Beaches

Mileage: 162147

For breakfast, we treated ourselves today. Already upon arrival, we noticed that the campsite offered a full English breakfast, and we definitely wanted to take advantage of that. Sausages, fried eggs, baked beans, and toast, along with potato rösti and ham, delicious, delicious.

As we were on our way to our last visit at the pool, our acquaintances rode by; they were heading to the beach and, knowing we were leaving today, they wanted to say goodbye. We received some more tips for beautiful areas and were informed that today would be the perfect day to visit Praia da Galé. The low tide was expected around noon, making the caves in the beach cliffs accessible. We adjusted our plans for today accordingly.

Next up was the pool. After swimming, we got Gary ready for departure—wastewater, trash, etc.

Then we drove to Praia dos Saldagos, where there was a very large parking lot, and we hiked a bit along the long sandy beach to Praia da Galé. The rocks at the beach were indeed full of caves, small ones, large ones, and some so big that one could stand inside. As the tide was rising again, we hurried back and after an hour we were back at Praia dos Saldagos. Here, we took our time to go for one last swim in the sea. Then we headed back to Gary, as we had more planned.

Since the end of August, we had been running around with two French gas bottles; one still had three kilograms of gas, and the other was almost empty. It was about time to address this issue. According to Sebb's calculations, we consumed about 1.5 kilograms of gas per week. The consumption varied a lot, depending on the refrigerator, cooking,... it was different every day. We didn't want to take a Portuguese bottle just 100 kilometers before the border, and a Spanish bottle in a few days was also not ideal. Where would we put the French bottle then? We had received the tip that there was an LPG dealer on our way who also refilled bottles, so we decided to try that. And indeed, refilling was no problem at all. There was a classic gas pump with a car connection on the premises. The attendant had the adapter for German bottles ready and refilled our bottle without much hassle, great!

Then it was just a ten-minute drive to Praia dos Tomates. The beach likely got its name from the fact that this region had long been a tomato-growing area; however, on our way, we saw quite a few lemon and orange trees, as well as olives. They likely required less water than tomatoes but were still irrigated.

Our obligatory beach walk first took us above the red cliffs to the west until we reached a wooden staircase that allowed us to overcome the height difference and then we walked back along the beach.

The sunset was once again visible over the sea today and was beautiful.

We had actually already prepared for bed, but we were still awake when it became so quiet after 9 PM that we could hear live music from a distance. We then became curious and decided to leave our cozy home once more and follow the music. So we walked in the pitch-black night with a flashlight and a bottle of wine through the landscape towards the music. Unfortunately, it turned out that the band was performing at a hotel resort that was extensively secured with fences. So we turned toward the beach and retraced our steps from the afternoon, only this time in the darkness illuminated by stars, the distant city, and a whole series of lights on the sea.