It's the day we're leaving, everything is ready. We take apart the bikes and discover that Sandra's bike doesn't fit into the box. Oh oh. She takes a quick trip to the bike shop to get a bigger box. She returns will a box big enough to fit a station wagon. Problem number two: finding a taxi willing to take two big boxes to the airport. Eventually we find one and were off to the airport where I was completely shocked to find that our flight was delayed two hours! At least we got some free food.

The flight was fairly short. On arriving at Faro we picked up our bikes. The bikes were in perfect condition however the same couldn't be said for the boxes that they came in. We decided to abondon the boxes. We finished assembling the bikes at about midnight and biking the short distance to the Ibis Hotel.

We made it to Portugal, ready to bike!

Day 2 Faro -> Loule (Dist: 22.7 1:33)

We wanted to get an early start to our first day of biking so we got up at about 10am and had a leisurely breakfast. We did a check of our bikes and then headed out towards the town of Loule. We managed to see a lot of the outlying parts of Faro in our attempts at finding the road to Loule.

Have found the right direction we encountered our first hill - Dorothy we are not in Holland any more! After getting a firm understanding of why our bikes came with so many gears we arrived in Loule.

We looked around for the pension we wanted to stay in (hint: look up!) We stayed in the Pensao Residencial Avenida Nova which was run by a really nice lady who gave us a whole bunch of information about the town.

We spent some time looking around the town. Unfortunately since it was late Saturday most of the shops were closed and we were not able to buy any of the fantastic pottery.

Had dinner in the lovely courtyard of Restaurante/SnackBar Horte Nove. Unfortunately the food didn't live up to the courtyard!

Day 3 Loule -> Sao Bartolomeu de Messines (Dist: 40.8km 3:05)

Ready for more biking we were up and on our bikes by 10am. We decided to take some smaller roads to see a bit of the countryside. (note for future reference: smaller roads = bigger hills!). We headed through Soalheira and Senhora de Boa Hora on a road that weaved though small villages and groves of fruit tress.

You wouldn't think it would be possible to lose each other on a small road in the countryside but we managed to almost do that. Having found each other we stopped for a few hour siesta and then continued on to Alte Fica, Benafim Grande, Alte then on to Sao Bartolomeu de Messines.

Bartolomeu de Messines was a bit of a strange town in that it was really really difficult to find any hotels or pensions as if tourist never came to the town.

After looking around for a while and asking a few different people we were able to locate a quarto (room) with a very friendly and very small little lady who helped us get settled.

We went out for dinner and Sandra discover the sardine paste that they put out before meals and was hooked for the rest of the trip.

Boeyed by our "smaller" road success yesterday decided that instead of taking the main road to Monchique we would try some smaller ones. We discovered a nice newly paved road that would through tiny villages in beautiful countryside. All was fine until we came across a fork in the road. Not only were both of the roads gravel, but the places listed for each direction were not on our map.

With the help of a portugese woman and some very very basic portugese we determined that we should go left. Now we were definately in rural portugal. With a few more forks in the road and a few more queries for the locals we eventually found our out onto the main highway, discovering that our few hour journey through the country had left us only about 6km from where we started!

We continued up the highway until we got to Sao Marcos de Serra. A wonderful town with a small park with a wonderful view. We rested there for a while before continuing on to Monchique. Despite some people saying that there is no route between S. Marcos and Monchique, there is one. Sure it is a rather windy route, sure the second half of the route is almost continuously uphill, sure it is much longer than it looks on the map, but there is a route! We climbed up to a height of about 800-900m and then skimmed from peak to peak along the ridges. Eventually, extremely tired we cruised into Monchique at about 8pm.

We found a nice pension in the center of town and went out for dinner in a great restaurant called the Pigs Behind where I had one of the best hot dogs I've ever had. (and very enjoyable service too!)

Day 5 Monchique

We decided to have a rest day. to be continued...