Outing

If you read my previous post (and if not, why not?) you’ll know that our recent holiday was “one that did not involve getting up at 7AM to get the bus at 8:00 for a 10-hour excursion to the world-famous Aloe fields of East Wherethefukarwestan,” but because we know who we are, we realized we’d eventually become bored with lounging in the sun, reading books, cooling off in the pool and sipping cocktails, so we booked a single excursion to a wine-tasting and the Benagil Caves on the Algarve coast for Saturday. We should have booked it for Friday because by Thursday we were already pining for a diversion.

And so, on Saturday, we got up at 7AM to get on the bus (actually, it was an 8-seater coach) at 8:00 for what turned out to be a 12-hour excursion. It was nice, but it would have been better if it had started later and included only the wine tasting and the cave tour.

We had to meet our ride at eight o’clock because it was a forty-minute drive to get the other people: a couple from Newcastle, a Romanian couple from Lyton, and a pair of Germans who we, naturally, could not communicate with. The driver, Joe (think Jerry Stiller), however, spoke at least three languages like a native, and probably had another two or three under his belt. We met up with another coach (another 8-seater) which made our group up to 16, with ten Germans and six English speakers.

Before meeting up with the German coach, we took a detour to a place where they made sea salt. Not much to see, and no one was really interested, and it was obvious that we were merely killing time.

We then took another longish drive where we met the German coach at a winery. At the salt flats, the eight of us—having formed no bonds—stood apart in couples. At the winery, with a new coach being introduced, we, again stood in couples, but the couples were grouped by coach.

We then had a protracted tour of the operation, which was a naked attempt at killing time so they could set the tables up (they actually told us that’s what they were doing) but soon we were seated, with the Germans at one end and the small group of English speakers—feeling awkward, at being, for once in our lives, the odd ones out—at the other. Then they fed us wine, cheese and chorizo, and by the time we left we were all good friends.

This, however, was at ten o’clock in the morning, not the usual time for a piss-up.

After another longish drive, we were released near an admittedly picturesque beach attached to a street that sold mainly tat, and given an hour and twenty minutes to do whatever you could do in an hour and twenty minutes, which wasn’t much. We took a stroll along the boardwalk bordering the, admittedly, picturesque beach, bought an ice-cream, and returned to the pick-up point to wait with the others.

After that, we took yet another longish drive to a boat-launch where we were to take an inflatable dinghy to view the famous sea-caves, so famous I had never heard of them.

We had been told (promised) that we would be in smaller dinghies, with the English and German speakers grouped together, but once we arrived at the docks, it was a cluster-fuck and our drivers went off to socialise with the other drivers and we were shunted hither and yon and, eventually—once fitted with life jackets—told to get into a smallish dinghy with no room for anyone else. I felt a bit like a refugee, hoping for a spot where there was none. Then the “captain” (for want of a better word) told the couple sitting in the last row that the benches were made for four people and they could move to allow us to sit with them. They were German-speakers and I don’t know if they understood him, but they gave him the eye and didn’t budge. And the two of them, thanks to their girth and the manspreading, took up about four-fifths of the bench.

No, really, this guy was a full 120-degree spreader ( \o/ ) and wasn’t giving an inch, so my wife squeezed into the space between his harry thigh and the gunwale while I had to sit on the side of the dinghy but, as it was an inflatable, it was more comfortable than the seat and certainly preferable to sitting on the fat man’s knee.

(I am not a fan of body-shaming, but if you are going to be that anti-social, you need to be ready take a few hits.)

We then embarked on a journey I soon began to refer to as, “Not Another Fucking Sea Cave!”

Granted, it was fun rolling over the choppy sea and fetching up to a hole in the cliff, some of which were large enough and deep enough that we went inside. Lots of photo ops and Ohhs and Ahhs, for about the first fifteen or twenty. There are lots of holes in that stretch of cliffs, and it seemed they were determined to introduce us to all of them. The promise was, the last one was the best, and after forty-five minutes I wished they would just speed on to the finale, let us get a photo, and get us the fuck back to the pier.

As it was, we moved from one hole to the other at the require pace but, when we got to the last one, we were not allowed to get out and swim as the brochure had intimated we might, because the sea had become too rough. The definition of a “rough sea” is different to an ocean liner than to a small dinghy—the swells were only about two to three feet—but, adhering to the Safety First manual, the captain sped us on a joyfully bouncy run back to where we started. I, for one, was glad to have seen my last sea cave, and my wife was glad to say Auf Wiedersehen to her neighbour’s hairy leg.

There followed a rather long drive back to the first hotel, then another drive to ours, punctuated by Joe’s sporadic commentary on whatever happened to be on the left or right side of the vehicle as he zoomed by. “If you look to your right you’ll see a beautiful castle,” he said, once again waking me from shallow slumber. I looked and saw nothing, but my wife assures me it was there. “It is the most beautiful castle, and the oldest one in [supply your own superlative].”

Having awakened at 7AM to begin our adventure, Joe returned us to our resort at 7PM, leaving us tired, and glad we hadn’t booked a second excursion.