6 January

The home of Fado

Portugal was powerful once, but those days are long gone. Lisbon, its capital, has been described as the crumbling remnant of this once-powerful nation. Lisbon, today, on the surface at least, is a bit run-down in places, but these areas only add to the character of the city. We roamed through the back streets of Alfama, the old part of the city today, through the very streets where Fado was born.

In the bright sunshine today, new high-rises in the distance mark the boundaries of the new Lisbon and the new Portugal. Still not among the most wealthy of the EU countries, Portugal can be far easier on the pocket than Italy or France. Things are changing quickly though. The EU has ploughed millions into developing Portugal's infrastructure. Roads and ports are modern and well-maintained.

Still none the wiser about Fado?

It was in the narrow, run-down alley-ways and streets of the Alfama district of the city that the often mournful music of the Fado originated. It all seems to have started with the rough, probably drunken songs of depressed sailors around the waterfront of Lisbon in the early part of the 19th Century. There were special Fado houses, but these were probably also the other 'houses' that sailors often frequented.

At about the same time, the 12 string Portuguese Guitar evolved from the more traditional six string version. Eventually, the themes and music of Fado were picked up by Lisbon's bohemian set and so from these humble beginnings, this genre of music rose to become the national music of Portugal. Its exponents are household names in Portugal today, but it is still all a bit of a mystery to us, even after our visit to the Fado Museum. The museum is a bit like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Nashville but without the Rock, or the Roll. Not to scoff! It was a great museum and an interesting experience. We even bought a Fado CD. If possible we'll attach a sample to the blog.

5 January

Routine

It's almost automatic now; the morning routine.

In a campground, get up, boil the wash water, make the coffee, wash and complete the “toilette” (just one of us), sit and wait (the other one!), check the maps, set up 'Navgirl' for the day's journey, visit the loo (don't forget your toilet paper!), make breakfast, wash up, load the fridge from the beer and wine cellar, empty the chemical toilet and the waste water, fill the water tank, pay the bill, check all hatches, start your engines and off. If we try hard, we can get all this done and be on the road by 9:30am. Hey – we are on holidays!

For free camps on motorways etc, leave out a few of these steps and add 'wander into a cafe, feign interest in eating and duck into the toilet'. (Toilet paper usually provided.)

Today was no exception. Like a well-oiled machine, we were on the road by 9:30 for the short drive to Lisboa (Lisbon).
The area of Portugal we drove through today can be very dry. In 2005, they had a crippling drought here, but this year, the country is beautifully green, oranges and lemons load the trees and the cattle and sheep are all fat. Cork trees are everywhere, easily identified by the bare, stripped trunks that turn red once the cork bark is removed. There is a world-wide shortage of natural cork and it is impacting on the younger trees. Trunks are sometimes stripped of bark before they are more than a couple of hundred millimeters in diameter. The bark doesn't grow back, so it's a long wait until the trees are big enough to produce again.

We hit our camping grounds in Lisbon just before lunch today, so we made an early start on the city with a trip on the bus to the waterfront district of Belem, the location of the famous Discovery Monument celebrating the discovery of the New World. Huge and impressive, it is probably better seen on a good day. The good citizens of Belem also have an excellent Modern and Contemporary Art Museum with a very large and interesting collection of exciting and, of course, bizarre stuff, and free! There was also a large Monastery but, being Monday, it was closed!

It was cold and grey, so we probably didn't see the city at its best this afternoon. Late in the day, the sun broke through, so tomorrow might be a better day.


4 January

Where are we really?

A few days back, when we left Marrakech in Morocco, we started our return to Amsterdam and the end of the Van leg of our trip. We have done some klms in a few days and we are now in the small city of Evora in southern Portugal.
But on the pleasant and mostly sunny drive into Portugal today, we had to keep asking ourselves, 'where are we really?' This part of Portugal, East of Lisbon, is so much like Australia, you could have shot “Australia” here instead of in Darwin and Bowen. The eucalypt, in its many varieties, is dominant here, as it is in most of the Mediterranean. Amongst the forests of gums, wattle and other acacias, some probably southern African in origin, fill in the under growth. The country is open and often rocky and the soil is red.

Portugal is not as densely populated as many of its neighbours and so there are open vistas a-plenty. Small towns with one main street and nothing much else pop up on the road every now and then. Some are railway towns with the line on one side of the street and the town on the other.

