HELLO WEST COAST!

the renault clio that came to the island before the bridge went out was not a late model, and it arrived early. insurance is a delicate business, and the ones holding the policy holders want to make sure that they've taken care of their clients. so, stowaway now in tow, the clio (insured by who knows whom) hopped back over to the mainland, hopped onto the highway and then made its way west through the toll signs of the expressway on a tank full of one hundred percent billable.

halfway to where the expressway turns north there's a fortress. but the fortress visible from the expressway is a fake. someone put it up to attract people toward one of the golf courses or to some fancy new foodie experience, but from a distance it isn't readily apparent that the structure is new. there's something more authentic a little ways inland at silves, but the clio is going west. there are, however, the ruins of a little castle at the top of the highest hill in aljezur, and after the clio makes its laborious way up the road that goes down to the beach below vale da telha, that's where it heads. not to the top of the hill, but to a parking lot below it where it stops, after conspiratorially greeting the two policemen in front of the post office, to park and let the driver out to visit the insurance office. and if there the tranquilidade exists in name only, it's absolutely palpable from the top of the hill, where two of the watchtowers of the eleventh century almohad castle still command postcard perfect views of the river town and its surroundings. not much changed, probably, in the daily life of aljezur after its thirteenth century reconquest, its people keeping on keeping their bees, catching their fish, minding their cattle -- and drinking their medronho -- while the knights divvied up their (new) king's share of the people's products. unfortunately, the design firm halfway down the hill does not make a postcard of the flowchart describing the steps from strawberry tree to intoxication that decorates the wall behind its reception desk.

at amado, carrapateira the boys with their boards were starting to make their ways in groups down the long, wooden staircases to the water (and the clever old man was passing his metal detector between the parked cars), but the clio wouldn't tarry longer than the time it took to snap a few photos, because it was following the serious surfers to the end of the road. and at sagres the traffic police didn't know the name of the street where the insurance agency was located and so said to ask at the post office. the wind, they say, is what delineates the extent of the coast they call the west, and they say that it always blows at sagres. the surfers (half of australia) are down at tonel, but above them, at the ends of the flat, narrow cliffs, the massive fortress of sagres and the lighthouse at the cape of saint vincent take the full force of the wind in their faces, undeterred, monuments to a people that had seen the relentlessly bitter force of nature at the end of the world and had left behind the tranquilidade enshrined in those insurance offices and gone to conquer a new one.

the beach at nearby ingrina is much calmer, but after the clio had passed the big roadkill snake on its way to lose its way there, the less imposing rocks of the cove simply presented other dangers. but still, the beach was calm, as were the hills of golden cereal fields around it: the dry, windblown hills that from some vantages appear to be the ends of the earth themselves, but don't, strangely, let on at all that the ocean is only a few kilometers beyond them, easily visible from their other sides. the hills with the fields and the cow pastures, the peaceful pines and the furious ones, and the clio making its way through all of it over snakes and past the cow crossing signs on the road back inland from ingrina. the old windmills with the wooden blades at one time actually milled, but the new ones, giant robots, power the grid, which included two more insurance offices in lagos.

and lagos has its undeniable charm. its stone sidewalks and tiled façades. its thoughtfully conceived cafes and specialty stores. maria de mar sells nothing but canned fish in carefully designed retro packaging, but the store is too obviously new to sell anything that was ever packaged at the lagos cannery, the ruins of which (lagos was an old commercial center, too) are two tall chimneys on the estuary, the tops of which have been squatted by storks. and after it had made its round of the business of tranquilidade in lagos, the clio made for the road that passes by those chimneys on its way out of the city, done with work, but still with half a tank to help it race the sunset down the expressway to marinha.

it got us there in time. and just the hint of the paradise in the cove below the parking lot was enough to thrill us as we stood on either side of the clio putting on our bathing suits behind our towels. the water was much too cold for swimming, but that didn't keep us from going for a swim before laying ourselves out to dry below the cliffs. we'd found our towels the perfect patch of sand, and the susnset we had beaten to marinha only darkened that last little piece of beach at the exact same time as the tide rose to meet the shadow cast by the sun as it fell behind the cliff where the clio was parked and lit up the one that formed the eastern edge of the cove.

back east, then, went that not late model clio, much later than when it had set out to quality control the tranquilidade of the west coast. the bridge would be open where the wind didn't blow quite so fiercely, and albufeira and those twilight concerts with the mystery sangria would have to wait for another excuse.