Holes to Heaven: Random International Update (21.10.13)

Peniche, Portugal

I left for the Barcelona airport at 4:30 AM on Friday morning not knowing what to expect from my random last minute trip to Portugal. My flight was not until 7:00 AM, but my friend Ryan had a flight at 6:00 AM, so it made sense to split one. To be honest, I do not remember much from Friday morning in Barcelona. I was running on about an hour of sleep and zero breakfast (I had a big dinner + ice cream the previous night). I figuratively crashed on the plane (because it is hard for just one person to physically crash on a commercial flight with hundreds of passengers). I then crashed figuratively again on the bus in Portugal. However. I arrived to Lisbon around 8:00 AM (it's an hour behind Barcelona) and only had 30 minutes to catch my bus to Peniche. As it turns out, the shuttle from the airport only runs every 40 minutes (sigh) so I actually barely ended up catching the 10:00 AM bus! I was still a no-sleep zombie, so this was all somewhat of a blur. I do remember that there was some confusion at the ticket office over whether my earlier bus ticket was valid for the later bus. "They" ended up deciding that it would cost 1,90€ to revalidate my ticket for the required departure time. Thankfully, English is the language of choice for all service industries in Europe. American culture and business has an enormous world-wide reach. I suppose some of its reach is due to the former British Empire. But mostly America (we are #1!). So I got the ticket sorted out, and it was off to Peniche!

Upon arrival, I only had the ~~direction~~ address of my friend Angelo's hotel to guide me.

=Linguistic Note=

In Spanish, the word for address is dirección. I accidentally re-translated back to English directly from the Spanish word. Didn’t even realize the error until editing.

Peniche is a small place. But I was a little worried that Angelo wouldn’t be in his hotel room and that I would have to wait for hours (it was about 12:30 PM by the time I arrived at the hotel). I wandered through the streets of Peniche with my little suitcase, following the map at the bus station, and arrived at the hotel successfully. The gods smiled upon me, and Angelo answered the door when I knocked. In about 45 minutes, we met up with Enrique, a dude from Murcia, who had a van. The beaches were a few kilometers away. The gods had also smiled upon Angelo on his first day in Peniche (he was there for a week) when Enrique stopped to give Angelo a ride back to the hotel in exchange for a nice, hot shower. We went in Enrique’s van over to a surf shop to rent my surfboard and wetsuit (it was 40€ for two days… not too shabby!), and then we left for the beach! We stayed an hour and a half or two hours out on the big waves (I was basically a lifeguard… did not stand up on a wave all of Friday). It was also really rainy and windy. After this first session, we went over to the lovely Swiss-owned restaurant with free WiFi and had lunch with Francia. Angelo and I called the group of five French kids “Francia”. They were all on vacation for a few weeks, living out of a van and another smaller car. After lunch, we drove over to another beach, a little bit to the north. The waves were great, and the rain had stopped. Having scouted the area successfully, we returned to Francia to let them know about it. I stayed at the first beach with the other two French guys (slightly more inexperienced than I was at surfing…) to get my surfing form down while the others drove over to the new spot. After hours of surfing on the beautiful Portuguese coastline, we all reunited at our favorite Swiss-owned restaurant (called “3House”). Angelo, Enrique and I did not eat dinner with Francia; instead we returned to the hotel (now it was raining again) to shower and go eat some awesome seafood. I had some delicious codfish (I think that was what I ordered).

Surf. Eat. Sleep. Repeat. This was the motto. Angelo and I went downstairs to get our complimentary breakfast (woo!) and saved some food for Enrique (who was arriving later in his van, where he sleeps). Enrique has a dog! Named Thea. She’s awesome. Photos to follow. We drove over to the normal beach, where Francia slept at night, to see if any of them wanted to go to Ericeira, a town about 50 km to the south of Peniche. They respectfully declined, so it was just Angelo, Enrique and myself. And Thea. Using the amazing navigation system on iPhones that works even without cell phone service (what?!), we arrived an hour or so later, around 1:00 PM. We stopped at some overlooks to see the waves at various places, but it was quite choppy. So we went to lunch at a great little place in the center of Ericeira, and returned to Peniche afterwards. That afternoon, we met up with Francia again. With Francia following, we drove to find the beach that Angelo’s surfing application said was awesome. After many dirt roads and nearly getting lost, we arrived. The waves weren’t great, but we found an old, iron bridge structure, a big exposed deposit of clay, and caterpillars. Oh, and a beautiful beach. Just not the greatest waves (surfers are picky). After returning to the original beach (with 3House, the restaurant), I stayed there with the smaller, smoother waves and the two French guys. It was a perfect afternoon. The weather was warm, the sun was out, and the waves were just my type. I stayed on the water until the sun set off into the Atlantic behind the small village nestled on the nearby peninsula, called Baleal. I rode a full, proper wave all the way, and a few halfway. It was so cool. After surfing until exhaustion. I got a coffee at the 3House with the French guys while we waited for the others to return. Then Enrique, Angelo and I showered and went to dinner. I had some spectacular salmon and tried Angelo’s octopus, cooked with suction cups and all. Surf. Eat. Sleep. Repeat.

Actually, in between the eating and the sleeping we went to a beach bar next to 3House with Francia. It was packed full of all sorts of surfer people. The bar opens up to the beach on one side. It was so cool. We ended up getting back to the hotel and sleeping around 6:00 AM.

Sunday my arms were extremely sore. I did not surf Sunday. Instead, since Angelo really wanted to catch a few waves before our flight at 8:30 PM, I took some photos and played fetch with Thea on the beach while Angelo surfed and Enrique body-surfed.

Enrique dropped us off at the bus station around 3:30 PM. Angelo and I said our heartfelt goodbyes, and hopped on the bus to Lisbon. At the airport Angelo checked-in his surfboard (I love the Portuguese airline, TAP. Not only do they check surfboards efficiently, but they also have a newspaper/magazine stand where you can pick up a free one to read on the plane, and also they give you a free drink, sandwich, coffee, and little bottle of strawberry smoothie on the flight (which is only 1:30 long in total). We finally arrived back at the apartment complex after a shuttle bus to Plaça Catalunya + a shared taxi (with Gabi, who was coming back from Amsterdam and whom I ran into at the baggage claim). After unpacking and showering, I got some sleep in preparation for another full week of class.