Sand Patterns

Well, I lied about no more posts until we get back from our trip to the eastern Algarve. I decided to add another post today.

When I went to the beach this morning around 7 am, a bit past sunrise, the sky was cloudless and the tide was lower than I have ever seen it. And there were intricate and beautiful patterns in the sand left by the receding water.

So, I took a bunch of photos of these patterns. Because the sun was low there are lots of shadows and sunlit ridges which I think are interesting. A few samples are included here.

Just a reminder that you can see a slightly larger version of any photo by clicking on it.

Today is a beautiful day, full sun and temperatures just above 20 C.

Tomorrow we are off on our day trip to the eastern Algarve and the weather guessers are predicting a similar day with sun and temperature around 21 C.

Should be lots of opportunities for good photos tomorrow, so info and photos for the blog when we return.

Western Algarve - Cape St. Vincent

Cape St. Vincent looks west and south to the open Atlantic Ocean and one can try to imagine what it would be like looking in both those directions not knowing what other than more ocean was out there. Every reason to consider it "lands end" - possibly frightening to many, a challenge to others like Prince Henry.

Because of its location in relationship to the rest of Europe and to the Mediterranean all European ships passing here used it as a marker of their location.

Not surprisingly, there are spectacular vistas. We arrived there approaching sunset so I captured some quite nice photos of the sun shining through the clouds as well as some views of the ocean and the cliffs.

According to legend, the name of this cape is linked to the story of a martyred fourth-century Iberian deacon St. Vincent whose body was brought ashore here. (According to our guide he actually died and was buried elsewhere then his remains were brought here for reasons that I don't recall. The ravens attached themselves to him at the original place and followed him to his new location.) A shrine was erected over his grave; according to the Arab geographer Al-Idrisi, it was always guarded by ravens and is therefore named by him "Kanīsah al-Ghurāb" (Church of the Raven). King Afonso Henriques (1139–1185) had the body of the saint exhumed in 1173 and brought it by ship to Lisbon, still accompanied by the ravens. This transfer of the relics is depicted on the coat of arms of Lisbon.

The area around the cape was plundered several times by pirates from France and Holland and, in 1587, by Sir Francis Drake. All existing buildings - including the Vila do Infante of Henry the Navigator - fell into ruins because of the earthquake of 1755. The Franciscan friars who cared for the shrine stayed on until 1834, when all monasteries were disbanded in Portugal.

This part of the Algarve, as you can appreciate from the photos of the cliffs, is quite high - possibly the highest part along the coast. As one goes east the height of the land above the ocean gradually diminishes until in the east near Tavira, one finds no cliffs at all. Rather, the coast line is almost at sea level as you will see in the posts following our trip to the east on Saturday, March 19.

The photo to the right is our guide, Irie, speaking with an interested tourist.

Our drive home, after a long and tiring day, was mostly after dark though we did stop before dark just east of Sagres for final photos - this one looks back to the west and shows, if you look carefully, the fortress of Prince Henry's "navigation academy" at Ponta de Sagres, in the distance. The beach on the bottom right is apparently one of our guide's favourite beach.

Western Algarve - Ponta de Sagres

As I mentioned, we had a speedy trip from Lagos to Ponto de Sagres and the fortress which housed Prince Henry the Navigator's navigation academy - and we made it just before the box office closed

Once we were in we had plenty of time to look around. Past the entry way you find yourself in a large open area with a few scattered buildings, including a small chapel, surrounded by low stone walls. Immediately inside on the left is a large circle of stones (about 50 meters across) with lines of rocks radiating from the centre to the outside of the circle. This "structure" was apparently unearthed in 1919 and the archaeologists are still not certain what it is - the main possibilities are either a sundial or a compass. Above is a photo of this structure.

