TOURS AND TRAILS | WESTERN
tour beyond the western Algarve For a few days, we shall leave the rugged coast behind us. We will travel to parts of the Algarve, home to swirling, diving birds, where the water buries shells in billions of grains of sand along the gentle coastline. We will walk among the reeds, which are full of endless surprises and in the salt marshes where there are herons and storks, and many other migrant birds. We shall warm our feet in the fine, soft sand and our spirit in the lazy, peaceful water; we shall drink in a bit of the Mediterranean, but with our eyes always on the infinite ocean. Later, on a gentle detour into the Alentejo, we shall catch sight of Spain, the shimmering banks of the great river of the peninsula, which rises there. We will hear the sounds of Andalusian clapping carried on the wind, mirages of pleated skirts and people of haughty bearing on horseback. However, we shall never lose sight of the people who live there, embraced forever by the land of the Caldeirão uplands, building their lives in this land of carobs and almonds, but living far from the seas. In whitewashed doorways, in the shade of virgin walls and decorated chimney pots, they weave wicker and shape whatever they can find. We will visit ancient cities with walls once painted dark and later whitewashed; a thousand churches in Tavira, a thousand gardens in Loulé, a thousand restaurants with the scent of the sea at the edge of Olhão. We will be enchanted by the eastern Algarve. We will lose ourselves and then find ourselves again among the most enduring remains of the Moorish era.
Alcoutim (HR)
43
