Near Sao Teotonio to Sagres

, we left very early the next morning without eating breakfast. We rolled into Sao Teotonio about five kilometers later really hoping to find a good cafe with lots of pastries. We weren't disappointed.

Shortly after breakfast we met two cycle tourists going the other way. They were a German couple, Dirk and Claudia. Dirk was doctor and the Claudia a graphic artist. Great people. They thought we might be sick of talking to other bike tourists after two years on the road. Quite the opposite actually. We had only seen one other one in Europe so far and I felt very anxious to talk to some more. We were envious of their Bicycling in Portugal guidebook, in German unfortunately. In New Zealand all the German riders had excellent, very thorough guides too.

The rest of the day was like a party. We had a tail wind (poor Dirk and Claudia must have had hell fighting it) and the road was not nearly so hilly yet still pretty. This was a sweet part of the coast. That morning we had entered the region known as the Algarve. It's famous for being a sort of Florida for Europe. It's pretty, has great beaches, and it's warm and dry when the weather in the rest of Europe is cold and wet.

Much of it, we heard, is over-touristed. But the west coast was a sweet spot for us. There was enough tourism so we could find lots of good places to stop, but not so much that traffic was bad and things were overcrowded.

At a pizza we met a strange man from Oregon. The poor guy just ran into the wrong people. He was driving around the Algarve in a rental car and when he saw our bikes in front of the restaurant he stopped in to ask us some questions. He had brought a bike along and wanted to know how the riding was. This was harmless enough. But he had a penchant to brag a bit and act the know-it-all. He let drop in a rather arrogant manner how he had ridden his bike in Asia. We said we had too! So we pressed him for details. He was vague at first but Joan kept needling him until finally he admitted he had only rented a bike for an afternoon in Chengdu, China. We felt a little bad for pushing it so far. Then we started discussing the wind in Portugal. He said, "Yes, seems to be a strong wind out of the northeast." I sort of hated to contradict him again but it was quite obvious that the wind was from the northwest. All the windmills pointed that way.

When he left, he said "maybe we'll see you later." He said it in that totally insincere way people say those words when they hope to never see each other again.

Joan: it was a real bummer meeting him, because we miss America, and then the first American we met in a long time was a real jerk.

Eric: We ended that day at Sagres, the southwestern most point of the Iberian peninsula. It was considered the end of the world to Europeans until 1492. Columbus and Magellan both might have visited here and at any rate their navigation methods owed a lot to the Navigation school that was in Sagres.

It was a good inspiring place for a school of navigation. The cliffs rise directly out of the sea to about 300 feet and the waves crash at the bottom dramatically.

Sagres is also the name of a very common Portuguese beer. Though I never saw a brewery in Sagres, I drank quite a bit of it at a little restaurant overlooking the cliffs.

The campground was very nice, filled with tall pine trees to break the ever-present strong wind. We stayed two nights, spending the middle day exploring the shore. There was a museum at the former navigation school but it's not much. The school was destroyed apparently by another famous explorer, Sir Francis Drake. There's also a lighthouse. But the dramatic cliffs are the attraction.

The morning we left, we stopped in the town itself for some coffee when we ran into another couple of bike tourists. Like the last pair, they too were German. We weren't surprised. We all had coffee together and hit it off right away.

They were Peter and Suzanne. Peter was a mathematics professors. For 16 or 17 years they had been doing annual bike tours so they had been just about everywhere in Europe it seemed. They gave us excellent advice about where to go and not to go in Andalucia. Before they left, we agreed to meet them in Lagos the next morning and hike the cliffs there.

From Sagres we had to ride north, into the northwest wind, for about 10 km until the road turned east. After that we had a strong tail wind most of the rest of the way to Spain.

But we didn't have much more that afternoon. Lagos was not far, only about 30 more km. We took some back roads and stopped in a tiny town called Burgau for a beer. We sat at a restaurant overlooking a small cove with a horseshoe shaped beach. The friendly bartender brought out two super tall glasses of cold Sagres beer. That was a special moment. I felt absolutely carefree. Even for people on a two year vacation, we can still experience moment of total relief from concerns. We wanted the moment to linger.

Then Joan noticed a "Rooms for rent sign" on the wall so she asked the bartender how much. We figured it would be way too much but what the hell, it's worth asking. He asked how much we wanted to pay. We said, not much. I think he sensed our take-it-or-leave-it attitude. He said 3,000 Escudos. That's about US$18 per day. Camping usually costs 1500 Escudos.

Then he showed us the place. It was fantastic. It had two bedrooms, a living room, a full kitchen, a nice bathroom, a TV, and everything had very recently been remodelled so it was very clean and everything worked quite well. We loved it.

We ended up making that moment over the beer last for five days. I have to hand it to Joan. It never would have occurred to me to even ask how much an apartment would be.

For once we felt like we had discovered something really great. Something that ten years from now we'll be telling people, "When I was in the Algarve I got a whole apartment in a little town called Burgau for 3000 Escudas. Of course now it's nothing but high rises and casinos. You can't even buy a drink for 3000."

It was so great having a kitchen! I cooked almost all our meals. There was a couple little groceries on the street so we could get just about anything.

We developed a good routine. We called it the Kurt Vonnegut week. I once read an interview with Kurt Vonnegut and he said he wrote from 7 a.m. until noon and that's about all the good hours of writing he had in him each day. So in the morning I cooked breakfast and then spent four or five hours catching up this journal or writing other things. Then we had lunch, slept on the beach, had an afternoon beer, cooked dinner, watched Baywatch and went to bed.

Baywatch?!? It was in English and so remarkably dorky that we had a great time making fun of it.

We also saw Lassie in English. We had watched it in French and Spanish and were proud of ourselves for being able to translate 60 or 70 percent of the idiotic dialogue. After seeing the show in English, we discovered that it is just as meaningless as the conversation exercises in our French and Spanish text books. Amazing how really really dull things are more interesting when you don't understand them.

We only left Burgau to meet Peter and Suzanne in Lagos, about 13 km away. We had an excellent hike along the unusual cliffs, including lots of caves and natural bridges, around Lagos. We talked about physics and math puzzles with Peter. Here's a good puzzle: Monty Hall asks you if you want door 1, 2, or 3, you pick door #1 then he shows you that it is not behind #3 and asks if you want to change your mind and pick #2. The question is, statistically is it better to stick with #1, change to #2 or does it matter? The answer is: switch to door #2. If you always switch your chances if winning go up. Think of it this way: your chances of picking the right door the first time is 1 in 3. But when you pick the worn door, then switch, you will always switch to the right door. When you switch you win 2 of 3 times.

Another one (sorry). This one was given to five random participants in an international mathematics convention in Berlin. Four of the five got it wrong: if one-and-a-half chickens produce one-and-a-half eggs in one-and-a-half days, how many eggs does a chicken lay in one day?

Answer: 2/3 of an egg. (it takes one-and-a-half chickens to lay one egg per day.)

Next: Across the Algarve

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