Day No. 66 - I would like ... - on to São Teotónio

Our plan was actually to drive a little into the mountains. - On the way, we keep coming across bizarre buildings or "works of art". - Is this art or can it go away? - Sometimes the question remains unanswered. After a few kilometers, a sign points to Azenha do Mar, a small fishing village on the coast. The name do Mar is enough, Torgit has forgotten the mountains. - So we head back towards the sea. The road gets worse and worse and leads us along one of the many plantations. In this case, it's another raspberry farm. Indians seem to be the preferred agricultural workers in the entire region. We are told that some of them are kept like slaves. But as is always the case with hearsay, we don't know anything for sure. Suddenly the road improves again and takes us directly to the sea. We stop in front of a small café above the cliff. I'm already thinking about having a coffee, but Torgit persuades me to go a little further down. First we follow a small footpath. Once we reach the bottom, we realize that we are stranded here for a reason. The view that presents itself to us is breathtaking. Individual cliffs break through the surface of the water. Some of them look like stone sandwiches stacked on top of each other. Everything is a little reminiscent of the backdrops from Games of Thrones, but we've only just arrived in Spain. The fishing port looks like something from another time. Somehow it doesn't seem to fit in with the picture that some of the boats are made of plastic and have outboards instead of oars. 

But suddenly we see them, the storks. We have been waiting for this sight for days. We have already heard that storks build their nests directly on the cliffs here. Dow we can see it with our own eyes. We want to get closer. We follow a small hiking trail, uphill and downhill over scree, we have to scramble a bit. There's a safety rope hanging from a difficult passage - this is exactly my terrain. My flip-flops are reaching their limits. I'm so excited that I hardly notice that Torgit is obediently following me. ( Torgit's note: I don't think I've ever heard the adverb "well-behaved" and my name in the same sentence before 😉 ) Her fear of heights seems to have been blown away. The storks are finally within reach, or rather within photographable distance. Now we wish we had a decent telephoto lens, a tripod or, even better, a drone. You simply have to see it to understand why we are so moved by this sight. For a while, we just watch the storks and a few seagulls, enjoying the waves. Then we head back towards the café. Unfortunately, by the time we get there, it's already time to look for a place to spend the night and do a little shopping. The coffee has to be postponed until another day.

We continue in the direction of the nearby São Teotónio. On the way, we find three small mini-markets. In each one we find something to tide us over for the weekend. At São Teotónio, we cross the small river Ribeira de Seixe, which divides the district of Beja in the north and Faro in the south. São Teotónio is a beautiful little town. The houses shine with their white facades and red clay roof tiles. The old village church and a windmill are the icing on the cake. - According to legend, Saint Teotonius passed through the village, which was in Moorish territory at the beginning of the eleventh century, and converted its inhabitants to the Christian faith.