11 - 13 August 2009
Our first day in Portugal was just a ride into the country. We stopped in a little town near the border for lunch and all I could think was; 
“Wow what a desolate place how could this little town survive”. The town was very cute, but the area around it was dry rocky desert that I was not expecting for a long time to come. Not until Africa at very least.
We really should have found a place to stay there so we could meet some peopleand get a feel, but instead we push on and headed out. A few hours a a few more 100ks we found a campsite near a reservoir. That is all i can really say about it. It did not have a much more then that, it was more of a public pool then a campsite. We did not do any thing that night but eat dinner and do some chores. We talked about what we want from Portugal and we could not decide if we want to go to the mountains again or see the cities.
That night, at about 3 am, all the dogs in the village started barking madly, as my regulatory earplugs were bugging me, I had removed them hours previously. I was awake instantly, thinking it would go a way I sat there for 30 min to no avail. I think it was a werewolf hunt.
Although we discussed it the night before it was not until the next day when we re-opened the talk did we decided to go to the cities. We decided it was best to see the people and learn about the Portuguese culture. We did however decide to start small. We headed for a beach town called Viana do Castelo, the Lonely Planet suggested it as a “place of traditional crafts and culture".
Well no, ugly is the right word! It was everything but traditional, it was a big city a industrial fishing port, that happened to have a few big hotels and big beach resorts. We could not find the campground again listed on the GPS, this has unfortunately been a common theme. We have been using a downloaded data base of campsites around the world. The concept is great and the guy that put all the work in to making and then giving it away for it should get a medal, unfortunately it only has about a 50% accuracy rate.
We drove around for hours and finally ended up in a small campground about 20k above Viana do Castelo.
This campground was nice although very busy. It did, however, run along side a river that you could swim in. We decided to stay a day or two. We set camp and I started dinner as Tam did a load of laundry. I tried to set up our bungy-cord-clothes-line, unfortunately I had a minor malfunction and it went flying. I looked for it for 20 min with no luck. Eventually I asked the campers near us (a groupof 4 young Portuguese). They said they did not see it, then one of them stood up and it fell out of his towel. I can not believe that they tied to steal it. Portugal has not impressed me at all so far. A hour later the guy in the tent next to us arrives and asks us to move bike so he can park his car. I don’t really see the point, as there is lots of space, but I do it anyway, trying to be the nice guy and biker ambassador and all that. So I move the bike by pushing it out of the way, he then he does not park his car there. All he wanted was the bike moved.Day two and I am not enamoured.
Later that night (at about 2300h) music starts blasting from somewhere. I get up to investigate and kill whom ever in the campground is playing it. However it is not comming from the campsite but the town near by. It lasted until about 0300h, thank god for ear plugs.
The next day we decided to stay in camp and enjoy the river and relaxed. Besides we really did not know what we wanted to do next. The music started up again (at 1000h this time) and to make things worse it was god awful music too boot. Somewhere between killing a cat and Cyindy Lauper sings Senatra. We walked in to town to find that it was coming from a megaphone in a church for some religious holiday. Despite this we spent the day swimming in a man made lagoon (enlarged section of river) that had a little waterfall. The water was cold but the sun was hot, we drank pina-colada (juice only) it turned out to be a rather enjoyable experience.