Travel + Leisure - India & South Asia
AWAY IN THE ALGARVE
A new spirit of cultural and exological preservation is blowing through the southern part of Portugal.
With its spectacular coastline and breezy, laid-back way of life, this southern part of Portugal has never had a hard time attracting visitors. Now, as government efforts to combat overtourism begin to bear fruit, a new spirit of cultural and ecological preservation is blowing through. ROSECRANS BALDWIN roams a region on its way up in the world.
the province at the very bottom of Portugal, is scruffy with abundance. Gardens spill over their crumbling walls. Fish markets are mosh pits. Orange and fig trees grow next to the street, dropping fruit on the sidewalk in riotous spatters. It’s a region where many people still live off the land and the sea, where in every other yard there’s a chaotic pile of outboard motors, and around every other corner, a tractor going dangerously slow—or a teenager on a motorbike who tries to run you off the road. The point is, a lot of the Algarve feels untamed.
One night in the dark, dusty middle of nowhere, you’ll be talking to a man in a small restaurant, a Portuguese guy in work pants with a three-day stubble, and suddenly he’ll come at you with a two-tined fork bearing a hunk of something fishy, a hot little bite dripping with olive oil—some oceanic specimen the name of which can’t be exactly translated into English—and he’ll insist, “You try this”. So you do. And you burn your mouth. But the deliciousness is so complete, so richly simple, you wouldn’t want it any other way.
None of this is what I expected. I’d thought the Algarve was overcooked. Though the region had withstood invasion by the Phoenicians, the Visigoths, and the Moors, it was, in the 1970s and 80s, conquered by budget tourism from the UK, Germany, and beyond, which has come to define the Algarve’s modern-day reputation—in Europe, at least. (“When I think of the Algarve,” a friend from London said, “I think of package tours.”)
But then I started hearing a different story. Friends in New York and California told me that the Algarve needed to be seen. Parts of its coastline had been rehabilitated, they said; highrise hotels had been torn down. And though travel to Portugal is booming—24 million people visited in 2017—I kept hearing that the Algarve was full of overlooked places: destinations more suited to discerning travellers, surf spots and farm stays, with
boutique lodgings to enjoy and small shops to discover. The suggestion was that Portugal was finding a way to reverse the effects of overtourism.
So in September, I flew to Lisbon from Los Angeles. At that time of year, the air and sea would still be warm, I was told, but the crowds thinner. My plan was to avoid the Algarve’s busy southern coast, and instead explore its wild western fringe—full of protected wilderness, dramatic cliffs, and roaring surf—then drive east to experience an updated take on agritourism in a landscape of old villages, fishing towns, and working farms.
MY FLIGHT LANDED just in time for breakfast. I stopped in the airport for an espresso and a pastéis de nata, one of Portugal’s treasured custard tarts, then picked up my rental car and drove south—a straight shot that took about four podcast episodes and one filling-station coffee (or approximately 2½ hours) before reaching Lagos, which served as the Algarve’s provincial capital from the 16th to the 18th century.
The old town of Lagos is hilly and labyrinthine, a jumble of whitewashed houses, colourful tiles, and terracotta roofs. On a Sunday morning, the place was empty. Street signs were not abundant. I parked my car and set off on foot to find my hotel— and promptly got lost. I could suddenly feel the effects of my long journey. Then a whiff of garlic turned my head. Through an open window, I could hear a Portuguese duet on someone’s stereo. I put down my bag and stood still. The song ended, and, equilibrium restored, I soon arrived at my hotel. “Did you have any trouble finding us?” the woman at reception asked with a smile. Before I could lie and say no, she was offering me a glass of white wine.
Located on the old city’s quiet northern side, Casa Mãe is a stylish boutique property set in an abandoned estate—a splash of contemporary craftsmanship in antique surroundings. It’s also resolutely Portuguese. The rugs, the pottery, even the notepad in my room were made by local producers; the shampoo in my shower was stored in an artisanal clay pot. “We are Portuguese, so we have this historical link with exploring the ocean, with the fishermen, the surf,” I read in the in-house magazine (of course the hotel had its own magazine). “It’s part of our identity, this Atlantic mood.” After a long walk and a light dinner, followed by an early night, I got up the next morning, did a few laps in the deep blue pool, then set off to find the Atlantic mood for myself.
FIRST I DROVE through the sleepy villages of Salema and Sagres, where residents drank coffee at sidewalk cafes. Then I headed north toward a beach that a friend in LA had recommended, Praia do Amado—part of the Sudoeste Alentejano e Costa Vicentina Natural Park. This 100-kilometre strip of protected land runs the western length of the Algarve and is edged with mossy headlands, wave-beaten cliffs, and glorious beaches. The reserve has been the beneficiary of a major push on the part of the government to beautify the coastline, and it shows.
