Portimão November 10

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Portimão, November 10, 2007

(Every time I think of Portimão, it brings to mind the Limelighter's song about Cudimão. Other than than the last 2 syllables, I don't think there's a connection.) Today is Aden's birthday, he's 5. We hope he's enjoying his new brother.

As we came into the harbor, there's a beautiful old Arab fort on the starboard (right for landlubbers) side. The city is massively built up, as is the top of the harbor, but the eastern shore is pretty much as it was (at least now).

Just beyond is a church. I later learned that it is used as a navigation aid, in fact, when you look carefully, there are 2 striped poles that create a range "light" (I don't think they are illuminated) to aid navigation. To come into the harbor, steer 19.1º lined up with the church and "you can't miss".

Many more photos are posted on the lighthouse site. There were 2 lights I knew of, another on the point I hadn't gotten the geographic coordinates of, and 2 more navigation references that are all on the site.

Today they loaded us on 5 busses, but only 3 arrived at our first stop for the day which was the village of Alte (which literally means "stop", and that's why it was built here, it was a good place to stop for the night during the crusades.) The other busses did our second stop first.

This was an area with many "converted" Muslims. They couldn't build a mosque, but many of the chimney tops resemble the top of a minaret. You can see that in the detail at the right.

All of the houses were well whitewashed and in immaculate shape. The streets were cobblestone and we needed to walk uphill. But the flowers, especially the beaugonvillia were fantastic. Two copies are to the left.

After walking through the village, we stopped in the village square. The woman who sponsored establishing the village had made a promise that if her husband returned from the crusades she would establish a church. You can see that church on the left side of this photo. The church was badly damaged in the "Lisbon Earthquake" of 1775, so the facade is a replica of the original. (The commercial portions of the village are behind and below me as I took this picture.)

As you see, the inside is not large, but very well appointed. We were especially impressed with the tile around the pulpit and the stairs behind the pulpit.

After entering the church, we had 25 minutes of free time to shop, purchase coffee, tea, et. al. As a result some of us were late getting back to the bus.

Our busses left Alte and we headed off to Silves (pronounced Silvesh.) They warned us that the walk to the Fort on the top would be steep but we were going to spend 1:20 here, so people were torn between tough walking and what to do for more than an hour.

As you can see the streets weren't flat, but they weren't terrible either.

At the top of the hill you had the mandatory church next to the Fort. Keep in mind that the fort was built by the Moors so the church came much later. The church is in the classic Gothic design. The interesting point is that most of the church was destroyed in an earthquake, but the transept and the altar space (shown here) survived.

Most of the inside of the fort is less than 2 feet high and is currently under archeological discovery with the intent to renovate when allowed. As you can see from this photo, the walls and the towers are pretty much as built.

They are planning an extensive renovation which I assumes means rebuilding rooms, gardens, etc. The only problem we had is it will also include a refreshment stand (which is already mostly completed) which while constructed of brick and wood looks very 21^st century. We think refreshments are historically accurate but their building is not.

This bridge is roughly the same vintage as the fort or perhaps even earlier. The fort was built here as it was as far up the river as you could navigate with a boat. When built, the bridge was 7 arches; it currently is only 5 (there are 2 hidden behind the encroaching shore) and, as you can see from the whitewash level, the water isn't very high.

We got back to the boat about 12:40 with a departure time of 1:00. I had a quick sandwich, ran up on the deck to take more lighthouse pictures, and managed to capture this photo of the coast line. On the left side you see the lighthouse of Porto do Altar and then the beautiful cliffs beyond it. We quickly turned Southwest (Marnie said you could check it easily, the sun and it's path were direct onto the bow of the boat) to get to Madeira. There won't be a page for the 11^th as we cruised all day (and I edited web pages). They had 4 lectures on the 11^th, Marnie did all of them, I did 2.

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