Cruising Notes
Life on the Rio Guadiana, a new ARC route, and Lochaline on Loch Aline
‘To get anything done, I begin my day in Spain while Portugal is still sleeping’
“Obrigada, oh, drat, no, gracias.” I’m in Spain, and I just said, ‘thank you’ to a store clerk in Portuguese. This morning I was in Portugal to check my email at the local library and of course I said “Buenos dias” in Spanish to the librarian instead of “Bom dia” in Portuguese. I keep getting confused.
I’m spending the winter on my yacht, Eidos, anchored on the River Guadiana, which forms the southern-most end of the border between Spain and Portugal.
Meandering for 20 navigable miles north from the coast of the eastern Atlantic, the river is wide, deep and calm enough to sail comfortably and the locals of the twin towns of San Lucar de Guadiana (in Spain) and Alcoutim (in Portugal) offer a warm welcome to visiting cruisers.
Both towns have docks for big boats and dinghies. The general store in Spain has almost everything I need and will order what they don’t carry. In Portugal, I can check my email and search the Internet at the local library. The post office in San Lucar accepts snail mail addressed to me care of General Delivery without a fee and the one in Alcoutim has public telephones. A wonderful restaurant on the hill in Spain often has a live band, while the terrace bar with a view of the river in Portugal is a regular hang out for the cruisers and expats. San Lucar offers free Spanish lessons, while Alcoutim has a convenient bus to the coast and bigger towns for shopping and cultural events. English-speaking expats live on both sides of the river in case homesickness sets in.
And so, in the course of an average day, I cross the river and border several times. To add to the confusion with language, time on the Spanish side is one hour later than in Portugal. And so when I hear eight bells sounded by the local church, I don’t really know what time it is until I decide where the sound is coming from. Then I say, “eight o’clock in Portugal, nine in Spain”. I keep my watch set to Spanish time in general agreement with other cruisers but last week I arrived in Portugal an hour early (again) for the opening of the library, and a few days before that, I woke up an hour too early to catch the Portuguese bus to the coast. I suppose that’s better than being late…
Start the day in Spain
To get anything done, I begin my day in Spain while Portugal is still sleeping. I take the dinghy to the dock, leave my rubbish in a nearby bin, walk up to the post office to check for any snail mail packages or letters, then up the hill to the general store for the usual bread and butter items. By then Portugal is ‘open’ and I cross the river, dropping off purchases and picking up my
laptop from Eidos, which is on a mooring on the border between the two towns.
In Portugal, I stop at the library, sign up for internet and spend a couple of hours writing. I check my email and am done before the library and all the stores close for siesta. This is also the time the cruisers are most likely to gather on the terrace in Portugal for a beer or to check the book swap shelves in Spain. In the evenings, I cross over back to Spain for my Spanish class and some tapas.
Since my Spanish is now better than my Portuguese, I suppose I can be excused for saying “Buenos tardes” in Portugal instead of “Boa tarde”. Or perhaps I should instead do what the locals do and say what is understood in both countries: “Hola!”