Our last full day of the cruise. The Portiamo harbor is very peaceful, with little or no breeze. One of the few days I could make use of our huge forward veranda. With the start of our tour not being until 9:30 am, I had a nice relaxing time reading the paper in the warm sunshine.
While reading the paper, I noticed a small serpent meandering around the railing. It slide back and forth and up and down in a very confused way.
We met our guide, Helena, pier side for our tour of Algrave at 9:30 am. Portiamo is not a large city...about 60,000. It is not a town on the coast, but it is on the Arade River. Historically, it had been a fishing town. Now it is a tourist town. There used to be 21 fish canneries, now there are none. Primarily, sardines, anchovies and mackerel were caught, canned and sold. Occasionally tuna as well.
She took us to the fishing museum which was very interesting. It was only a couple of minutes from the ship.
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| Helena |
There are two smoke stacks and a crane still standing from the original fish cannery. The reason they are still there is because the storks are using them for nests.
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| Storks on top of the crane |
The men of the village would work the boats and the women would work the cannery. Fishing boats would come to the end of the pier and the fish would be scooped out in woven baskets and put on a conveyor to the cannery.
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| Removing the head, guts and bones |
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| Thorough Washing |
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| After washing, into the autoclave |
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| More washings |
The cannery not only canned the fish, but also made the cans themselves.
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| Fish are hand packed into the cans |
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| Olive Oil is added before sealing the can |
Finally. the sealed cans are pasteurized.
After the tour, we had several local fish on toast with local wines.
These were made by an artisan fish cannery across the river, very small volume for local consumption. The varieties we tried were: Horse-Mackerel Carrot Coriander; Sardine Dried Tomato; Tuna Sweet Potato Coriander; Mackerel Olives Almonds; Tuna Algarvian Style. My favorite was the Algarvian style tuna.
Tasted three local Portuguese wines from Alvar...where we will visit next. A white, red and rose.
https://villaalvor.pt/?lang=en
Next we took the coach to Alvor which is about 20 minutes west of Portiamo and has a population of about 6,000. It is located on a lagoon which has a small portal to the Atlantic. They have to be continuously dredging to keep the contact with the ocean open. They used to catch a lot of fish and lobsters here. They still do fishing, but a lot of tourism as well. Much of this area was forever changed by the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. It was off Cape Vicente in the Atlantic Ocean and measured 9.0 on the Richter Scale. It generated a 30 foot tsunami which devastated much of this part of Portugal. Estimates of 75,000 people perished. Alvor was once a walled town. The earthquake destroyed essentially the entire town. The walls were never rebuilt, but one small section still remains.
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| Main Street |
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| What remains of the 15th century walls of the city |
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| Notice Mary cradles the Christ Child in one arm and a sailing ship in the other |
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| Lobster pots |
Tomorrow we port in Lisbon and our cruise ends. We have to have our luggage outside our doors before we turn in tonight. We are doing a Seabourn snapshot tour of Lisbon which will drop us at the airport. We will catch a cab to our hotel, the Hotel Avenida Palace. Stephen T. should be flying in while we are touring and will meet him at the hotel.
Our room keeper, Cintia, came by to wish us well.
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