DAY 6 - BUS TO ALJEZUR, TAXI TO ARRIFANA, WALK TO CARRAPATERIA - 24.6km
We’re skipping another stage today, taking the bus to Aljezur and then finding a taxi to take us to Arrifana, where we’ll start our hike to Carrapateria.
After negotiating all that transit, this then looks to be our longest stage by pure distance, so we want to be sure to leave ourselves a lot of time. We’re up early and bleary eyed as we try to reckon with Donald Trump having been re-elected overnight, trudging down Odexeice’s steeply descending streets to catch a bus at 7:00am.
The schedules at the tiny bus stop seem to confirm what our host texted us. A haggard man slumps against a stone bench. I assume he’s sleeping until he clears a raspy throat to ask if we have a cigarette. Antoaneta does and offers it. He thanks her reverently, and tells her she has just saved his life. We chuckle politely and he says wistfully ‘I wish that wasn’t true but it is’.
A bus arrives exactly when it should, but thank goodness we confirm with the driver where he’s headed because it turns out we’re one bus early. The next one is ours and we snag the front seats for a beautiful ride through country roads and misty fields as the sun rises.
The last few stops fill the bus up with students on their way to school and Antoaneta is taken by the fact that they are teenagers who look like teenagers, not the made-up, high-fashion mini-adults she sees in Paris.
We’re finally dropped off in a little square in Aljezur. After dashing across the street to catch some photos of one of those misty fields, we go in search of coffee.
Best bet is a cramped little counter wedged into the shops around the bus station, with a couple of rickety tables amongst overflowing shelves and derelict freezers. A line-up of regulars does almost wordless business with the leathery owner. I start to notice a worrying pattern of people coming up to order a shot of hard liquor, knocking it back, then immediately heading out to their cars. This is all at 8 am, mind you.
We don’t follow the trend, but I do check another item off my bakery list: a guardanapo.
GUARDANAPO
A folded-over triangle of sponge cake typically filled with thick eggy custard or doces de ovos, making it another portuguese delicacy cashing in on the power of yolks. Its name comes from its shape when folded over, translating as ‘serviette’.
Even from this smudgy little display case where it’s been sitting for god knows how long, it’s delicious.
A Danish man with dreadlocks enters in a bit of a panic. His phone’s dead, it has the access code for his room, do we have a charger? It’s sad that my first five thoughts are to play out what scams he might be perpetrating, but ‘I need to charge my phone’ seems innocuous enough and I do, in fact, have a charger. He negotiates with the owner over use of a slot in an already stuffed power bar, then leaves his phone there and ducks back out. Part of me thinks ‘gee, I hope he comes back before we’re ready to leave’ but the worry is for nothing. He does, I get my charger back, no scam (yet), he is very grateful.
Now: getting to Arrifana. First attempt is to take an Uber. It claims drivers are ‘in the area’ but when we try to summon one, the app gives us only false hope. Lucky for us, it looks like there’s a taxi stand a block away and when we get there, what may be Aljezur’s only taxi is sitting and waiting.
The charming driver is so used to this, we barely need to say ‘Rota Vicentina’ before he knows exactly where he’s taking us. As we’re about to pull away an elderly man comes jogging up to the taxi and discusses something a little frantically with the driver. Naturally we can’t track any of it but we wonder if we’re about to be kicked out of our taxi.
Nope! Our luck holds. The driver, as far as we can tell, just had to call the other taxi in Aljezur to deal with this unprecedented demand. The interloper also apologizes profusely for holding us up. Everyone in Portugal from bus station vagrants to would-be ride thieves is wonderful. I think between the grumpy hotel clerk in Zambujeira Do Mar and the server in Azenha do Mar we met the only two unpleasant people in the country.
At last we arrive at the real start of our day, a patch on the side of the road with a reassuring trail marker pointing down a dirt track. It’s also a small moment of celebration - this is our last transit tangle before heading back to Lisbon. I always have a degree of anxiety negotiating any foreign transit, and the idea that from here on out we just need to walk from point A to point B is comforting.
That said, this is still supposedly our longest day by distance, so we hustle down the path for a while, dip into a cove, then start a long, gradual inland ascent that puts us back on more dirt roads.
We stop at a small resort hotel that has not opened yet to make use of their tables for a drink and snack. Soon after, another pair of hikers does the same. A little further on we cross paths with a herd of cattle (and one horse who I hope was where he’s supposed to be) being led down the path by a farmer and his very eager dogs.
Out of curiosity I check a map which seems to suggest we’re already about halfway to Carrapateira. This seems impossible. That would, at this rate, make this one of our shortest days. We eventually learn not to trust any estimates of time or distance, since they end up varying so much from source to source, and then again between all those sources and our actual experience. But this was probably the most egregious.
Just when we’re starting to get tired of all these featureless dirt roads and acres of scrub, we’re taken back out to the coast. We agree that since we’re apparently making incredible time we should try to find a way to descend to the water and do the last stretch of walking on a beach.
From a headland, there’s a thin but visible trail that looks like it snakes and switchbacks to the inviting sand far below. We take a chance and it pays off. The last 15 feet or so are accessed by a weathered rope triple-knotted around a gnarled tree, requiring you to basically belay down some steep rocks, but that little taste of adventure lands us on the sand at last with a vast expanse of low-tide beach stretching in three directions.
Our arrival at the beach basically confirms the wild mis-estimate of the day’s length. All we have left is to follow it South and it will become Praia da Bordeira, the beach directly outland from Carrapateria, our final destination.
So we take off our shoes and take our time, in slow arcs between wading at the water line and admiring the cliffs.
Not to mention admiring the semi-submerged rocks absolutely packed with anemones.