This afternoon, just after we set up the van for the night, we watched the sun come down over a group of Brits who were camped beneath a beautiful stand of gums. In the late afternoon sunlight, they could have been on the Murray.
Evora - a UNESCO Heritage-Listed site, was our port of call for today. With easy parking, a close to town camp site, some great things to see, Evora had it all for us. A walled city,with Roman ruins, an interesting Cathedral with ghoulish Chapel of Bones (to remind us all that life is short) and an aqueduct, Evora was soothing to our shattered nerves, after yesterday's drive-through of Seville. If only every city was as easy to negotiate!

3 January

Seville drive past

Ever need to see Seville, we are your people. City centre, suburbs, ring-roads, industrial areas and roads in and out of town in all directions. Just a breeze for us now. That's about all we did today. Not that the city is so difficult. It is compact with a population of about 700,000 people and an excellent road system. Just no parking, that we could find, for large vehicles.

Missed another gem of a city because of lack of parking., or an open campground, or Aire ...... but that's the trade-off. C'est la vie!


2 January 2009

Out of Africa? .. how trite!

On the road again?.... used before?

Border crossings can be a total non-event or they can take hours.

Our return to Spain and the EU today was at the upper end of this scale. Who would have thought it would take almost an hour to get out of Morocco and into Spain? Nobody in this day and age objects to border formalities. They ensure our safety and security. But do they have to be so inefficient?! It may be jingoistic, but crossing the Australian frontier is always 'efficient'. It may take time, but you can see that things are working to a system. Even entering the USA, there is a 'system' - frustratingly slow and poorly managed - but a system.

Again, today, at the Moroccan frontier, it was chaos. We were lucky. For some reason a policeman, controlling the rapidly growing and slow moving line at the border, decided to wave us through to an express lane. Right to the front! Good for us, but what about the unlucky? AND, for the first time this trip, somebody else entered our van! Was he friendly? Yes. If we'd had drugs, would he have been as pleasant? NO! He looked into cupboards and the various “pits” that comprise a camper and tapped away, listening for unusual noises – ie a water tank that didn't have water in it. It was the most thorough check we have ever had in our travels, but we didn't really mind if the end result is less drug-trafficking. It is reassuring to believe that somebody, somewhere, is doing something, so that next time we come, we won't be put off going other places by the potential threat of police raids of the campground in the middle of the night, as was indicated by one of our sources.

Never mind, we made our ferry back to Algeciras by minutes and 50 minutes later, were back in Spain. Tonight, we are camped in a crowded camping ground just outside of Tarifa, south of Cadiz. It was a rainy and miserable day, but the Germans were out on the beach para-sailing. It's warm, even by Australian winter standards, but ... in the Atlantic... in January?

Hundreds of campervans and caravans are still streaming south. We saw many on our way south before Christmas. There seem to be more now. There is hardly a spare plot in this camping ground and there are several this size in the area. Morocco must love it - this lot, all headed their way! And why not? It's about 20C on a good day here and -10C just 1000 km north. By the way, we are heading north.

With more than three quarters of the 3 month van leg of our total 5 month adventure done, it is a good time to reflect on this form of travel. After three previous long trips in Campervans, we consider ourselves experts. That's about 12 months living in vans on the road in Europe!

Firstly, it's cheap, or at least you can control your costs. And it can be flexible. You can go where you like, when you like. But can you? We have had some disappointments trying to park and see sights even in relatively small towns. Driving is becoming increasingly difficult on Europe's ever more crowded roads. The big plus is independence. Even with the difficulties with traffic, finding somewhere to stay and constantly getting lost, it is much more of an adventure than a Kon-Tiki Tour! After all, how many other people do you know who have driven up the main streets of Amsterdam, Budapest, Paris, Rome, Sofia, Athens, and many, many more cities, towns and villages in a campervan?
Would we do it again? Ask us in 12 months time...

Oh. About Morocco. Fantastic experience. Not all that easy travelling the way we did, but not the most difficult country we have visited by a long shot. Fantastic, friendly people. Beautiful scenery. A culture that is new to us, different and enthralling. Very safe and welcoming for westerners. Get there before it becomes even more touristy, but be prepared for a 'culture shock'.