It didn’t feel much like an occasion for celebration but August 21st marked the one year anniversary of our leaving Peru. On the other hand September 5th did seem an achievement: we now had four years of sleeping in other peoples’ beds in 19 countries under our belts.
The Algarve summer was hot and we stayed outdoors till bedtime. It was November before we got properly acquainted with our living room. Everywhere the fields and pathways were littered with rich, mahogany carob pods. I started to collect ours and a sort of fever got me. Before I knew it I’d filled ten sacks. Early mornings we’d wake to the sound of click clacking as the neighbors beat their trees with long, wooden poles and I learned from them how to reach the highest branches. When I could find no more, a man came in a truck, weighed them and took them away. We donated the proceeds to charity and I learned to walk upright again. It took a while. In the autumn the broom pole whacking continued but this time it was the olives that were ripening. Some farmers used electric vibrating rakes to shake the trees and the air was filled with soft whirring sounds as well. No leaf was left unturned. I came out of the dentist’s office one morning to see two women walloping a couple of trees on the sidewalk. Meanwhile, our olives remained unharvested and sometimes I’d trod on the windfalls and make guilty little puddles of olive oil on the path.
Portugal’s vaccination rate was one of the highest in Europe. By the end of September 86% were double dosed. I think they actually ran out of people to vaccinate. When Pferdi could endure sitting still no longer, we took a trip down memory lane on the western Atlantic coast. In Odeceixe we spent the day with a Belgian we’d got pleasantly drunk with in Colombia. Later we arranged to see another friend from those days; a Portuguese we got to know at Ecuador’s Caceria del Zorro horse races. One Sunday he drove 300k south and we 300k north and we met in Avis, a brilliantly white, fortified town. Over a long lunch we caught up on his last days in South America. It made our departure from Peru look like a package holiday. Like many Pan-American riders, his journey was almost over by the time Covid arrived in March 2020 (early February being the deadline to reach Tierra del Fuego before winter sets in). Trying to ship his bike home, Argentina shut down and Uruguay refused him entry. Brazil was closing too but he persuaded some border guards to let him in (It helps to have a former colony in the vicinity). But still he had to leave his bike behind; it wasn’t until 2021 that he was able to arrange its shipping home.
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In October we took Pferdi to Porto. We climbed the Algarve mountains in the dark and by the time we descended into the open plains of Alentejo the sun had come up. The first stop was inside the medieval walls of Évora. Drinking coffee in front of the Roman temple with the Gardens of Diana behind, it was like being back in Italy. On the second day out the journey was long and exhausting. With eight hours of mostly winding roads, the cork forests and citrus groves went largely unnoticed because if I took my eye off the map we’d be up and away in the wrong direction. Worse, there were forced stints on the tolls because the country roads would suddenly end. We were allowed to drive free as far as the exit where the old road resumed but it was nerve-wracking; we’d no prepaid toll card and everything was electronic and unmanned. The only things working were the cameras. How I missed those red-lipsticked beauties smiling down from lonely Mexican tollbooths (even if they did charge us as a car).
In Torre de Moncorvo we climbed off the bike like two 80-year olds. Limping passed the churchyard a funeral procession was just arriving on foot. But…..behind the chapel, up a steep alley, there appeared a cafe-bar, with four small tables outside. I almost wept with relief. There we got tipsy on cold beer and chicken-filled pastries and later slept more soundly than the poor soul in the box down the hill.
Riding in the Douro Valley I couldn’t decide if we were in Germany or Thailand. I certainly didn’t recognize Portugal anymore. Meandering through countryside made up entirely of vineyards and olive groves, the smell was fruity, ripe and pungent, like an old pub on the day after. The emerald hillsides were layered with terraces supported by old stone walls, and the vines were beginning to turn autumn gold. Down below on the winding river the Lorelei siren could have moved right in and immediately felt at home. In the small towns, Pomegranate, orange and lemon trees lined the streets and the Sandeman silhouettes kept watch as we continued north. Gone were the whites and ochres of the South. The houses here were built with grey stone blocks and embedded so deep in the hillsides it seemed like they’d always been there. It felt like another country.
Following the Douro all day, through village lives and laundry, it was a shock to arrive in Porto and worse, Friday evening rush hour. Crossing the river too early we kept taking the wrong Autoestrada and finding ourselves on overpasses to Spain or Norway or somewhere equally useless. We approached our hotel from the rear, unintentionally of course, and after paying €28 per night for underground parking, sat down outside the café next door. Its window was filled with swirling linens, pastries and chocolates and inside the smell of coffee made me lightheaded. Still recovering from the first real experience of Portuguese city traffic, and going native with his usual abandon, Pancho took his cue from a neighboring table and ordered a brandy. And honestly, I couldn’t blame him.
