Portugal - kilometer-long sandy beach at Criaz - November 12th

In the night _ _ _ _ _! If you're clever, you can insert the correct letters here...!

In the morning, the same...! Silvia and Röbi are so kind and invite us for breakfast (including sauna). We don't have coffee or bread, so we're grateful for the offer! We're being taken care of very well here. We chat a lot and only get going around noon. We say goodbye again, but we're sure we'll see each other again, for sure!

Since we don't have as much time as the two of them, we're already on our way to Portugal. We drive on the highway for a bit, but after the border, we switch to the country road and follow the coast. Portugal welcomes us with rain, but we're still happy because today we have an extra hour, as we set the clock back one hour in Portugal...! So we reach a spot at Criaz, right by the beach, not at 5 pm, but at 4 pm. It's very quiet here too and we're completely alone. Accordingly, we have five toilets, five showers, and ten sinks all to ourselves...if you have it, you have it! I don't even close the door when peeing, I feel like I'm in a huge bathroom. We take a quick look at the beach, but it's high tide, so there's not much beach available. I go for a walk with the dog and it starts drizzling, great, and there's quite a breeze here. It's getting colder! In the evening, we sit in front of the van again, eat delicious food, and can't believe it when at half past eight, another old VW van arrives at the spot. Well...that's the end of our five toilets, showers, and ten sinks, and open doors...! A young couple from Austria, on the road for a whole year...not bad either! They bought a puppy at the market...let's hope it doesn't become a 60 kg shepherd dog...!

The night is rainy, the morning is dry and sunny! We enjoy coffee in the sun, the wind is still blowing, but with a hat and a jacket, it's fine!

Then we head to the beach relatively early because the tide is already back at 3 pm.

It's fantastic, a kilometer-long sandy beach and hardly a person in sight. We walk for a while, admire the big waves, and see two dolphins again...but on the beach...not in the water! Unfortunately! We also find all kinds of other trash on the beach, things that get washed up...really annoying! In France, apparently there were lots of packages with cocaine washed up, and Jörni thinks there might be some here too...so he inspects everything closely. Then he finds something and spends a long time unraveling it...of course, it's not cocaine, but a clean rope...!

After two hours on the beach and an extensive search for whatever, we head back before the tide comes in all the way. We spend the rest of the day sheltered from the wind behind the van and enjoy the sun. In the afternoon, Jörni gets back on his bike and gets some drinks. In the evening, we finally have salad again and we only manage to stay up until half past eight before going to bed...it's all because of the time difference!

PS: Upon closer examination of Jörni's photo, you can see that Santiago de Compostela did something to him...he looked like that in the morning :)