Travel Diary. Day 6. A Boat Trip along Portugal's Rocky Coast.
Since this boat excursion, 184 days have passed - or 4,416 hours, or 264,960 minutes, or 15,897,600 seconds - but the flavour of the emotional experience has remained. Such ocean expanse, a strong but warm wind current, sizeable waves that tossed the rubber motorboat up and down as if at play - as if to say: your dozen little human lives are nothing compared to the eternity embodied that day by the ocean waters. Much oxygen flowed in, and an indescribable feeling of freedom - a thousand times more powerful than the feeling of fear or danger.
When you are in southern Portugal, do enjoy this attraction - you won't regret it: a 1.5-hour trip along the rocky cliff coast, entering some ten caves, including the Benagil Cave - advertised in all the tourism brochures and, judging by the number of photographs in Google Images searches, seemingly the most photographed - a window to the sky. Such a tour per adult costs 25 EUR. In general, the prices at attractions throughout Portugal are very democratic.
Of course one can travel along the coast choosing to paddle in a kayak, on a SUP board, or in more stately fashion on an improvised pirate ship. The main thing is that you feel the incomprehensible urge - as every Homo Turistos does upon seeing something fabulously beautiful - to keep photographing and filming. As a result we returned to shore with 600 frames, and now I sit and think what to do with them all and how to convey to you, my reader, that true sense of the corner of paradise.
I will perhaps repeat myself, but paradise and hell are right here on earth - there is no need to search for them up above or down below. And the Algarve region of southern Portugal is the reflection of paradise on earth. The yellow sun-warmed cliff coasts contrast with the turquoise water. Mist lingers in the caves, lending a touch of mysticism. Above the head seabirds circle, for whom this place is everyday life - and in storms and rain it looks nothing like paradise at all, but rather a harsh place to live.
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