Hinterland. (Portugal Pt. IV)
Aug. 10th, 2007 11:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sister_luckWe didn't spend all our days at the beach or even near the sea.
On Sunday, we explored the interior. (Doesn't that sound like an adventure? It wasn't really. There are roads and signs and no wild beasts.)
First, we stopped at Caldas de Monchique with its hot springs that first delighted the Romans. It's an odd sort of place, because it was built solely for the benefit of the visitors who want to try the healing properties of the waters.
I'm not sure that I would want to get a massage in full of view of the daytrippers walking down to the mineral water bottling plant:
Then we met an old man on a very stubborn donkey. I loved the fact that the guy even had an umbrella with him on his saddle (a detail which you can't see in the picture).
We left Caldas de Monchique to drive up the Algarve's highest mountain, Fóia. 902 metres isn't really that much and the summit has been graced with mobile phone masts and other unsightly contraptions, but the view is splendid:
On the slopes of Fóia and the surrounding mountains you can see ruins of stone farmhouses with terraced fields that have been abandoned.
At the foot of the mountain, there's Monchique a small town that was very sleepy on a Sunday afternoon with only a couple of old folks gathering under the trees of the carpark to sell the produce of their gardens. There are a lot of very pretty buildings that are in need of restoration and I'm in two minds about that. Clearly, Monchique is a poor place and development would bring the inhabitants more cash, but if all the buildings were made shiny again, wouldn't it lose some of its charm?
It's the perpetual dilemma of the tourist. The streets were mostly empty and we climbed up to the ruins of the convent..
..but more about that in another post - this is already much too long.
On Sunday, we explored the interior. (Doesn't that sound like an adventure? It wasn't really. There are roads and signs and no wild beasts.)
First, we stopped at Caldas de Monchique with its hot springs that first delighted the Romans. It's an odd sort of place, because it was built solely for the benefit of the visitors who want to try the healing properties of the waters.
I'm not sure that I would want to get a massage in full of view of the daytrippers walking down to the mineral water bottling plant:
Then we met an old man on a very stubborn donkey. I loved the fact that the guy even had an umbrella with him on his saddle (a detail which you can't see in the picture).
We left Caldas de Monchique to drive up the Algarve's highest mountain, Fóia. 902 metres isn't really that much and the summit has been graced with mobile phone masts and other unsightly contraptions, but the view is splendid:
On the slopes of Fóia and the surrounding mountains you can see ruins of stone farmhouses with terraced fields that have been abandoned.
At the foot of the mountain, there's Monchique a small town that was very sleepy on a Sunday afternoon with only a couple of old folks gathering under the trees of the carpark to sell the produce of their gardens. There are a lot of very pretty buildings that are in need of restoration and I'm in two minds about that. Clearly, Monchique is a poor place and development would bring the inhabitants more cash, but if all the buildings were made shiny again, wouldn't it lose some of its charm?
It's the perpetual dilemma of the tourist. The streets were mostly empty and we climbed up to the ruins of the convent..
..but more about that in another post - this is already much too long.
