The Campo. It's a bit like Yorkshire. Well, not quite. The rolling curves of the Alentejo hills are decorated not with typical English tree varieties like Oaks, Chestnuts and Sycamores, but instead awash with Olive, Pine and Eucalyptus¹ trees. The segmented farmland is not built with dry stone walls spreading in labyrinthine patterns from grey slate topped farmhouses but instead is dotted with whitewashed Quinta's and low lying corn fields. I remember last December when I last went to stay at my mate's Quinta and took the train there from Lisbon. After the train crosses the river Tejo you find yourself in kilometre after kilometre of flat open olive groves and vineyards and it's only as you continue south towards the Algarve that the terrain becomes steadily more hilly until you reach the Monchique Mountains. The motorway drive is not quite as scenic, but there are times when the road rises a little revealing a billowy carpet of green olive treetops. But it's in the shadowy foothills of Monchique that my mate lives. The drive up to Monchique from his house is always a stunning drive, reminiscent of that scene from the original "Italian Job" film where the winding twisty road is perilously straddled on one side by a wall of rock and on the other by a sheer drop. Quite, quite breath-taking. I hope by this point you're getting a picture in your minds eye of something a little like the views from my friend's Quinta across the valley to the outline of the hilltops across the other side. Personally, I like the summer sunsets the best. The dusty dry orange earth seems to reflect the sunlight up into the hills creating a hazy orange hue to the skyline. However, according to my friend the best time of year to visit the Alentejo is Easter, when the hillsides are filled with a rainbow bloom of wild flowers. This sight will remain for now, firmly written in marker pen, on the very top of my to-do list!
So,
Car Trouble aside, we had arrived safely. The tent went up. The tea was brewed. And.... Relax. Take in the scenery. Chat with friends. Eat, drink and be merry. (Tired children put to bed.) Beers. Wine. A lovely evening was had by all. And finally, to bed.
Morning came around seemingly much sooner than one would have expected and as the cockerel crowed the sun beat down upon our Canvas Palace. By half past nine the sun was heating up the bedroom compartments to Sauna-like temperatures. We had no choice but to crawl out and face the day head on. And so it began; the first week of our stay in the Alentejo. The weather was consistently good with baking hot sunny cloudless skies day after day allowing for plenty of summer holiday activities such as reading, drinking coffee in the local cafe, sunbathing, more reading, drinking beer in the local cafe, swimming in the pool, etc, etc. On days when the sun wasn't too hot, or indeed in the early morning or late afternoon it was nice to walk up a few hills and explore. On one particular walk my family and I discovered a lane up to a small lake where we found a picnic table and a couple of delightfully comfortable hammocks (pictured) in which to relax and gently let the time slip past.
In fact the first week flew by, with a steady stream of people arriving on the Quinta in preparation for my good friend's 60th birthday party. Now this was not the first time that I had visited for his birthday, after all, he'd moved out to Portugal some six years ago with his Missus and three younger children to start a new new life. (I guess it would be folly of me to suggest that his move hadn't in some way inspired my own!) And so it was that with each passing day one or more of their older four children would arrive with their partners, university mates or drinking buddies. And so it was also, that with each passing evening the pre-party parties went on later and later. Finally Tuesday came. The day of the Big Party. People arrived from all over the Campo it seemed, driving in from 30km away, including English and Dutch expats, a German punk rock band with their entourage and even a smattering of Portuguese friends. The barbecue was lit and the drink flowed. The music got louder and louder. Not even the accidental breaking of a bass guitar (shame!) and the near brawl that followed could stem the party atmosphere. (Well, it did for a while!) And so the party raged on and on into the small hours...
The following morning I awoke, surprisingly somewhat later than the "half past nine heat limit" and opened the tent flap to rain. Yes, rain. Rain in August. That never happens. Well except for last year when I distinctly remember landing in Portugal on my one-way ticket and walking out of the airport terminal to a torrential downpour! It was a welcome relief I suppose after a week of scorching relentless Alentejano heat, which is almost always a few degrees hotter than Lisboa heat. The tent stood up to the downpour well and we quickly learnt the knack of entering the tent without getting a stream of cold water down our backs! It was perfect weather for the day after such an impressive party; sobering and cooling.
The following day was Thursday and the day that my family and I had planned our return to Estoril. However, despite numerous phone calls to people who were mechanics or to people who knew mechanics we had yet to make any significant progress on the reparation of our car. The decision was made that my family would get a train back home while I stayed on to try for a few more days to get the car fixed. They acquired a lift to Santa Clara train station and caught the 11o'clock train back home. By 3pm I had a text message confirming their safe arrival. And so I was all alone on the Quinta with my old friend, his Missus, their numerous kids, their numerous kid's numerous friends and the rustic geezer from over the hill.
I spent the next four days making phone calls in an attempt to fix my car and contemplating the vastly different lives of all the people that I'd made company with over the last week. I'd met young people who reside in London taking the tube to and from their high powered finance jobs everyday and who relished the opportunity to spend a few days living a life so absolutely completely different to their normal one. I met an intriguing German guy who'd moved out to Portugal 25 years ago with his sister and made his life through fixing cars and trucks by manufacturing his own spare parts. I'd met a Portuguese single Mum who lived and worked as a Sous Chef and part time Cleaner in the Algarve, and of course, I met her extremely vibrant children. The rustic geezer was a constant throughout my stay. He was essentially lodging while he built his house on his own little slice of Campo over the hill. He had very little money and was quite easily the most resourceful and frugal man I have ever met. In my short stay I saw him fix a broken parasol with a length of bamboo, a broken plastic garden chair by sewing the leg back together with wire and heard that back at his house he was busying himself building walls from discarded beer bottles. "No such thing as rubbish", I once heard him say. And on the rainy day I met, on his 88th birthday, a Portuguese man called Seraphim². It truly is a shame that my grasp of Portuguese is so terrible because I would have loved to talk to this man more, after all, he'd lived through two world wars in a country that was essentially neutral under the reign of
Salazar. Life in the open Campo is a whole world apart from life in suburban Estoril where everyone is connected to water and electricity supplies, where your neighbours are mere metres away, where life (at least to me) just seems a whole lot more civilised and (dare I say) easy. But perhaps that's the draw of the Campo? Perhaps that's why people decide to settle there; to live apart from the greenback chasing rat race?
"What about the car?" I hear you say. Well, I'd done all I could to get it fixed over the past two weeks, and quite honestly, it was time to go home. It was the 22nd and I did not want to out-stay my welcome. More importantly for me however, I needed to get back to Estoril and start getting my head around starting my new job. Finally, I had reached the conclusion that it would be so much easier to get the car fixed in Cascais than it would in the barren (at least in terms of Volvo specialists) lands of the Alentejo. And so, I packed up the tent, started up the car and set off North.
¹The presence of the non-native Eucalyptus tree in Portugal is one of great Political contention. Much of Portugal's native woodland has been replaced with fast growing Eucalyptus trees with the intention to farm them for their timber. Unfortunately the trees contain high levels of very flammable Eucalyptus Oil and it is no coincidence that many of Portugal's forest fires happen in such areas.
²I don't normally mention people's names on my blog to preserve anonymity. However, I'm told that when Seraphim was born the Portuguese were only allowed to choose names from a very short list for their children. This also explains the extraordinarily high number of girls named Maria in Portugal.