The beach eventually opens even wider and we need to start cutting inland toward the town.
We now pay for the effortless stroll we just had. Further inland Praia de Bordeira may as well be the Sahara as we crest dune after shifting, sliding dune, slowing our progress and with no end in sight.
An oasis appears in the distance: a ramshackle shack. We make ourselves believe it has seating and drink, but it turns out to be a surf school. We can rent surfboards but we can’t drink them.
We make a drastic choice to cut straight across the beach instead of following it all the way inland. On the other side is an inviting set of steep wooden steps up to a boardwalk. They’d usually be inaccessible from our side due to a river cutting through the beach, but the weather’s been dry and the river’s been parched - not even a trickle to hop over. Thank goodness - we’re sick of sand.
At the bottom of the stairs we try to shake the last of it out of our shoes and ascend to what turns out to be a series of parking lots on the headland, all crowded with surfer vans and RVs. Their doors are flung open to the temperate breeze and each one is a window into a bespoke little apartment as the inhabitants make dinner or lie in bed reading or wax their boards.
The series of parking lots eventually leads us into town. Our guest house is at the outskirts, in a line with a few other sprawling properties. It has a courtyard with a small pool, and our room itself is gorgeous - two storeys tall with the beds up some rickety stairs on a half-floor above. The main floor has a comfy couch, a tiny kitchen and a decent bathroom. We even get our own little outdoor table and chairs in the courtyard.
We also get a momentary complication when the woman checking us in insists we booked for one person and therefore should have been charged more. Antoaneta manages to find a paper trail between her and the owner that shows he was aware there were two of us. It’s a bureaucratic deadlock until our host agrees it’s above her pay-grade, and that she’ll run it up the ladder. It never comes back down.
After dumping our bags we go for a customary welcome drink at ‘Micro Bar’ up the hill in town centre. Turns out to be another amazing place. Antoaneta gets an open-faced hamburger and an imposing mug of beer. I’m not up for a full lunch but, based on our success with sweet potatoes the previous evening, try a sweet potato cake - also thumbs up.
While we’re in town I figure it’s a good idea to replenish my euros at a convenient ATM just around the corner. It becomes tragicomic.
It accepts my VISA. Good start.
I punch in a custom amount of 100 euros.
As I’m punching it in, I decide I should do 150 instead.
I try to hit correct but hit cancel instead.
It thinks about that for 60 agonizing seconds.
It finally lets me have my card back.
I put my card back in.
It says ‘reading card’ for fully two minutes and I can’t get it back.
I am convinced it is stuck in there forever when it finally lets me through.
I very, very carefully select 150 euros.
It ‘processes’ for another two minutes.
Again, I am convinced the card is stuck in there forever.
Suddenly and with a loud buzz it spits my card back with THIS CARD CANNOT BE USED.
As soon as I take my card back the screen gets even more aggressive: MACHINE TEMPORARILY OUT OF SERVICE.
No euros for me.
Instead we head for a tiny grocery store where I dole out some dwindling cash for drinks and snacks including, after seeing them all over, a peanut cookie. I have an achievable dream of dipping in the courtyard pool and then sitting at our patio table with a beer and chips.
The dream comes to fruition though the pool is freezing, so even ‘dip’ is generous and, snacking poolside, I realize I accidentally got myself 0% beer. Neither detracts from a perfectly pleasant afternoon watching new arrivals haul their surf gear from their van to their room.
When it’s time for dinner, we’re boring and just go back to Micro Bar - it was good enough to deserve a second outing. Before settling in Antoaneta needs to find more cigarettes. First we try the mercato - no good, but he points us around the corner to a dive bar.
Here’s where all the locals hang out while us tourists indulge at Micro Bar. Cheap tables, cafeteria lighting, off-colour CRT in the corner buzzing a football match at high volume, low fidelity. And, hurrah: a cigarette machine in the corner! Antoaneta tries to match the pictures on the buttons to the pack she’s about to finish and none of them seem quite right. We call over the bartender to help and she’s as stumped as we are but between the three of us we triangulate the best bet.
We’re the only ones brave enough to weather Micro Bar’s outdoor seating as the sun dips and the air cools, but we’ve layered up in anticipation. Wanting a long, lazy evening we start off nursing delicious raspberry lemonades. The burger still sitting heavy, Antoaneta just gets fries. I go for god’s gift to portobello salads, an extravagantly plated platter topped with an entire baked brie.
After the wonderful meal I also grab a to-go pistachio cheesecake slice.
THE PISTACHIO CHEESECAKE
…sent me down a small rabbit hole of grilling Antoaneta about cheesecake technique. The question arose because this one had a light, almost marshmallow or gelatin texture in contrast to the heavy, almost flaky kind I was used to. The only other time I’d experienced this texture was with another pistachio cheesecake, but this one at a very clearly Ukrainian bakery. So I wondered if this was just a cross-cultural pistachio cheesecake thing.
Thus a long conversation about different styles of cheesecake across the world, baked vs not, light vs heavy, gelatin vs no gelatin, etc. Who knew!
I don’t want to risk spoiling the evening by tempting the ATM again, but I feel like we’re now on a lucky streak. The luck holds! No longer ‘temporarily out of service’ and satisfyingly responsive.
On our way back down to the guest house Antoaneta notices how brilliant the sky is - the light from these small towns is no match for the milky way and we get an astronomical panorama.
She decides to head back out and retrace part of the route through the even darker parking lots for some stargazing. I’m content with a warm room, comfy couch and cheesecake. She reports back that the stars were as stunning as expected but she was cut slightly short by an intimidating rustling in the bushes that she preferred not to wait around for the source of.
