Day 17 - Portugal instead of Spain and gas station strike

Hello everyone

Wow, today was a really eventful day!

Originally, we wanted to do the 'Caminito del Rey' via ferrata today and we were really looking forward to it! Unfortunately, it was actually canceled because of the bad weather! We checked the weather forecast and realized that it wouldn't get better all week. At breakfast, we unanimously decided to completely change our plan!

Instead of going to 'Ronda' and then to 'Gibraltar', we went straight to Portugal - the weather should be better there.

We had planned a 5-hour drive to 'Portimão', but we ended up standing in traffic for about 45 minutes. There's a special system for toll roads here: tourists have to get in the right lane, leave a credit card and then the license plate is captured by a camera. Each section of these toll roads is monitored by video and the amount for the route is automatically charged to the credit card. Once in Portugal, we went shopping first. That was a really strange store... Everything is imported and all items were labeled with their country of origin - since we couldn't find any other shop, this one was enough. Of course, after shopping, we passed by about 10 other grocery stores :)

Since our motorhome was already running on reserve, we urgently needed a gas station! We found some... Even many... But all of them were out of gasoline. Finally, we asked two policemen who explained to us that only one gas station would have gasoline at the moment. There had been a strike in Portugal and it had only ended this morning. Now all gas stations would be refilled, but it would take time. We went to the gas station described by the policemen and happily found out that it really had fuel! However, it was limited: each vehicle was only allowed 15 liters. The vehicle in front of us drove so far forward at the pump that the sensor recognized our camper as a refueling vehicle. Result: when we wanted to refuel, it didn't work: only 15 liters/vehicle were allowed! It was an everlasting discussion until we finally convinced the employee there that we hadn't received a single drop yet.... They deactivated the sensor for us and we filled up 30 liters out of spite :D

Finally, having accomplished everything, we went to the beach. It's just indescribably beautiful here!! The cliffs right on the beach, an incredible panorama! By chance, we discovered a hiking route of 5 km right along the coast. We want to tackle that tomorrow :) After the exploration tour, we had a Margarita and once again well-deserved burgers! :D

Later in the evening, we dropped off mom at her hotel, which we had booked about an hour before :) It's only 1km away from us, perfect how that worked out!

Tomorrow, once again, we have no idea exactly what we're going to do, apart from the hike - the rest will spontaneously happen again.

See you tomorrow! :)