Monday 30 April 2012  - From Spain to Portugal

Day 18 and 140 to go.

With a late night again we woke still quite tired but we knew that we had to get up and moving as we would have a big day of driving ahead of us. So by 8.30am and after a hurry up from the campground staff, we were saying goodbye to Sam and Dave and back on the road after sitting still for 4 days.

It was still quite cool outside and we had rain on and off as we drove through the back streets of little towns before finding the Autovia again. Seville was the first major town we skirted around. Heading over a large bridge with 6 lanes of traffic it was slightly chaotic with all the cars and trucks just inches away. With the GPS and markings on the road it wasn’t too hard to navigate and we were back on quieter roads. Coming into a more hilly area saw us blanketed in low-lying cloud cover that was beautiful. The landscape was changing again to low rolling hills. It was more rural with many farms and a lot of pigs. We also drove through wine country noticing many cellar doors along the way. 

Some areas were very pretty covered in red poppies, purple Patterson’s curse and yellow and white daisies all in the same fields. In one stretch it appeared we were driving through national park with thick scrub. I saw some dog like animal wander off into the thickets as we drove past. We also saw many birds of prey, some the size of a decent wedge tail eagle.

We stopped for fuel after a couple of hours. We seemed to be following a lot of bikers either returning from the GP or heading on to Estoril. We even passed the Colin Edwards team truck.

Back on the road we continued to follow the GPS through little towns and after 4 hours we finally crossed over into Portugal but with no checkpoints and border control we may as well have been in Spain.  We also crossed a time zone to be on par with England and 7 hours behind Perth.

We drove past a huge lake not long after entering the border. It is obviously used as a Portuguese get away and recreational area if we were reading the signs correctly.

With a further 30min drive we made it to Evora and our campground for the night. We parked up under some gum trees to make us feel at home. We set up and had lunch before walking the 2km into the town and inside the ancient city walls.

The town of Evora is very pretty with cobbled streets and white washed houses. It was very quaint.  Our destination was Capela Dos Ossos but as it was closed when we arrived so we decided to wander the nearby park and check out the remains of an old building that was inhabited by many peacocks.  

We then returned to Capela Dos Ossos or Chapel of Bones. It really was the most grotesque thing I have seen. The inside of the chapel is constructed with the bones of 1000’s of bodies. It was definitely the eeriest Addams family experience, but worth a look.

After our visit we checked out the cathedral next door it was not as pompous as some we have seen, before wandering back towards the supermarket for groceries. We bought pastel de natas, (Custard tarts) which Portugal is famous for and after speaking to the baker he recommended the best sort but also gave us a different variety to taste the difference. We are noticing that the Portuguese are more fluent with English than the Spanish that is obviously helpful for us. With shopping bags packed we wandered on to the campground.

Finally I was able to get on to the Internet at the campgrounds lounge and get in touch with the goings on at home and update Facebook and the blog. It wasn’t particularly quick but we could do what we needed.

I returned to the van at 6.30pm to join Paul and to make dinner. We decided we would not go up to Porto tomorrow as it would another 500km trip and we would need to head back to Lisbon for the race on Thursday. Instead we have decided to concentrate the next few days on Lisbon and then go to Estoril on the Thursday afternoon.  With that decided and both of us so exhausted we had a shower and were in bed by 8pm. 

View Larger Map