Who are the People in Your Neighbourhood

Birds. Singing. Cats. Singing. Waves. Shouting.
Okay it might not be shouting, but from my side of the wall it is difficult to tell the difference. My neighbour is a very boisterous lady. She is the wife and mother of fishers. I can easily see her filling the role of fishmonger. Despite being separated by four rooms and brick walls doesn’t dampen her volume. I hear her every morning.
When I first arrived in Nazare she scared me. She seems tough and, I thought, not very friendly. For Kootenay and I’s first months she alternately ignored us or spoke harshly and gestured in our direction. When I ran into problems hooking my gas tank up, I went to ask her for some help and ended up more frightened of her than of leaking gas.
This all changed a few weeks ago. The city hosted a festival. Portugal seems to have something to celebrate every month. This festival was to pray for a productive and safe fishing season. Fishers from Nazare make their way around the world. I have met people who have fished in France, Spain, England and Canada. The celebration involved various saints being paraded through town and then onto to the fishing boats. There they were loaded onto the boats and then the boats headed out to sea. They circled the bay three times while fireworks were shot off from the bluffs of Sito. When they returned the local priests lead prayers.
My friend Vitor managed to get us a ride on one of the boats for the festivities. Nazare was very appealing with its white washed houses topped with red tile roofs. Looking back on it from the sea added to its charm.
People lined the shores and waved to the boats as they made their way out to sea.
You don’t get seasick do you? This question was asked of me more the a few times as we made our way out of the harbour. I cheerfully said No and hoped that was the truth.
It was a great day. The sun was warm. I didn’t get seasick, and the fishers were gracious enough to share their beer with me.
About a week later my neighbour stopped me as I was returning home from walking Kootenay. She gestured for me to stay where I was and ran back into her house. I waited nervously. I knew that Koot hadn’t done anything wrong, and assumed that I hadn’t either, but my go to emotion is always guilt.
She came back out of the house with an 8X10 picture of one of the boats. There I was sitting on the boat heading out to sea. She had a picture of me. Odd.
Turns out it was her family’s boat. Vitor is a friend of her son. When we hitched the ride on the boat none of us knew that we would all be so closely connected.
Now when I hear her singing/shouting from the place next door I smile. I am pretty sure I haven’t done anything to make her mad at me. I think she might even like me little bit.

Alentejo Blue Baby

I am back from Alentejo. It was great. After reading guidebooks and Monica Ali’s book Alentejo Blue I was prepared to find a depressed area filled with old people that was as flat as the prairies and as dry as Nevada. But instead I found myself riding a horse along a reservoir created by the Alqueva Dam. It was beautiful. There was olive, orange, lemon and cork trees. And the Gaudiana River, which feeds a patchwork of small local farms, excited Kootenay. I had to keep her on a leash or I would have had one very wet dog. I don’t think Vitor would have wanted her dripping all over his nice leather seats.

When Sofi and Vitor offered me the chance to tag along with them to see the area I took them up on it. We piled the three of us, and two dogs into Vitor’s car and headed out. I was prepared for a road trip Canadian style. You get up in the morning and drive all day, with hours of driving separating cities. Here is it a little different. We left Nazare at about 11 and promptly stopped for some breakfast. Then we drove to Evora. This took maybe two and a half hours.

Evora is a beautiful old town with an ancient core that is a UNESCO heritage site. It also houses a very modern university. We strolled through the center of the city had lunch and took in the Diana Temple, which is really the Roman Temple of Evora. Then we were off to our hotel.

The cork trees we passed along the way are really cool. Their bark is harvested about every ten years. The tree is stripped of its bark leaving it with a rusty red trunk. Eventually the bark grows back leaving it ready to be stripped once again. The yummy black pig hangs out underneath and eats the acorns that fall from the tree. So the tree is responsible for the cork in the wine and the yummy dinner that I had with it. You gotta love a tree that committed to my happiness.

We stayed at Horta Da Moura. It is an old family farm that has been transformed into a hotel as part of a rural tourism program in Portugal. On our first night we went into Monsaraz for dinner. The hotel recommended we try O Alcaide. Great suggestion. That is where I first tasted black pork. The pig is black not the meat. Yummy. And the potatoes that we were served were fantastic. They were cut like potato chips and then fried and salted. With a little local red wine to wash it down with I was a happy girl.

The next day we went back to the town for lunch and tried another restaurant. Vitor ordered the meal of the day that day. He had Alentejo pork. It is small cubes of pork served with clams or mussels and a wine and paprika sauce. This time we tired a local wine that was produced for the restaurant. The Portuguese know how to flavour pork and how to make wine. The total bill for two jugs of wine, three lunches, fresh cheese, olives, and bread came to about thirty euros, pretty damn reasonable to me.

Monsaraz is a tiny town/castle that sits on top of a hill keeping on eye on Spain. It is a pre-historic town that has had many occupiers. Right now there are about 60 residents and the day we were there; twice that many tourists. Cobblestone streets, white washed houses with the Alentejo blue trim, and bull fighting rings were the amongst the sites.

Somehow we also managed to find ourselves heading to Spain looking for cheese to go with the local wine we had picked up. Unfortunately for Spain everything was closed. So we took a quick look at another castle and headed back to Portugal. We stopped just across the border and found a local cheese maker and some crackers and made it back to Horta da Moura in time for dinner.

Quite a weekend eh… and I am haven’t even told you about the lunch on the way home (great in case you were wondering) and the fantastic view from the windmill that I now want to buy and live in.

Check out Vitor's website to see the pictures.