I went looking for the end of the earth, and I found it – in more ways than one. With my trusty Ford Fiesta rental car and my Google Maps gps, I wound my way to Cabo de São Vicente, which happens to be the western-most point in continental Europe and, at least until the 1400s, where most people believed the earth ended. It’s been considered a magical place since Neolithic times – the Greeks even built a temple here to honor Hercules. Today it’s a windy, barren outcropping of rock save for the remnants of an old fort and a tourist operation built up around it. The coastline here is unlike anyplace else in Portugal – severe cliffs with 100-foot drops and waves that surfers flock to. I wanted to see surfers, but their domain was in some of the bays that cut into the rock along Portugal’s eastern shore, so I decided to go find them. Mind you – this is truly desolate country – almost no one lives here, and the roads to these beaches don’t exactly appear on printed maps. But my Google Maps lady had treated me well so far in my wanderings, so I figured she could sort out the names of a few beaches I had. Well, I was wrong.
We (um, me and Google Maps) headed away from the fort with one of the names of the beaches plugged in to GPS, and it seemed like it was going OK for a while. When the lady told me to turn onto a road big enough for only one car, I trusted her, even though I had to almost pull into the ditch for oncoming traffic. When that road turned to rough rocks, I still trusted her. I mean, this is probably how surfers do it, right? When she started telling me to turn left into fields of brush, I got worried. By this time, I’m miles away from the main road and I’ve taken quite a few turns onto one sketchy “road” after another. My life is utterly in her hands at this point. I kept going down the road, because I wasn’t going to turn into a field full of brush, and then she started freaking out. Go left. Then a minute later, go right. Mind you, there are no roads there. Then I was on something that was pretty much a cart path for donkeys, and I realized that my GPS lady had lost her marbles.
And guess what happens when your GPS has a mental breakdown in the middle of utter wilderness? You do too. I had an hour to have myself out of there before the sun was going to start setting, and I was having visions of sleeping in my car and praying to God that wayward surfers found me the next day. I admit it – I said some pretty unkind things to my GPS right about then – things that would make angels cry. At that point in time, however, I was sitting at a Y in the road that offered me either a cart path or a cart path. I turned myself around and just started trying to pick my way back through the hellish nightmare of roads she had led me on. The surfers were going to have to wait for another time, because at that point I just wanted to be back in sweet little Lagos where there are actual streets and things. Mercifully, my wandering brought me to a paved road. It wasn’t the same paved road I’d been on, but hell, I couldn’t afford to be picky at that point. I wasn’t sure I could trust her anymore, but I gave the GPS the new destination of Lagos, and she acted like she knew where we were. Yeah – good joke – that’s how I got to a cart path too. But I gave her a second chance, and she actually got me to a main road, from where I was home free.
Here’s the thing: On those horrible little back roads and donkey trails, I saw some really cool things – things I would never have seen if I’d been cruising down the road at warp speed. I didn’t see surfers, but I found a rickety old homestead that looked like a pueblo, and I saw an invasion of colorful snails devouring plants along the road. Seeing a sunset on the eastern coast would have been nice, but thank god I didn’t have to watch one from a cart path. Haha. All in all, I’d have to say the adventure is going well, and what I learned from all this is that an adventure is what you are delivered, not what you plan for it to be. But it’s still an adventure 😀
And check out more photos from these incredible beaches and cliffs – I am in love with Algarve.
