Where is everyone???
Well this is interesting. After complaining about all the tourists, we seem to now be unable to find any?
We’ve been here for 2-1/2 days and the weather has been really nice. Sunny and 26 degrees. We arrived in Tavira after about 6 hours travel from Jerez via Seville by train and bus. A bit long but it was broken up with having to go back to Seville to catch a bus as there are no trains into Portugal from southern Spain. There are trains from each side going to the border, but the tracks don’t meet up. At least this is what we are told. I do know you can go by train from Lisbon to Madrid so it’s not a completely screwed system.
Tavira is very pretty. We are staying about 2 km outside of the town center in a condominium complex, top floor unit with an unobstructed view of the Atlantic Ocean. It’s absolutely gorgeous! We have to walk a bit to get groceries and town center is a 30-minute hike but it is nice and quiet here. And great for relaxation after the busy city centers. But . . . it’s almost too quiet.
There are lots of condo complexes dotting the waterfront of which we are a part. Maybe it’s just the one we are in or maybe it’s the quiet months before everyone descends onto the Algarve. Not sure, but it’s like a ghost town here. A lot of the condos are vacant. Parts of it look like sets for the Walking Dead. It’s very weird especially after the busy cities we have been in, but there are very few people walking about here and I suspect it’s probably the nature of this area. The town itself is busy with lots of beach goers and most likely ex-pats living here, the Algarve being the seaside vacation wonderland of Europe, but where we are staying . . . nada, zip, snoozeville.
So, Tavira is not at all what we expected. We thought it might be a quaint little fishing village with some resort stuff around and some nice beaches. And it is sort of like that, but sort of not. The quaint fishing village is just a small town with shops and cafes catering to the tourists and ex-pats. There is local flavor here as well and Tavira also has Roman and Moorish relics to boast about. Outside of town are condo complexes, some golf courses, some resort compounds along the water and a major road/highway connecting it all. The road that runs through Tavira is the main highway for the entire Algarve, so it is very busy and there are no alternative routes which allow you to bypass it.
The central Algarve is where all the mega resorts are, the western part is rugged and sparse, and here in the east, it’s relaxed and quiet. That’s not to say there is nothing interesting here, it’s just we haven’t been able to get to any of it. It’s hard to walk to anywhere other than around the town center unless you want to walk along the highway, which doesn’t have any sidewalks. You need a car.
Southern Portugal is spectacular, with pretty beaches and varied geography, especially in the eastern Algarve, where we are, bordering on the Baixo Guadiana district. This area is also where the southerly route of the El Camino starts or ends depending on your perspective. The photos we post unfortunately, are only going to be local and will not show how beautiful this whole area is. Here in quiet Tavira, a lot of places are empty and/or in a state of disrepair. While there appears to be many Europeans and Brits living here, we don’t really encounter them except when we are in town shopping. They are all in their cars. I suspect the busier times are more the summer months when it is high season and all of Portugal, the rest of the Brits, the Scandinavians and Germans come down to vacation. The disrepair part is more telling I think. There seems to be more than a few building projects that are unfinished and a number complexes that need cleaning and a fresh coat of paint.
We walked to one of the seaside resorts the other day (about an hour hike) and there was supposed to be a pedestrian/biking bridge across the river to get there. The only other access is a longer walk down the highway. The bridge is there but it’s listing at a 30-degree angle, boarded up, and has warning signs on to keep people off. We ignored it obviously, as there was no way we were hiking all the way back and around. We were told by other bad ‘ignore-warning-sign’ people that it has been like this for over a year now. So, maybe the area is struggling for money?
So, why didn’t we rent a car? Good question. Unlike crazy-ville city centers where a car is IMO a waste of time, here in the Algarve with a decent highway stretching across it, a car would have been a perfect way to see most things here. For starters, we probably needed to rent in Faro which is not that far down the road, but we stopped in Tavira first. We also needed some down time. And chilling out on the balcony, in the sun for the first couple of days, with a glass of wine, has been very nice. I think to really explore this area, one would need at least 2 weeks, and we only have one. There is a lot to see. There were a couple of days of thunderstorms and showers and we weren’t that motivated to get out. Mostly though, our focus was getting around Spain and Portugal relatively cheaply without the hassle of driving, insurance, gas, tolls, and other expenses, and while that has been a good decision, we probably should have researched and planned the Algarve better.
We’d come back here definitely and for longer, but it will be planned differently. So, if you are thinking of wintering somewhere, this place seems like a no-brainer. Get a car though.