Though Henry, a devoutly religious man, is referred to as a "Navigator" (a person who explores by ship) he apparently sailed only once or twice and was sea sick each time. He was, however, the motivator, strategist and brains behind the Portuguese explorations, which were extensive. Prince Henry developed here at Ponte de Sagres, with support of a religious organization called the Order of Christ, what might today be called a "think tank" for exploration. He apparently brought together navigation experts from several parts of Europe to "pool" their expertise in order to develop new strategies for exploration and it appears that the results were spectacularly successful. Apparently it was here that the revolutionary sailing ship, the Caravel was developed. The lateen sails gave her speed and the capacity for sailing to windward (beating). Caravels were much used by the Portuguese for the oceanic exploration voyages during the 15th and 16th centuries - the so called "age of discovery".

The Portuguese Colonial Empire (Império Colonial Português), was the first global empire in history. In addition, it was the longest-lived of the modern European colonial empires, spanning almost six centuries, from the capture of Ceuta in 1415 to the handover of Macau in 1999. The empire spread throughout a vast number of territories that are now part of 49 different Sovereign States ranging as far east as Japan and the Indonesian archipelago and west to what is now Brazil in South America.

The photo to the right is the small chapel plus some tourists.

It is said that most of the Portuguese expeditions set out from Ponta de Sagres or Lagos.

The photo adjacent is looking east just over the low wall with one of the small turret-like structures intruding on the right.

On to Cape St. Vincent (Cabo de São Vicente), the most westerly and southerly point in Europe and sometimes referred to as "lands end" or "the end of the world", that's how it could easily have been seen by people in this part of the world in the 1400's.

The above photo is taken looking west toward our next destination, Cape St. Vincent - Cabo de São Vicente.

Western Algarve - Lagos

From Aljezur we drove south and east to Lagos which is on the south coast. Here we had a very nice lunch at the Portelas restaurant - apparently a favourite among the locals - and the food was very good.

The first photo may be familiar from posts last year - it is the "promenade" along the marina in Lagos.

Lagos was a walled town and part of the old walled town remains. I would have liked to go through the walled area but time was limited so we went to the slave market area and the church of St Anthony, a small military church decorated to the extreme with angels, cupid like figures, saints, etc. all covered with gold leaf - no photos allowed. Anthony appears to have been the saint of many causes including protector of the military, finder of lost property and matchmaker. We were told that the church was small and had no seats so that the priest could see all of his congregation and make sure that no one was misbehaving or sleeping. Here is our group on the promenade after lunch discussing the next move.

With regard to the slave market - Mercado de Escravos, opened in 1444; Lagos was the first slave market in Portugal and possibly in Europe.
Apparently there was much trade between Lagos and north Africa and during trading trips in 1444 the Portuguese traders found slaves for sale so traded their goods for slaves and brought 230 back to Lagos to be traded or sold there.

The slave trade continued, supported by the Catholic church until 1761. In February of that year Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo a statesman in the government of King Joseph 1 facilitated passage of a law which made it illegal for the children of slaves to be held in slavery, the beginning of the end of slavery in Portugal. I don't have a photo of the market as it is nothing more that a 8 to 10 meter square with 230 ropes stretched across the area to signify the first group of 230 slaves brought in 1444. In the photo above, the slave market area is down at the end of the line of posts on the right - the Church of St. Anthony is on the left in the above photo and in the photo below.

In the square just to the left of the posts bordering the road there is a statue of Prince Henry the Navigator who is credited with spear-heading the extensive Portuguese explorations and discoveries. See comment below.

The church to the right is that of St. Anthony and the last photo is one of Ruth in the street beside the church.

We left Lagos in a bit of a rush and had a hectic drive to Sagres as we had to be there before the fortress on the Ponte de Sagres, just south of Sagres, closed. This is where Prince Henry the Navigator built a fortress and convened his navigation academy, a kind of "think tank", to realize his dream of conquering the oceans beyond the Canary Islands. More on the Ponte de Sagres place and Henry in the next post.

More western Algarve

I have written much more in these blog posts than most of you will care to read but I do it as a sort of journal to remind myself where I have been.

So, from Algar Seca near Carvoeiro, we went north to the Monchique mountains through Marmelete en route to Aljezur. On the way we stopped a couple of time to enjoy the vista and at one place there was a local woman preparing her outside wood fired oven for bread making.

