Portugal

I know all my loyal readers have been dreadfully missing my blog updates. My apologies. I have been up to a lot this past month since I last posted so I will try to think back and write about all my exciting adventures.
In February my three best friends here and I took a road trip to Lagos, Portugal. Lagos is in the south on the coast and is a tiny beach town. Our original destination was Faro, a slightly bigger coastal city, but luckily our program director talked us out of it. We rented a small Fiat Leon from a rental company near the airport. In order to take the bus to Portugal we would have had to spend all day in a bus, switching at least once in Sevilla if not again at the border, and it would have actually cost more than splitting a rental four ways. The car ride only took five hours from start to finish, and was a easy ride with great views and simple navigation. Unfortunately only one of us knows how to drive a car with a manual transmission so Jodi did all the driving. We had a few small hitches with the car: first we could NOT get the little thing in reverse. This meant that I physically pushed the car backward out of the parking space while everyone else laughed at me and we prayed the rental company people would not see us. After we finally backed out of the spot, Jodi had a few problems getting the car to go. We stalled 4ish times in the parking lot, but eventually got out and it was smooth sailing from there.
When we arrived in Portugal we had a bit of trouble finding Dina's Guest House where we were staying. The directions from Hostelworld were translated VERY poorly into English and did not make any sense. We drove around the city three times, stalled several more, and finally found the parking spot indicated on our directions. From there the walking directions were ALSO very wrong. We found a nice Portuguese man who did not speak English or Spanish but walked us to the international youth hostel. We waited for him to leave and then were close enough to navigate our way to Dina's. The guest house was really nice and we had our own room with four huge beds and a private bathroom. There was also a patio attached to our bedroom and a kitchen for use.
We went out to explore the city a little bit. When we returned we discovered that the people staying in the other room of the guest house were two other people from our program in Granada!!! The six of us all went out for traditional Portuguese dinner and then hung out at Three Monkeys bar. The city reminded me a lot of Placencia in Belize, where all the locals knew each other and hung out at the same bars every night. Many of the businesses in Lagos are run be ex-pats, Australians and Brits who came to Lagos and just couldn't bear to leave. It made for a very American friendly environment and was much less intimidating than the big cities where I felt more on guard against pickpocketers, etc.
The second day in Lagos we slept in late and then had lunch at a burger joint called Don Torro's. The actually had a veggie burger on the menu, so I enjoyed it. Everyone else soaked up the joy of American-ish food, which I think all would agree is the thing we have missed most here. We then went to the beach just a few blocks from our guest house. The beach was gorgeous and had a ton of fun caves to explore that connected beach after beach along the coast. The edge of the beach was very rocky so we just laid on the sand and enjoyed being on the beach in February.
We went on a search for some recommended restaurants that night, but everything was closed because it wasn't high tourist season yet. Luckily we stumbled upon a fairly cheap Italian food restaurant and had a great affordable meal. After dinner we went to a few bars and had some drinks and then went home.
The next day we walked over to the other side of Lagos and spent the day at the larger beach. The water was so clear and warm, I could not believe it. I could have spent hours and hours just swimming and splashing around in the water. We took a ton of pictures of the water and the beach and just enjoyed doing nothing. I wanted to stay on the beach forever, but the sun started to go down and we had to return back to Dina's. We met our new guest house mates while we took turns in the shower. They turned out to be three American guys who are studying in Granada and live about 4 blocks from us there. It really is a small world. Everyone was kind of pooped so we decided to come home after dinner. Stephanie and Marlise went to bed early and Jodi and I spent some time watching youtube videos and then eventually turned in.
Before we left Lagos we visited a little breakfast place that had pancakes, eggs, hashbrowns and bacon for three euro! This may have been the most astonishing discovery in all of Portugal. Before we left we took a boat tour of the caves, which turned out to be the four of us riding around in a run down old motor boat while our "guide" pointed out rocks shaped like things ("This one is an indian, this one is an elephant, etc.) Either was the caves were beautiful and the tour operator gave us a two euro discount so it was only six euros a piece for a one hour tour. The drive home went relatively smoothly as we were fueled by three euro breakfast, until we stopped for gas. We assumed that our car would take gasoline, not diesel, and didn't think much about the possibility that it would not. It wasn't until after we had put 20 euro of gasoline in the car that I saw the little sticker that said diesel on the inside of the gas tank lid. We weren't sure what to do so we started to drive while I looked through the manual, which definitely said gasoline, not diesel. Luckily we made it to the next gas station before the car shut off. Apparently diesel cars don't run that well on gasoline. We spent the next four hours calling everyone we knew asking for advice, trying to call the help line the rental place gave us (there was no phone number provided on any of the paperwork so that meant getting online and finding the number), being told the woman from the agency was out of the office and would call us back in ten minutes (aka 1.5 hours) and then eventually getting help from the police. Luckily the boyfriend of the woman in the gas station was a mechanic, and he sucked the gas out of the gas tank for us. By the time we got back on the road several hours had passed, it was dark, and we were hungry and tired. But we made it back safely and returned the car.
The last obstacle was getting back into the city, since the car rental place was at the airport. The last bus back to the city had already left and it turns out taxis will not come to the airport. There was a nice old man in the quick mart who said he would drive over to where the airport taxis are and see if any were there and if not he would take us in his car. This seemed sketchy, but better than a night in the airport gas station quick mart. The man came back 10 minutes later driving a taxi... whatever. We finally made it back to Granada, at which point we had to pay the taxi driver in small coins because we were flat out of money as we had not anticipated missing the bus nor having to buy another tank of gas. Overall we had an amazing weekend. Lagos was one of the most beautiful cities I have ever seen, definitely the best beach for swimming, and I would return in a heartbeat.