Carvoeiro, Algarve

Lets go to the beach! Fun in the sun along this picturesque coastline was magnificent for us.

The Algarve coast is a famous vacation destination within Europe, and maybe not so much outside of it. We certainly were not expecting the Okanogan levels of summer homes and hotels that dotted along the coastline. Small hub towns are every 5-10km or so providing basic shops and expensive restaurants for tourists. We see why the whole coastline is a destination though. It is gorgeous.

The standard backpacking town in the area is Lagos, but with lacking public transportation in the area, we thought that we would reside in Carvoeiro instead, nestled between all of the destinations we wanted to attend. That was a slight mistake though, as unbeknownst to us, this little town fully developed as an expensive family resort town. Too smart by a half I guess. Given the hot sun that was down there too, we ended up using Uber a few times to avoid long 2h walks back to the AirBnB. We experienced our first scam! Our Uber driver thought we were not paying attention, and tried to do some laps in a residential neighborhood. We called them out pretty quick.

Our AirBnB was a half hour walk inland. We got ourselves set up after our arrival, and headed down the road to the main town beach. We crushed some kebab’s on the way to the beach, and set ourselves up on the sand to relax. The water got deep fairly quickly, and the open Atlantic water was quite chilly. But it was very refreshing for us. We took a swim, and a relax before heading out to get some Thai food for dinner (they gave us free port!). The three chili heat curry was barely spicy. It’s here we understood the true meaning of ‘European spice’.

The next day we took on the Trail of Headlands hike. It starts in Carvoeiro, and ends at a beach a theoretical 7km away, but it felt a lot longer. The hike was pristine though. Centuries of ocean has carved at the limestone cliffs, creating a fantastic mixture of beaches, faces, islands, sinkholes and caves. The journey was very hot, but the trail was not too hard. It was well marked too. The reward was amazing too. Praia do Mohle lay at the end for us, split in two by a breakwater. There was the chaos side (good fun) and the lame side (lame fun). We went to the chaos side, and enjoyed the 3-4ft waves that crashed over our bodies as we jumped around the waist deep water.

We were too hot and tired to walk back to Carvoeiro, so we just took an Uber back to town, and hung out on the town beach creating seashell art and napping. Its a lot of fun people watching on the beach. Lots of families are trying to keep their kids somewhat contained. A lot of couples on a romantic getaway as well. We got some Chinese food for dinner, it was ok, but its Chinese food so its still good. The walk back to our room was lovely, as the colours of the sunset over the hills make a nice atmosphere.

New day, new hike. This time the Seven Hanging Valleys Trail. We took the scammy Uber to the end point in the morning, which was another beach (Praia do Minha). This beach was really gorgeous, with cliffs caves and islands everywhere, but shade was at a premium. We (Graham mostly. The waves were too fun the day before) burnt quite bad on the shoulders, so a cave was our home for the afternoon. We took a book from our room (How to Fail by Elizabeth Day) to read on the beach together. The book was a memoir of Day’s life, and all of the things she’s failed at, and what she’s learned from them. Her struggles seemed somewhat common compared to the populous, so we lost interest about halfway through the book. Eventually we decided to start our hike in the late afternoon.

The highlight of the hike is Benegil Cave. Its a large cave open from the top with a beach inside of it. If you ever decide to go, rent a kayak and go from the bottom. You can’t see anything from the top, especially from the late afternoon when the light doesn’t shine down. The rest of the hike was lovely, even if it felt like it dragged on a bit. If we come back, we will get the kayaks.

Our final dinner was a decent Indian food joint. All of the food here defenitly catered to the family tourists, and as a result all of the flavours were somewhat muted. The restaurant was completely empty compared to the packed standard burger/seafood/steak patios that dotted the town.

The Algarve coast is a stupidly gorgeous place to be, but it is overrun by tourists. If we were to do the Algarve again, I think we would pick a different town to stay in (Lagos, Albufiera, Tavira likely), as they are a little more backpacker friendly apparently. Nonetheless, we really enjoyed our downtime (two 10km hikes as downtime???) here, as the continued rest from the first three weeks is much needed.

We need the rest for our next adventure. Our first backpacking hike! We will let you know how it goes.