If Albufeira was a woman, she would be a tall, elegant lady with long blond hair, the colour of golden sand.  She would be about 55 years old, not in her prime, but still beautiful and able to turn heads.  She has some small scars, maybe a tattoo or a piercing from her youth, although she’s not ashamed of them, because they have made her what she is today. She is worldly and well-travelled, and her heritage is mixed. She wears elegant designer clothes, but they are well worn and shabby.  Her long nails are brightly painted, although some have chips of colour missing. Her voice is deep and throaty, after decades of cigarettes and late nights.  This is Albufeira.

Today we walked from Albufeira to the beach of Olhos de Agua for a lunch date. The trip there was about 12.5km and 43 floors in elevation.  At the 12km mark, so close to our destination, Rosco, my non-athletic and un-coordinated boyfriend, who famously fell into the lift on the way to our first date, pulled up lame.  Even a lunch of Peri Peri chicken and cold beer did not solve the problem, so we caught a taxi most of the way home.

Olhos de Agua is one of the more famous beaches of the Algarve.  Its name translates to ‘eyes of water’, so named for the natural freshwater springs on the eastern side of the beach.  The village is home to a fleet of fishing boats with matching fishing huts. Fisherman go to sea daily, keeping the local restaurants well supplied with fish, prawns and octopus.  The beach has the beautiful orange cliff faces of the Algarve and spectacular rock formations that sit in the water. Restaurants are built right on the sand or the rock face, with decks that overhang the Atlantic Ocean.

On our walk today we witness some of the exceedingly ugly hotels and resorts that sprang up in the 60s and 70s.  They make no attempt to fit into the existing landscape or architectural style, and just looking at them hurts my eyes.  They’re monstrously large buildings, coloured red, or that dreadful salmon colour. Most of them are in stunning locations, on the cliff top, with their own private sandy beaches.  In time, I hope they’ll be renovated and perhaps integrated into the landscape a little better…..but for now, they show the flagrant disregard of the “gold rush” days of Portuguese tourism.

Interspersed between the garish hotels and resorts, there are plenty of charming little buildings, many with Moorish chimneys, one of the architectural features of the Algarve.   The ornate chimneys are a throwback to the Moorish past which is celebrated in today’s architecture.  Even though the conquest of Spain by Muslims happened over a thousand years ago, the quirky, Moorish chimney survives today.  “They can’t all be chimneys”, says Ross…. “some of them must be stink pipes!” He’s such a romantic.

The weather here, like Spain’s Costa del Sol, is fantastic – blue skies and about 15 degrees during the day.  It’s very similar to a winter in Queensland.  I really can’t understand why the place isn’t packed with northern Europeans – it’s fantastic weather and because it’s Winter, it’s low season, it’s very affordable. Instead, inexplicably, the visitors all come in the Summer, peak season, when it’s between 35 and 42 degrees and packed with wall to wall tourists! Ugghhhh.

#Portugal #Albufeira