HERE ENDETH THE LESSON
We knew the trip through Spain, Portugal and then Spain again would be relatively uneventful compared to the rest of our journey , and so we devoted much of our time to a review of the whole trip.
The journey through the Algarve and the West Coast of Portugal though revealed the best and the worst aspects of our travel. The best is of course the people we met, and going through the tourist spots enabled us to quickly seize the moral and behavioural high ground since the proliferation of Country Stickers on our rear made us look pretty cool.
The worst was that we realized how pathetically small our van is in comparison with the 40 footers that frequent the sites of Portugal. So the very thing that made us stand apart from the typical overlanders…that we had a luxurious home, also made us stand apart from the travelers in Portugal for the opposite reason.
That apart we did enjoy it even though the 2 years in Africa made Portugal look horribly expensive.
We were able to keep eating well at EU prices though simply because we tended to camp rough most nights. The Portuguese are very relaxed regarding mobile homes camping overnight at their beauty spots. High spot for both of us was the Douro Valley just East of Porto. Heart of the winelands and impressive scenery.
After travelling all the way up the coast from the Algarve to the border in the North we saw and drank most of which Portugal had to offer, and then moved into Spain for some religious education. For a couple that do not profess to have found or even got close to Jesus we seem to have had a number of religious experiences which enable us to hold our own with the most ardent of Jehovah’s Witnesses, but the most moving was at Santiago De Compostella, which is the goal of literally hundreds of Pilgrims…all of whom walk there…sometimes hundreds of miles, and always to worship at the Tomb of St James.
The fact that the Church has a dubious record of authenticating bones of the Saints and wood from the Cross and the fact that it is almost impossible to authenticate that St James was ever in Spain let alone buried there seems to be a matter of little significance to these people who undertake great privations to be able to throw themselves with great gnashing of teeth on the alleged burial place. Good for them we both say but the crass commercialism which surrounds this site is led by the Church itself. These days you can’t light a candle in memory…all you can do is place 2 Euros in a slot and in a glass box which looks like it came from an amusement arcade, a tiny electric candle lights up for 5 minutes.
Our final destination was Santander and the ferry but we had a day and a half to explore the town which we both thought stood up as a holiday destination on its own. Good restaurants and lovely beaches, and luckily good weather.
So what did we learn over the 2 years of our trip….difficult to express without being excessively sanctimonious, but if nothing else we learned that people are not accurately represented by their Governments, but more importantly although inherently passive, kind and generous people can be moved to incredible stupidity and violence by media manipulation.
Janet and I found it most expressive to represent what we learned by an Oscar style awards ceremony. The awards were as follows.
Most fantastic hospitality… Iran followed by Sudan.
Most irritating people Ethiopians followed by more Ethiopians.
Best food…..Mozambique sea food
Worst Food…..Ethiopia…followed by Benin
Most fantastic Scenery The Simeon Mountains in Ethiopia.
Worst Roads Angola (but getting better)
Most Corrupt Police Russia joint first with Cameroon.
Least Corrupt Police…No award the phrase is an oxymoron.
Hottest Country…..Nigeria
Incidents most likely to cause divorce…. Janets Navigation.
Most Valuable Piece of Equipment carried….A Porta Potti
Least valuable…A satellite phone.
What would we do differently
1 A car with a high ground clearance
2 .A Porta Potti that holds more than 5 litres
3 Learn some basics of car maintenance
So that’s it until we can afford another trip…… this time Tierra Del Fuego to Alaska and home via Vladivostok….we’ll see !!!!!!!
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