Ride Day X: Nazare to Santa Cruz

I think that we've become accustomed to the misty, foggy coastal mornings with a strong northerly wind.  Today started with the same conditions but with a lower temperature and a bit more liquid in the mist.  It was cold.

We really enjoyed our evening in Nazare.  We had our own kitchen to cook some food (we just made hash with veggies and eggs) but it was fantastic.  The town is nice in the evening, at least in the little neighborhood where we stayed.  And it was quiet after about 10 p.m.

Another nice thing about having our own kitchen is that we can make coffee in the morning and move slowly and drink coffee and think about the ride ahead.  Today we are pushing south as far as we reasonably can, to Santa Cruz.  Lorie wants to divert through an ancient walled city called Obidos, and that will add some miles, but it looks pretty nice so it will be worth it.

We finally headed out into the fog and it was so thick that I included the headlight today in addition to the tail light, which is always on.  I am really glad that we are doing this ride from north to south.  The north wind is at times just brutal and to ride into it rather than have it at our backs would be awful.  To give some context, at one point we were heading straight downwind on a very slight downhill, straight as an arrow on good road, and we were easily pushing 60 kph without any effort at all.

By the time we rode into Obidos we were thoroughly cold to the bone.  Coffee was in order so we attended to that first.  The town is pretty popular and the busses were filling in pretty fast, so we walked in through the gates and wandered around a bit.

A bit blurry, but that's the walled city in the distance. 

Still pretty gray when we got closer

The town is interesting and has lots of shops and restaurants.  We didn't linger long because we wanted to keep moving to keep warm -- there were quite a few hills today that kept us toasty going up.  And we've forgotten what it feels like to ride double digit hills -- a couple of 13% grades today reminded us.

There is always fun stuff happening on Sundays, and today we came across a mountain bike race.  The cops were stopping cars as the riders rode across the road.  We shouted "Aupa, Aupa" (which you may recall is Spanish for "go, go" or something like that) and it must have some meaning in Portuguese since the riders all smiled and waved.

Bom dia!

The fog got worse at one section and we had to take it easy because we were worried that cars couldn't see us.  But soon enough we were getting back toward the coast and saw some blue through the gray -- that changes your mood right away and we were buoyed to see it.  We found Santa Cruz very easily and our Guest House for the night (guest houses are the way to go if you don't mind very modest accommodations and the chance to meet some interesting folk).  We wandered down to the beach, which is said to rival Nazare for surfing but the wind was super cold so we didn't hang out long.  The beach is very nice, though, and on a warm day would be a great place to hang out.

Cool rocks.  It was super cold but at least it was sunny.

Frozen and hungry we went back to town to find a supermarket (since it is Sunday, everything is closed).  But when we heard a lot of voices we needed to investigate.  What luck!  It turns out that today is the Santa Cruz crab festival.  We were lucky to get a table in the midst of hundreds of folks chowing down on crab.  We each got a whole crab, a bib, and a hammer to break the shell.  It was great and super fun, if a bit messy.  Lorie cracked one big pincher and juice sprayed the guy next to her really good.  He laughed, we laughed, and he took our picture.

Great crab. Not as good as Dungeness, but good!

Our tool kit for the feast

Before

After

Great fun.

As we walked back up the hill toward the Guest House an enticing aroma tickled our noses.  We saw a group of people in front of some kind of small house; smoke came from the chimney.  We had to investigate.  Everybody had a number in their hand and inside the house a big wood-fired oven was blazing.  Four or five women were rolling some kind of soft bread dough and filling it with various meats -- chorizo and sausages.  They placed the dough onto a paddle and into the oven they went.

What are these treats?

We were stuffed with (and smelled like) crab, but this we couldn't pass by.  So we got a number and when our turn was called (we watched the numbers from people in front -- we can't understand the way that the numbers sound when called out...) we bought a couple of the loaves.

Rolling the dough with meats

The ovens and the dough in front

The finished loaf

We have no idea what these are called.  We tried to find out but nobody spoke a word of English and we could find nothing on the web.  But they are so good -- the bread is crisp on the outside and moist and tender on the inside and the meat makes it fantastic.  Just what we needed after a crab feed.  But sometimes one needs to take one for the home team to experience the culture, right?

We needed to walk off some of the food, so we went back down to the beach.  The fog swirled in and out and it was cold, so much like Oregon's coast.

Until tomorrow, be well

Tomorrow we're off for Sintra.