Another entry from Bob
Sunday, we decided to make the drive to a neighboring beach called Praia de Santa Eulalia, a small beach not far from Albufeira. The beach was surrounded by cliff walls and had a small taverna where we had lunch.
Upon returning to the beach, Mary purchased me a personal Taiwan Massage. I must say it was the best scenery that I’ve had getting a massage.
Very late last night after the blog was done, we made reservations for ourselves and our travel friends to go on a cave tour boat at 3 o’clock today. When we had returned from the beach, we showered and headed down to the pier for the fast boat that took us on a two-hour tour through magnificent caves.
The boat sped along 2-foot seas for a rather bouncy half an hour to rendezvous with a school of dolphins. This must have been very exciting for the group of 12 French folks as they were overcome with excitement and joy. Mary said if a fin is a fin unless of course it has teeth.
As we turned from the pod and headed toward shore to see the caves, the woman in front of us was viewing the water way over the railing. She was losing last night’s dinner, this morning’s breakfast, anything she had for lunch, and high tea. We felt bad for her, she was 70 and her husband gave no difference to her difficulties.
The caves were phenomenal. The coastline is made up of the sheer 80 to 100‘sandstone cliffs. Overtime these cliffs have had failures that caused the sandstone to fall into the sea leaving behind caves that were magnificent. Not sure this landscape is repeated anywhere else but here in Portugal. Several caves were so large that the boat captain could navigate the boat of 40 feet or so into the cave. They were quite a few boats, all jockeying for position to get into the caves.
For a final night, we met up for cocktails then to dinner. But the restaurant we had reservations with was closed! A quick trip into town, and we had dinner outside. Across the way, was a bar with live music, and we had a few beers and listened to the music. We requested “country roads”, sang along and really enjoyed spending the last night with them. Monday, we travel back to Lisbon to meet with 2nd set of travel pals! Obrigada, Algarve!!