Losing It In Amsterdam: Surfing Portugal

A friend of mine describes Portgual as an abandoned country filled with empty, crumbling buildings. This assessment seemed a bit harsh until I found myself staying in one of those crumbling buildings. This collection of ruins 50 kms outside of Lisbon was reclaimed by the current owner, Guida, who has spent the last 15 years “fixing it up” into the flea market and surfer guest house it is today.

Guida is a lovely and interesting person who reminds me of Ernie - of Bert and Ernie fame - mostly because they’re both orange. Guida’s curly hair is flaming orange, her skin is a slightly browner tone, her nails are painted orange and she wears electric blue eye shadow for flair.

I can only imagine the amount of work Orange Guida and her eccentric collection of artist friends put into restoring this place, much less the daily work spent running it. Living here would leave me in a constant panic with lists of the thousands of things requiring immediate attention from trimming the overgrown hydrangea to figuring out how to turn hot water on for my guests. Guida does not seem bothered by any of it, and after showing me to my bunk bed filled room, took me to the beach for pizza and beer. This was a brilliant tactic because who cares about hot water when you’ve got pizza and beer?

Thankfully running this establishment is not my responsibility – but staying here is. Unfortunately my trip started off on rough note beginning with a 4:15AM wake up call, leading to a delayed flight, and then a grand finale of waiting at the Lisbon airport for 2 hours looking for the taxi that promised to be waiting there for me. After making repeated unreturned phone calls to the owners, I finally hopped into a taxi by myself. It took considerable team work with the driver to find this random building in the middle of nowhere, but we did it. Plus the driver was a surfer, so he entertained me with surfing information while we drove around aimlessly in Ericeira.

I learned that professional surfing championships will be held here in 2 weeks and that Ericeira is a really dangerous place to surf. I probably should have checked into this before booking my trip. The driver informed me that the waves here are the best in Portugal because there is nothing but hard rock under the water. When I looked surprised to hear this information, the he looked in the rear mirror, pointed his finger in the air and said “you must be very careful not to crush your head.”

I've never seen a surfer catching waves with a helmet on, so I may be the very first.

Dinner last night was made by Roberto, a Spanish surfing instructor, who served all you can eat eggs and fish soup about 2 hours later than planned. It was much better than it sounds. Tomorrow night the Austrians are making Weiner Schnitzel and so I might be going to bed early.

You might be sitting there wondering how I am able to write this AND surf at the same time. Although that would be remarkable, the truth is the waves are barreling too much this morning and the surfing instructor – named Sha-WOW, of course – is hoping they calm down a bit by lunch time. I haven’t mentioned yet that the water is about 10 degrees celsius.

Which has reminded me of one of the things I appreciate so much about surfing - it puts you in uncomfortable situations, allowing you to overcome your fears. I am even more appreciative that this opportunity has been delayed by two hours.