She was too shy to allow me to take a photo but on the right is a photo of the yard in front of her house. In these higher elevations it was cooler and cloudy with bits of light rain. On the way we passed through the Serra de Espinhaço do Cão ("Spine of the dog" mountains) between Marmalete and our next destination, Aljezur, close to the east coast of Portugal and just inside the Parque Natural do Sudoeste e Costa Vicentina, the heart of the St. Vincent coast.

Here we are at the market and small cafe where we had some drinks. Our guide, Irie, standing and Donna, Ev (Jean Wheeler's sister) and Jean with her back to the camera.

Aljezur is a lovely old village from the time of the Moors. It has extremely narrow streets and hills and is the home of Castelo de Aljezur, one of the seven castles/fortresses important during the Christian defeat of the Arabs in the 13th century (The 7 Castelos including the Castelo de Aljezur are represented on the crest of the Portuguese flag).

The photo at the right was taken from the market/coffee shop where we had our drinks so you can see that the Castelo is high above the village with a commanding and beautiful view in all directions - very hard to sneak up on this fortress! In the town we visited a small market, bought some fresh figs, and, as indicated above, had refreshments before driving through streets which seemed too narrow, for even a small car, up to the Castelo for some amazing vistas.

I can't recall the directions I was facing for each of the last three photos but they were all taken from the Castelo de Aljezur.

Trip to the western Algarve

This post is under construction. The links here are links to some of the places we visited on our trip from Albufeira, our home base, to the western Algarve on March 12. Photos and stories soon.

Some introductory comments. We had a wonderful day from every point of view. The weather was perfect; sunny and pleasantly warm in most places. The higher elevations such as Marmelete were a bit cooler but still warm enough for light clothing. The scenery and our leader and guide, Irie, were great. We learned much about Portugal and Portuguese history, only bits and pieces of which might appear here. As with Carnaval, there will be 3 or 4 posts about this trip.

We drove intially from Albufeira to the small community of Pêra then to Alcantarilha,(which means bridge in Arabic - names beginning in "Al" are from the Arabic or Moorish period in Portugal) then to Porches (a producer of decorated ceramic tiles - Azulejos).

Then to Lagoa (which means lagoon) and south to Carvoeiro. (which means charcoal burner) on the south coast. Here we learned about and saw an Algar, which is a bit like a huge "sink hole" - a hole all the way down to the ocean. There are some that are just a big round hole (we saw one that was about 10 meters across) to complex ones like the one in the photos.

The first photo is taken at the top of the Algar looking out toward the ocean and the second is looking down from the top.





If you look closely about 2/3 of the way down from the top of the enlarged version of the third photo you can see the small opening to the ocean. Photo 4 was taken looking up from about a third of the way down - if you look closely at this one you can see Ruth.

The 5th photo is another view from near the top and the 6th is a second Algar a couple of kilometres away. This one is just a round hole, possibly 30 meters across, that opens to the ocean at the bottom. For safety reasons there is a fence around it, so it is not possible to actually see the bottom.

From here we drove north into the Monchique mountains that separate the Algarve from the adjacent province, Alentejo, on our way to Marmelete, en route to Aljezur.

Just a word about the provinces in Portugal, of which there are 11. These are geographical division only and have no political or administrative functions. The Algarve, for example, is bounded by 4 natural boundaries - the Atlantic Ocean on the west and south, the mountains in the north and the river that forms the border between Portugal and Spain in the east. All other provinces have similar natural boundaries.

More about Aljezur and the other areas in the next post.

As promised - more Carnaval

A cool rainy morning here in Albufeira - the first day we have begun the day with rain. The good news is that the rain has now stopped and it is clearing.

This may be the last post with photos of Carnaval as we are off to the western part of the Algarve tomorrow and hopefully some good photo material.

As I said in my last post, this one would be photos of people in the crowd.

I have a couple of photos of this child, but I like this one the best.

She looks a little lost.

This girl I spotted just as we were leaving the parade area.

There is an earlier photo of these girls who were busy gathering streamers and other material being thrown from the floats.

Children were not the only people in the crowd in costume. A young man above and, I think, a mother and daughter to the right.