SCORCHED EARTH (OLHAO, ODECEIXE, TOMAR, PORTUGAL)

When we planned this beast of a trip, it was simply to get back to Spain. Then, as these things go, it ballooned blossomed. I guess I kept on looking for ways to make the beast bigger and better, hairier and longer. After all, from Spain, Portugal’s a hop and a skip, and Morocco’s just a jump.

My first brush with the Portugese language came at 26 when I stumbled my dirty backpacking ass across the South African border and into Mozambique. At the time it seemed like Spanish to me, just rack on an “oish” at the end of every word. Como estoish. Adioish. I had already clocked a few years of bar and restaurant work at that point so my (what is often and derogatorily referred to as) “kitchen Spanish” was strong. I knew how to say ice and trash, can you watch the bar while I go for a smoke and, for some reason, the skinny girl with the chicken flavor.

I ran into few problems. German would have been a more useful language, because those fuckers travel everywhere and after a few bierkrugs at the hostel when they slip back into the mother tongue it’d be nice to know what they’re laughing at.

Crossing the border from Spain, where Billy and I spoke nothing but butchered Spanish for a month, coming to Portugal was a shock. Everyone spoke English to us. We couldn’t get an hola to save our vida. We beach hopped our way up the coast to a small town outside of Tomar, where we had booked a lakeside cottage for a month. Though the town didn't rank on any of the must sees in Portugal, we figured it would be a good base to explore the rest of the country. 13 day trips, two vacations within our vacation, and one prison break later, I’ve come to terms with the fact that I was wrong.

I’m having difficulty writing about this place without sounding like an asshole. I guess the first step is acceptance…

Okay, it’s a week and a half later. I’ve accepted it. Here we go.

The listing read something like, tranquil countryside stone cottage on the largest lake in Portugal. Four things we learned since arriving. First, the countryside was burned to a crisp in a series of fires dating back to 2003 and again just last year. These were horrific fires that tore through a humongous portion of Portugal’s interior, people died, farmers lost their crops… and the view from my Airbnb rental was destroyed. See? Asshole. And, it’s my fault. I could’ve Googled a bit more. Of course the people that rent the house aren’t going to point the camera in the direction of disaster – although I do have a new idea for Airbnb, which is to include a photo of the least appealing feature of your rental because nothings perfect and lets have some fun – but, anyway. That’s the first thing we learned.

Second: The lake is not a lake, it’s a valley that was flooded when they dammed the river. So it’s kind of like a huge ditch with water in the bottom of it. Coming from Northern Wisconsin, which has the second highest concentration of naturally made lakes in the world – yes, I’m an uninformed asshole, we’ve established this – I was bummed.

But the cottage was made of stone, that was definitely true, and the woodburning stove kept us warm through another two weeks of rain, and I can’t fault the – oh yeah, I just remembered the third thing.

We ran out of wood on the fourth day. I messaged our host and asked for more but it took a few days, and my babies were freezing. By babies, I mean my feet; Wilder and Nakota could chill on an iceberg. So, like a good Northwoods girl does, I went foraging. We found a pile next to the house in what looked like an abandoned lot. It was a chopped down charred tree, from the fire no doubt, and in my ignorance I figured, maybe they just have these piles everywhere. Maybe, because of the fire, there’s an abundance of dead wood all over the valley that needs burning…

NO, ASSHOLE (is what I gather the farmer was saying to me in Portugese a few days later when he came to collect what remained) BECAUSE OF THE FIRE THERE IS A SHORTAGE OF WOOD BECAUSE ALL THE FUCKING TREES BURNED DOWN!!!

So that wasn’t great.

And the fourth thing. English isn’t spoken all over Portugal. In our town it was barely spoken at all. Which, good on them! But I’ve been to a lot of places around the world where English isn’t spoken and I’ve always managed to order lunch. Eating is one of the easiest things about traveling, you find a restaurant, you sit down, they know what you’re there for and food magically appears. But somehow, for some reason, (and this was before the firewood dustup so I can’t blame it on that) we went to the two restaurants in town and could not get served. The first one, we were just completely ignored and at the second they said they didn’t have a menu, couldn’t tell us what they had and no we could not have juice. Even though I saw juice, sitting right fucking there.

So there was that.

But Tomar is beautiful. And we made up with the farmer (with the help of a bottle of port.) And probably, because we didn’t love where we were at, we took more daytrips and saw more of this country than we would otherwise – hell yes, I'm silverlining this. But in the end, after coming home from our umpteenth day trip to a place that never felt quite right, we decided to cut our losses and head north, and damn I’m glad we did. We found another little piece of paradise in Portugal. But I’m glad we did all of it actually, because this trip’s almost over and I think we'll remember our mistakes just as fondly as our... ah fuck it. Next post.