thanks for helping them, but they didn't realise how much we appreciated their hospitality.

We did keep in contact for a while, but unfortunatly we lost contact and I just hope they are still fishing and at least have a radio with them.