Chuck's News: Day 11- Hiking the Fisherman Trail - Day 7 - Putting the Plan into Action

Well, we would have slept in today as we are not hiking. But, there was a castle on a hill, an old church and a new town to check out. Plus, our fancy (can you say sterile) four star hotel was giving us an included breakfast that had to be served to us between 8 and 10 and we had a bus to catch at 12:33. So many responsibilities!!

Bus you say? Whatever for? The next three stages of the trail are inland. We reasoned that with our limited time we could skip those and bus ahead to the coastal sections. We are putting our plan into action. Plus, a rainy period is in the forecast. We are positioning ourselves to take a day off to let the rain fall without us being one of its targets.

We were up at 7:00am. Showered and dressed we headed for the dining room. There we saw a single table set for breakfast. Our table. We sat and a woman brought us a full meal, four different kinds of rolls, scrambled eggs, a fruit bowl, yogurt, cereal, cheese, luncheon meat and tea. Sitting there in this large room, the floor and walls tiles so that every sound echoes. I was reminded of Dave at the end of 2001: A Space Oddessy when he finds himself eating at a table, by himself with every sound echoing. It wasn’t as weird as I am making it sound. I am just uncomfortable when someone is waiting on me as this lady was.

Our 2001 breakfast finished, we headed out to town to see the Iron Age (yes that old) castle on the hill above town. This is supposed to be a day off for us, so rather than walk to the top, we sought out a taxi to take us there. We tried Uber, but after it searched for about five minutes it concluded there were no drivers available. We had seen a taxi cue spot when we walked into town yesterday. We walked over and asked the driver if he would take us to the top where the castle was. He didn’t have a good command of English so he thought we were asking directions. I mean, come on, the ride to the top was less than a mile. We finally convinced him that we wanted him to take us to the top. He agreed to do so for five euros, so we hopped in and 3 minutes and about 400 vertical feet later we were standing in front of the castle gate. It was interesting to see this very old relic with a long history. Occupied by the Moors until the Christians forced them out in the 1200’s, it is like a Time Capsule. The view to the valley and town below were excellent.

We walked back down, stopped at the public market to inquire about bus tickets (you buy them from the driver) then across the valley to the church on the opposite hill. A quick walk through the nearby streets, a stop for Pepsi’s at the grocery and back to checkout of our room by 11:00am.

When we came out of the hotel door who should we find but two of our four “skinhead nazis” turned good guys. We chatted for a moment with them; they too had spent the night in the same hotel. Sally wanted a photo. Turns out they are from the Czeck Republic.

We wandered over to the bus stop to wait for our bus. It was now about 11:15am. Our bus didn’t arrive to pick us up until 12:23pm. With time to kill I started to edit and write my blog. Sally was people watching, but getting restless. She saw our four Czeck Republic men walking towards us. She jumped up and ran across to get their photo. From my position I could see them laughing with Sally about our chance meetings. Soon she was talking about hitchhiking to Lagos rather than paying for a bus trip. We gathered our packs and looked for a good place to position ourselves for catching a ride. We walked across the bridge and up the highway a little bit, but there was no place to pull off. We decided to go back where we were, in front of the bus stop was best. When we arrived back we found three German girls had already taken our spot-they even we’re holding a Lagos sign. We didn’t want to compete or spoil their chances so we settled into the benches at the bus stop to either wait our turn to try hitching or catch the bus. Sally now had something entertaining to watch. These 3 late teen or early 20’s girls took much longer to score a ride than we thought they would, but by12:00 they were gone. Now it was close enough to our bus time that we decided to just wait.

We tried to board a bus we thought was going to Lagos. I put our packs in the storage bins below, then entered the bus to pay our fare and ride when the driver told me it wasn’t going to Lagos. Back out, remove our bags and wait a little longer. Finally, bus 79 arrived. We stowed and boarded.

The ride to Lagos was about 40 minutes. Lagos felt like a big city, especially when compared to the tiny towns we had been walking through.

The bus dropped us on the road that parallels the harbor. Using Apple Maps we navigated about 15 minutes to our hostel, entered, got the tour and landed in our room. Leaving our packs behind, we headed back out to find lunch and do Rick Steves’ walking tour. Fish and chips in a pub. Once you stepped inside you weren’t in Portugal anymore. Now you were in England, complete with Brit servers and customers.

After Rick’s short tour we did our daily shopping for tomorrow’s food for the hike and tonight’s dinner, went back to the hostel, cooked dinner. While eating, a wonderful 67 year old lady from Montreal sat across from us and engaged in conversation. Our dinner extended by about an hour as we shared travel and life experiences.

Once back in our room fatigue overtook me again. I happily crawled into bed and was asleep by 9:30pm.

Sally eating breakfast, 2001 style