We spent the weekend visiting the Algarve region which is the southern point of Portugal. This area is mostly supported by tourism, but also has a lot of agriculture farther inland from the beaches. Our first town was Lagos. Given the coastal location of the town it has had human habitation of the typical march of civilizations of the Iberian Peninsula. It reached a peak during the Portuguese Age of Discovery with being a frequent home of Henry the Navigator, a prominent shipyard, and most interestingly had the first European slave market. The slave market was built in 1444. My favorite part of Lagos was the Ponta da Piedade sandstone cliffs along the Atlantic Ocean coast. These cliffs are unstable and sheer cliffs that are at times 60 feet high. The sandstone’s erodibility made for having extraordinary grottoes and arches being formed. We were able to hike along the edge of these cliffs and it was an extraordinary view. At times the trail was a bit creepy, but a good little hike. The first picture of the cliffs shows the scariest part of the hike circled in white. We next visited the Fortress of Sagres which was built in the 15th century and is just 30 minutes from Lagos. It is on quite the impressive point with a perfect view of all surrounding coastlines of which an attack could take place. One of these attacks was by the Englishman Francis Drake in 1587. These cliffs are up to 100 feet high in places and the rock is a grey limestone very different than the golden sandstone of Lagos. One thing I found fascinating was that there were people fishing off the edges of these cliffs. That is a very long fishing line. The fortress was founded by Henry the Navigator as a school and there is also a Nossa Senhora da Graça church. Much of the structure was destroyed in the 1755 earthquake. That was the earthquake that even damaged cities in central Spain. It would have been a good time to be in the construction industry. Our last stop was Albufeira which is the most tourist-oriented of our places visited. It also has the steep cliffs where most of the buildings are up on top of the cliffs. Albufeira expands to approximately 300,000 residents during the summer and during New Year celebrations. There are many hotels and restaurants. There is even an escalator that goes down to the beach area. Owen loved going up and down on that escalator. This region is famous for their seafood. A local culinary specialty is a rich steamed stew dish of local shellfish, traditionally referred to as Cataplana after the style of cookware used.
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