July 17 - Take a bus and all the gear across town to the car rental agency. It is a tiny office across the street from the Music Museum. Fast enough to get the car and off we go, south to the Reserva Natural das Dunas de Sao Jacinto. Once out of Porto and off the main highways, it is small country roads down the west side of Aveiro Lagoon to the dune park.
Stop in the town of Sao Jancinto and cross the dunes to the Atlantic coast.
Turn around and head north and east to Castro de Monte Mozinho, an archaeological site east of Porto. It was an iron age city that was peaceably settled by the Romans between 100 BCE and 100 CE, and had small numbers of inhabitants up to medieval times.
From here take highways generally up into more mountainous areas. The car is having a lot of power issues, I suspect that the petrol I put in was not 95.
Our room for tonight is in a house on a small, steep country road with a tiny garage that I can barely squeeze into with the car. The group of houses (not a town as such) is called Parada, about 20 minutes west of Vila Real.
The car is having such problems that I don’t want to attempt going back up the steep hill to look for dinner. Instead we walk, about 45 minutes steep up to a ridge and then steep down into another valley, to eat at a local cafe. As much as I feel stressed about the car and our lack of mobility, it is special to sit in this place, among the diners who’ve just gotten off work and other people from the surrounding community. To add to our troubles, we don’t have enough Euros for the meal and none of our cards work. But the staff is sympathetic to our plight and lets us pay in US dollars.