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Porto in the rain, with its narrow, tiled buildings and black iron balconies, had the damp air of Venice in winter. Portuguese and French tourists mingled on the waterfront and crossed the water under the great metal arch of the Ponte Dom Luís. We always seemed to circle back to our café whose canopy sheltered from the drizzle till 8 PM. It was there we met João from Porto Sidecar Tours on his Chinese sidecar (just back from delivering a bride to her chapel), and the softly spoken, wonderfully lisping Spaniard staying in our hotel. His bike was costing him €0.00 per night because he’d chained it to a lamppost. But he was out every morning with a towel.
If getting into Porto was bad getting out was even worse. Every way led to the toll road, luckily this time a non-electronic one so no chance of going to jail later. Rewards came in Nazaré with blue skies, salty air and a surf museum in the 16th Century fort. Unfortunately calm seas are not what one goes there for but it was gloriously refreshing despite the lack of 100 ft waves. Maybe we should have visited Fatima first, but then again, a peaceful ocean in Nazaré is probably a miracle in itself. There were certainly no miracles at Fatima later. Maybe it was the vastness of its empty grey square, or the modern outdoor altar blocking the lower portion of the basilica but I found it an uninspiring place.
In the fishing port of Peniche we thought we were looking out at the new world from mainland Europe’s most westerly point. Unfortunately that turned out to be a blip further south and a smidge further west. So that pleasure still awaits us. We didn’t get too lost in Lisbon, probably thanks to the divine intervention of Christ the King whose outstretched arms guided us across the Tagus on the 25 de Abril suspension bridge. (Call me a Commie but I’ve always got a thrill from being in countries whose most-treasured places are named after revolutions).
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The entire expedition covered 1,600k over nine days. Without all our worldly goods on board, it was easy to travel and even easier to unpack each night. Already we were planning return trips but for now our budget-conscious brains were reeling from the price of gas. This was only our third journey of any significant length since arriving in Europe and we’d had other things on our minds during the first two. Pferdi, God bless his little Russian heart, is a terrible gas guzzler. The bottom line is at €1.80 a litre, he’s the wrong bike on the wrong continent for long distance travel.
Back home we shifted the evening’s operations to the front of the house to better watch the sun go down, to relive the old life and ponder the new. It’s a peaceful scene marred only by the frenzied feedings of the dog pack living across the field. While I’m not one to deny them the joys of their nightly nosh, the excitement does seem to imply a certain lack of muzzle memory. These days topics of conversation are scarce. Let’s face it, whatever has happened to Fran has happened to me and Pferdi too. And vice versa. Sometimes we look at the stickers decorating the bike, and remember the stories behind each one, and sigh. Other times we have Ideas, which Fran says must now replace Plans. The other evening, carefully balancing my wine and leaning slovenly on Fran’s top box, we looked at Pferdi and asked some very tough questions: Do you get lousy fuel mileage? (Yes). Are you underpowered, slow and cumbersome? (Yes). Are you the most ungreen vehicle this side of Siberia? (Yes). Is your petrol tank tiny and your suspension nonexistent? (Yes). Are you our best boy and does everybody love you? (Yes). And that unfortunately was that. Another sigh.
Our new year rang in with all the pomp and circumstance of a Monday rolling into Tuesday during a wet week in February. The small window between newfound freedom and the latest letter of the Greek alphabet to rule our lives has closed. Over 89% of the Portuguese population is now fully vaccinated but it’s back to square one. Or feels like it. We postponed a trip to Spain and cancelled a long awaited visit from Germany. Both in theory could have been accomplished but neither we nor our friends were inclined to add to the problem. Portugal returned to a state of calamity on December 1st, introduced new restrictions, tightened them over the holidays, and then relaxed them again even though the Covid numbers keep going up, and up and up. Like the rest of the world, we felt winded from the out-of-nowhere punch of Omicron. “Ideas” were just beginning to form again when the light at the end of the tunnel turned out to be a speeding train. We’ve never been stopped for this long before. There’s a terrible urge to do something, when the best thing to do is actually nothing. Our bit for the war effort is staying ‘at home’ and yelling into the phone, “can you hear me now?” And so we’ll watch and wait for the next window, and hopefully a new alphabet. Preferably one whose letters don’t always end-up forming a prison sentence.
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