As I drove north, the two-lane road became a path weaving through pine forest. After about half an hour, I reached a long sand beach. Families were out sunning, picnicking, doing nothing at all. I parked next to a blond German in sunglasses airing out his wet suit. “Not too crowded?” I asked. “Not here,” he said. “There’s waves for everyone.”
Twenty minutes and $6 (`428) later, thanks to a friendly operation above the beach called Amado Surf Camp, I was in the ocean with a rented surfboard, talking to a friendly French guy. We agreed this was a very good way to spend the morning. Later, I asked a young woman in a shop where locals went for lunch. She sent me 200 yards down the street to Restaurante do Cabrita, a small joint with a terrace, shaded by wooden beams, that was packed with customers. Most of them were eating fish or prawns. For about $15 (`1,070), I had half a dozen sardines—a regional speciality, grilled and flaky, more like tiny silver trout than the ones that come from a tin—plus a salad, boiled potatoes, and the coldest beer of my life. One of the waitresses, with a tone of concern, asked me, “As sardinhas…you like?”
I assured her that I liked them very much. After lunch, I drove aimlessly, my GPS switched off. Through my open window came a whiff of the sea, the resinous scent of pine trees, and the occasional puff of barbecue smoke. At one point I pulled off onto a dirt road. A Land Rover was parked where a hiking trail cut west. I followed the path for 15 minutes, past banks of wildflowers and a crumbling old cottage—or was it a chapel?—until I walked out onto a rocky bluff above the vast Atlantic with a never-ending view. It was basically the rim of the continent. If people once stood there, I thought, and figured this for the edge of the world, I could understand why.
YOU’LL BE TALKING TO A MAN IN A SMALL RESTAURANT, AND SUDDENLY HE’LL COME AT YOU WITH A TWO-TINED FORK BEARING A HUNK OF SOMETHING FISHY.
“IF YOU WANT to really appreciate the Algarve, you need to go out on the water,” Paulo Gonçalves said the next day, as we puttered away from land in his boat. While the western Algarve is all rugged bluffs and ocean winds, the southeastern shore is known for its protected lagoons and strips of perfect beach. Gonçalves leads boat tours through his company, Algarve Wow. We met him and his staffer Sara Kellen at a dock in Faro, the eastern Algarve’s biggest city, and cruised out at high tide between fishing boats. The plan was to explore the Ria Formosa Lagoon. Classified as a marine park in 1978 and, more recently, cleared of unlicensed developments, the Ria Formosa lies between the Algarve’s southeastern coast and the ocean, from which it is protected by a string of barrier islands. “People have been fishing here for centuries,” Gonçalves said. Most of the sea bass, sea bream, octopus, and cuttlefish they catch is sold in markets on the mainland, he added, pointing out two buildings in the town of Olhão.
We headed out to Culatra Island—seven kilometres long and less than 1.6 kilometre wide. The island’s three villages support about a thousand people over the winter, but swell in the summer with vacationing Portuguese. “There are no cars, just lots of golf carts,” Kellen said. “Even the ambulance is a golf cart.”
We docked at the village of Culatra, the biggest on the island. Fishermen were walking into town or repairing nets; they’d finished their catch hours earlier. Gonçalves sent a few text messages from his phone, then looked up and smiled. “You like oysters, right?” A fisherman had put around two dozen samples from that morning’s haul on ice for us. Gonçalves shucked expertly while Kellen opened a bottle of rosé. The oysters were fresh, thickly briny. They tasted simultaneously of the sea and of the air; it was as if they tasted of the moment itself. “THE PORTUGUESE WAY, when it’s well maintained, is maintained to be active, not to be photographed,” said Lionel Alvarez, the manager of my next hotel, Vila Monte Farm House. “It’s messy. You start to appreciate the beauty of being natural.”
Vila Monte certainly abides by this principle. Perched on a hill in the country outside Faro, near working farms, the place exudes high-end rusticity. The lobby contains a miniature farmers’ market; my two-room suite was set in a manicured orange grove. Hidden in the extensive grounds were an outdoor cinema, two swimming pools, and two restaurants serving local ingredients prepared extremely well. The overall impression was both contemporary— from the elegant, minimalist decor to the restaurants’ aromatic kitchen garden—and timeless, rooted in the idea of what it means to be Portuguese. “The main activity here is nothing,” Alvarez said. “There’s no ‘do,’ no ‘don’t do.’ It’s easy. It’s not complicated.”
I spent the rest of my stay embracing Alvarez’s mantra. At least, I tried to do nothing. I did wander the historic center of tiny Cacela Velha. I climbed the ramparts of a medieval castle in Tavira. In a fishing town, Santa Luzia, I walked down the quay and noticed people boarding a ferry. For $2 (`143), a young woman said, I could ride out to the beach and back. A few minutes later, I was crossing a wooden walkway with a dozen people, and after a few minutes more, I was swimming in pristine, opalescent waters bordered by an empty beach.