Monday 7th March 2011

Pottered up the road and found a nice site at SAGRES, close to the town and overlooking the beach with lovely views. 6 vans parked there with another 20 or so parked up above on the cliffs and more exposed to the rather worsening weather to come. Walked over the fort on the headland in the afternoon and spent and enjoyable hour or two walking on the cliffs and reading about the exploits of Henry the Navigator who taught the Portuguese how to sail into the wind and navigate when out of sight of land without falling off the end of the world as this place was widely held to be. Tremendous thunderstorms overnight but Sunday was bright so we drove along to the beach at CARAPATEIRA with intention of staying there overnight. Terrific views from the carpark but as there were only a few surfing dudes in beat-up campervans and the inevitable germans in a WW2 panzerwaggen ( at least the swastikas were painted out) who looked like staying we headed back to Sagres and parked by the fort this time along with 34 other motorhomes.

Weather forecast very iffy for next week and we heard from Derek & Margaret who were heading for CONIL and intending to then make for Portugal, so we decided to head back along the Algarve and settle down in a campsite and wait for them. As we had liked FUZETA it seemed the right place to go.
Site still busy, mainly french and ok if not exactly topnotch but the location is great as you can walk out of the door onto the sands. LIke Tavira, the village and fishing port nestle behind islands of sandbanks and and you can get water taxis to take you over to them...which we will try to do if the weather improves. We had some horrendous rain storms (and the site manager insisted we change pitch at one stage as we were surrounded by water) but some lovely sunny days as well when we managed to cycle out along the saltpans and saw flocks of Avocets, Spoonbills, Flamingoes, Godwits and goodness knows what else.......there is an amazing variety of birdlife all around here and we have a Crested Lark thathops around the pitch and something as yet unidentified which may be a Firecrest or Goldcrest.
Took the van into OLHAO to stock up at the Intermarche and ran into Paul & Marianne who at still at the site there. Arranged to meet for lunch in Olhao one day but weather has not let that happen yet.

Saturday 12th. March

Derek & Margaret suddenly arrived having decided to leave Conil when the sun was shining. We had expected them on sunday and had bought food at the local market in preparation so we had a very jolly evening chez nous catching up on the news and drinking so much wine that certain people were very inebriated. And the same thing happened on Sunday night in their van.
Unfortunately the weather is very rainy.

And of course we have been and still are concerned at the earthquake in Japan. We had news from Julian at first that Justin had sent an email saying all ok...we have no wifi here....and then I turned the phone's data roaming on to connect to the internet and pick up Justin's facebook page.
By Saturday we managed to speak to him by, phone after they had got home after spending Friday night sleeping at the school, and heard the story of their adventures which whilst worrying are nothing like the horrors from the tsunami victims up north. Tokyo will now have rolling power blackouts and we wait anxiously for news about the failures at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Worrying times and we watch Sky news constantly. Spoke to Justin a second time and they are ok so far.