A Good Feeling for Portugal?

Portugal, has, to generalise somewhat crudely I'll admit, two distinct regions: The Algarve – in the South – and everywhere else. Fortunately for us, generalisations allow for exceptions and towards the bottom left of the Algarve we found something we didn’t expect to find in a region so focused on catering to the booze cruise bunch: we found a place of respite, and it was even covered in hammocks.

Arriving in Raposeira was to the drunk partied out fool what a shiny, clean, cold-water tap is to anyone who’s found themselves inexplicably wandering around the Sahara for a week. We had spent the best part of a week exploring the coast, only to find red faced English speakers at every turn. Fortunately we managed to escape somewhat around Faro and the surrounding hills, which harboured some refreshingly – actual – Portuguese folk. These people were friendlier than you could really have hoped for, given the abundance of tourists in the region and we were kept obscenely well fed and watered, and ate local specialities including a lobster filled Cataplana and a thousand gallons of local wine.

The rest of the Algarve though… it’s as if someone took the land, shook off all the people and replaced them with whatever came out of the pub at 2am. Take Lagos, for example: some phrases uttered in ignorance before the onset of night: "A beautiful town", "Look at the castle!", "Wow what beaches". With the dark came an insane number of drunk, belligerent, vomit covered tourists: Australians by the half billion, Germans by the tens of thousands and even a spattering of French (the UK was surprisingly underrepresented here). So we ended up drunk by osmosis, after trying to find something, anything, else.

But there isn’t anything else, just the stench and scream of the 19 year olds slowly falling over into puddles of their own making. At the end of our days in Lagos, and the Algarve as a whole, I’d almost lost a toe (I’ve never seen a stubbed digit bleed so), burnt a hand (hostel cooking: one for you, three for me!), sliced my other foot nice and deep (thanks crustaceans!) and almost split my head open (spatial awareness and wine do not mix well).

The North of the country is a different kettle altogether. The North is where Portuguese people live. If The South was a lot of small, quaint villages and towns covered in red-faced tourists, The North (well, from Lisbon up) is varied, vibrant and jam packed with life. Coimbra sits inland, north of Lisboa and south of Porto. It’s a place heavily populated by university students, and what a city! The centre steeped in all sorts of olde history. Something about the Moors and something else about a library, too, according to the guide books. I wouldn’t know as my day was spent by a glorious pool in the city’s fantastic camp site...

Venturing in at night gave us an good idea though; beautifully maintained cobble streets wheel about over a hilly town littered with fantastic University buildings, churches and small squares where the students gather, sit, chat and share a smoke. Porto is a similar affair, with some extra spectacular on top. Set in a valley by the sea, with the huge, super-scenic (and yes, touristy) Douro river flowing into it. Porto city centre is a sight to behold (a site to behold perhaps?): buildings are beautiful yet wearing thin from years of neglect. If you look too close you might notice that half the buildings don’t actually have all the walls you might hope for; the number or buildings that are nothing more than a façade is staggering.

From there, it was on to Lisboa. Staying in the capital is pretty simple, hostels jump out at you everywhere. We stayed at the overreaching Oasis Backpackers Mansion, which may have once been a mansion, in the way of having a hundred rooms, but the aristocratic theme came to an abrupt halt after that. One bathroom (toilet and shower) between every ten poor suckers negated any sort of comfort, replacing it with a constant wonder about when you might next get to micturate. And while the place strived to fit in with the young tourist crowd (ie. with pub crawls and other such organised ‘fun’), it was hard to shake the feeling that the staff wanted you to fuck off, stop asking them to do ‘stuff’ and leave them to be horrifyingly cool. Rude doesn’t even cut it.

The rest of Lisbon did its level best to make up for this though (and staying at The Poet, a nearby hostel, one night, left us with a much better impression of Lisbon’s hospitality). Life in town is good: drinks aren’t too expensive, especially in the Bairro Alto, which was both hectic and mad in a refreshing local way. During the days there is something for everyone, if you can drag yourself out of bed (thanks, Bairro Alto!). Our experience of the North was a good one, an improvement over the South for sure, but that’s probably only thanks to the rest we got in the small town of Raposeira, at the hostel with the hammocks.

They were a sight for sore limbs and livers, peppered around the side of the most aptly titled hostel ever: The Good Feeling, a place plonked on the edge of the town, 20 minutes from anything else in the South East of the Algarve. Run by ex pro surfers (Hugo, Miguel and Abel), at The Good Feeling there is no stress. It’s not even possible. When we arrived, the hostel was quiet, the only hint of a person was a note on the open door: ‘Back Soon, Just Relax’, it said. So we had a little explore around the large, comfortable lounge and kitchen, and, after a minute or two, settled down in the hammocks to wait. Maybe an hour later, as we were drifting off a car pulled up full of people kitted out for the beach, looking well sunned and rested. Standard procedure, it turns out, is that they happily drive you wherever you need or want to be – gratis: beaches, bars, shops. They go 'cos they want to; they want you to see it, have fun and hell, if they have to have a little surf or a small beer while they wait, well they’ll just bloody well do it.

Our time there was spent – between blissfully calm beers, chats and meals in the evening – on a couple of trips that are run out of the hostel. Surf lessons were taken at a great little local school, and we went on an amazing cave-exploring, leg-wobbling rock-jumping ball-smashing trip, too (ProTip: try not to land on your back, legs splayed when leaping into the sea off of a 15m rock). There is no doubt that these were some of the nicest days of the trip. We didn’t know what to expect from Portugal, and it’s fair to say The Algarve was not it. But The Good Feeling was an antidote to the somewhat relentless South, and a great precursor to our – slightly – more sober explorations up North. No matter if you are heading to Portugal for a booze and beach trip, or to party all night in Lisboa, it’s well worth making the trip to Raposeira, where there is peace, calm and hammocks. If you’ve been anywhere else in Portugal, you will goddamn need them.