Day 29 - Lisbon to Seville (545kms)
Well, here goes. We’ll see how far I get with the journal from Sierra's iPad.
Today ended better than the last and we hope we can all forget about yesterday and go back to enjoying our holiday. Knowing that we couldn’t really do too much today other than sightseeing from the van, we weren’t in too much of a hurry to get up and get going, given our destination was Seville and it was only a 4 - 5 hour drive. Then again, I was keen to see the back of Lisboa, but we can’t leave the van unattended at the moment as you can now open the cabin door by sticking anything in the lock.
I digress for just a moment, as Madi has just woken up in our Seville campsite - which is on the docks, in amongst a car yard. She has opened a roof vent from her bed above the dining table and stuck her head out to see “cranes”. They’re cranes used to unload ships, but the point is that the simplest things make the kids so excited and she wants us all to get up and look at them. The tone of her voice, it’s like Christmas morning surprises.
If there wasn't lots of other campers here I’d be a bit dubious of the area we are in, as it was very dark and quiet when we arrived last night. We were literally driving around deserted roads in an industrial area where most roads were gated and locked. It took about 15 minutes before I managed to find a gate with a security guard standing at it, just by using a pin on a camping map app. Pure luck. No pressure, as it was only midnight, after our great afternoon at the beach and stopping for dinner roadside. But back to the day.
Tolls. Yes, they are proving to be not only very expensive, but also hard to work out and pay for. There are your standard tolls - take a ticket and pay when leaving the toll road. Then there is electronic tolls that you stop at a service station for, buy a ticket, get a man to link your rego to the purchased ticket/voucher and just drive. Then yesterday we drove on an electronic only tolled road with no signs of how to pay or what to do. So we haven’t done anything. Hummmmmm!
After a 3 hour drive, we arrived on the southern coast of Portugal and after seeing pictures of the cliff backed beaches and the colour of the water, we decided a one hour detour to the beach was in order. So instead of turn left for Seville, we turned right toward Lagos - our destination being Carvoeiro and Praia de Marinha.
When we arrived at Praia de Marinha at the top of the road we were greeted with a no camper van parking signs, but I thought I’d at the very least drop Kristie off to photograph the cliffs and beaches. So at the beach car park (with more signs indicating no camper van parking) the kids and Kristie jumped out and I turned around to parallel park and wait for the girls up the road. Within a few minutes, Kristie was back at the van saying you have to work out a way to secure the camper van door and come to look at the beach. She suggested using the 10 metres of rope we had purchased as a clothes line to tie the door closed from the inside. I managed to secure the door by tying the door handle to the ladder hooks of the above dining table bed, so we could head off to the beach together. Given the bed is motorised (to raise and lower it), after having tied the door closed, I could move the bed to tension the rope so nobody was ever going to open that door from the outside. Good idea Kristie.
But we did manage to switch off, swim, relax, play and eventually enjoy ourselves, and we spent a great couple our hours at the beach. Madi did not want to get out of the water - she’s a mermaid through and through, and when we did get out, there were plenty of rocks to climb over and jump off. This place is gorgeous.
With time (yet again) not on our side, and having to be in Seville tomorrow to get the camper van door fixed, we climbed to the top of the cliffs yet again, saying goodbye to beaches on this holiday. We walked the cliff tops (ice creams in hand) to get a different perspective of the cliffs and beach, and photographed the natural rock arches as pictured in the guide book. They must be pretty famous, as from the beach we noticed boats coming from somewhere - and lots of them, to see the formations. Some were jet boats and I’m wondering if the tides are right - could they pass underneath them?
Back to the van, and relieved that 1) it was still locked securely, and 2) we hadn’t been towed for parking on the beach road. We would have been very unlucky given there were a couple of camper vans parked in the beach car park itself (ignoring the signs), but our confidence and luck feels in short supply at the moment. So onward to Spain and Seville we headed, after a grocery stop at the best supermarket in Carvoeiro.
We crossed the Portugese/Spanish border under the cover of darkness and we stopped for some dinner at a roadside stop after filling up with fuel. Fuel is 20+ cents per litre cheaper in Spain. It was then on to Seville where we arrived about midnight. Madi sleeping on and off, but Sierra wide awake, singing all the way to “sezzie’s favs” from Spotify.
In Seville, the gps took us into the area of our camp for the night, but not the fixed address - we didn't have one. We had to navigate the quiet dark streets of the port area till we eventually found a locked gate with a security guard standing at it. A phone call to the number on a sign and 5 minutes later a man turned up in a car to let us in and guide us down an unlit road to a massive car park with a section of camper vans ring fenced in the middle of it. All this with no one really speaking a word of English, but it felt right at the time, especially as we saw a very “normal-looking” couple returning on foot to their van after a night on the town. Our escort driver offered them a lift (rather than walk the long unlit road), which they gratefully accepted. Given the late hour, we were happy to quickly park amongst the other motor homes and get straight off to sleep.
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