National Lampoon’s Portuguese Vacation

Portugal on the whole is a pretty sweet country.  The architecture in the cities is awesome, small alley ways, cobble stone roads, etc.  The country side is amazing, with rolling hills, low, thick forests, winding rivers and lots of green, even in January.  The region in the very south of Portugal, called the Algarve was fantastic.  It has 300 days of sunshine per year, giant sand stone cliffs overlooking secluded beaches and clear, blue water.  The temperature when I was there was about 60 deg. F, even took out the sandals.  There were vineyards, orange and lemon groves, truely a scenic area.  The Portuguese people I met were extremely friendly on the whole, although I found that smooth English is not commonly spoken.  Although most people don’t speak Spanish they can understand it for the most part, so having some Spanish in the bag of tricks was useful at times.  Portuguese is a “romance” language like Spanish or Italian, but I wouldn’t classify it as romantic sounding.  To me it sounded more like a cross between Russian and Spanish.  I don’t think the back packing is quite as common here as with other European countries, as several locals seemed surprised that someone from Colorado was travelling through by themselves.

Some of the notable sites here were Lisbon itself, the castle that overlooks Lisbon, the scenic country side and the beaches.  My favorite place was near the city of Sagres, in the southwestern tip of the country.  Its actually the most westerly point of Europe, and used to be refered to in older times as the “End of the World.”  The area is made up of huge cliffs overlooking the sea.  There is a fortress built on the cliff above the sea at this point.  It was here that Vasco da Gama sailed from on his epic voyage that resulted in the discovery of the ocean route to India.  Couldn’t help but playing with the end of the world theme.   

I had the seeminly brilliant, bold idea to rent a car in Portugal so that I could try and get off the beaten path and get a different experience than if I got around by train and bus.  I flew into Porto, which is in the northern part of the country, where I would spend a day and then I was going to drive down to Lagos, a city on the southern coast.  After a day or two here, I would make a few stops as I made my way back to Porto to catch my flight out.  One of the joys of travel is the unexpected, its perhaps the most rewarding part of it all.  I would like to share some of these joys with you surrounding the rental car.  Instead of a narrative approach, I would like to list out the string of events and let you fill in the unexpected emotions I felt. 

-Intend to drive from airport to a hostel in Porto for the night.  It is about 11:00 at night, and despite being excited to be in a new country, I am tired.

-Don’t take to heart the comment from the car agent to be carful with the map, there are new roads that aren’t included, until I am lost driving on unknown highways and small back alley ways.  

-Get to downtown Porto eventually, only to discover the streets here resemble spaghetti, and that the word “planning” had not been invented when the roads were built.  Lost in the car, so I get close to the hostel on the map and try to find it on foot.  Get lost on foot, so I get back in the car.  Cannot find road signs anywhere, and when I do the street is gone before I have time to turn.  The clock has struck midnight, so I decide to stay in the first hotel I see, price at this point is not an issue.  Settle into a nice Comfort Inn, 3x more than the hostel. 

-Wake up refreshed, check out Porto, and then start the 6 hour drive to the town of Lagos.  An hour past Lisbon, I need to fill up with fuel for the first time.  The car needs gasoline, so I stare at the 4 choices of fuel.  One says ”Diesel,” explicitly, so definitely don’t want that one.  Then there is “Gasoleo”, looks promising.  The other two are “Chumba 85″ and “Chumba 92.”  Thinking that these last two were Super and Premium, I go for the regular “Gasoleo,” no need to use the fancy stuff. 

-Back on the road, its dark, and there are no cities around.  The car shakes violently to a stop.  “Gasoleo” is Portugese for diesel.  There are two types of Diesel and two types of Gasoline, not one type of diesel  and three types of gasoline. 

-Just bought a Portugese cell phone number, so I call the rental car company.  A tow truck takes me and the lifeless car to a gas station, where a Taxi driver arrives to take me to the Lisbon airport to get a new car, 1 hour away.  Lovely lady the taxi driver, but we don’t speak each others language.  After severl attempts by each of us to talk to each other like we know the other will understand, we sit in awkward silence.  The driver then gets the idea to call a friend of hers on speaker phone that speaks broken English.  The friend then plays interpreter between the two of us. 

-At the rental car company in the Lisbon airport, the agent is unsurprised by the mistake and already has a fee for me to pay.  I find out that I was not the first one this misunderstanding happened to and will not be the last. 

-It is too late to continue driving the remaining 3 hours to Lagos, so I decide to stay in a hostel in Lisbon.  Repeat of the night of driving in Porto, except its later, the streets are on steep hills, and I have just filled up my first rental car with diesel.  As an added bonus this time, I manage to get stuck in a private, gated community on the side of what felt like a cliff for awhile.  Had to wait at the exit gate until a resident left.  After driving by several times and walking to the place on the map where the hostel is supposed to be, I cannot find any signs for the life of me.  It was only later that I found out in Portugal, a business must pay a fee to have a sign out front, so hostels tend to avoid this extra cost.  Cut my losses with the hostel.  Its around 1:00am so I find the first hotel and check in.   This one is around 3.5x the cost of a hostel. 

-Wake up invigorated, excited to be in this country, tour the city a little, and then decide to head to Lagos and hopefully the beach.  Check out of the hotel, backpack in hand, only to find another car in the place where mine was parked.  The hotel consierge is nice enough to call the towing company to confirm they have my car.

-The towing in Portugal is handled by the Policia, so I make my way to the Police impound lot.  The two policemen I worked with to get my car back don’t speak any English beyond hello.  They look at my passport, nearly laugh at my long hair in the picture, and both separately scrutinize my immunization list, inside and out, as if it were some sort of secret document.  I have a fun time trying to explain why my Drivers License is from Texas and my passort says I’m from Colorado.  Hoping they would give the foreigner a break, I payed my ticket and towing expenses and left these two nice officers.  Apparently I had parked in an illegal zone, which I either didn’t see or didn’t understand. 

-The rest of the trip is awesome, Lagos is the relaxing place I needed.  Meet some travellers from around the world, eat some great local food, and catch up on sleep.  Take a scenic route back to Porto, driving through orange groves and through mountains covered in green.  Despite a few bumps in the road, I manage to finish the trip strong.  But in a last attempt to sabatoge these feelings, I took a wrong turn right before the airport and had to turn around on a toll road.  With the sun in my eyes, I mistakenly went through an express lane and didn’t get a ticket.   Thinking the next toll exit would understand my situation and let me turn around for free, I was quite overcome with joy when the attendent informed my I had to pay the maximum toll of 25 euros.  When talking to his supervisor in English didn’t help, I had no choice but to pay up and get to the airport as fast I could.   Of course I had to go through the same two tolls in the other direction, and happily found out the actual cost of the toll I burned was .30 euros.      

-Sad to see the time was gone, I got on the plane out of Portugal with a tear in my eye.  Only time has given me the perspective to laugh about this and realize it was my own ingenious idea to rent a car, and not the country of Portugal, that caused my unexpected experiences.  Won’t be renting a car in Europe again any time soon.