Nothing but blue skies do I see

Oh Lagos, Portugal - where do I begin? Blue skies, 75 to 80 degree days, bright sun, blue-green oceans surrounded by sandy, secluded beaches hidden by tall, jagged cliffs with caves carved out into the rocks creating paths to more private beaches. And to top it off, despite the huge amount of tourism that goes on here, the locals seem to lack the cynicism that often comes along with catering to large groups of people on holiday. People greet each other with ola´s as they pass one another on the streets, friends hang out in their neighbor´s shops to gab about whatever, everyone is laid back and just so dang friendly. It also doesn´t hurt that everything is relatively inexpensive (our guest house that included a private balcony, shared kitchen all in a private apartment was 13€ per person).
I want to go into detail, but I´m going to hold myself back and sort of list what we´ve done in this town. After wandering around lost for a few hours, stopping at a cafe and getting directions, and finally making it to the lighthouse we were orginally attempting to get to, we decided to follow this trail that wound down into the sea where about 4 guys in little motor boats sat waiting to take people on private tours. For 10€ ($13 per person) we were given a tour of the grottos by this old Portuguese guy. He would talk about the various rock formations and what their names were. He knew a little Spanish and some Potuguese is similar to Spanish, so I think we mostly understood what he was talking about.


Speaking of driving people into cliffs, our second big excursion in Lagos was taking a scooter out for the day and heading out to Sagres, a place once thought of as the end of the world. For the most part, everything went along rather swimmingly...until Ben somehow drove straight into a sign post. I still don´t understand how it happened. Ben says it was the strong gusts of wind, (which I admit were excessively strong), but one minute we were heading straight down the road and about to park the scooter and the next Ben and the scooter were sideways on the ground. Fortunately Ben was driving too slow for too much damage to happen (maybe that´s how the wind ended up taking control) and it only ended up costing us 80€, a smaller blow to our budget than we had been expecting. Other than the mini-crash, being out the 80€ and the strong gusts of winds blowing us about, the opportunity to see the countryside from a viewpoint other than the windows of planes, trains, and buses was totally worth it. Plus, since we didn´t have to get the scooter back until the next day, we got to see the sunset from a place we would not have been able to get to otherwise.
Later that evening we ate dinner with our Canadian neighbors Phil and Sarah (neighbors as in their room was down the hall from ours) at a Reggae-inspired bar/restaurant which reminds me... I am having a difficult time discerning what is a bar, what is a restaurant, what is a cafe and what is store since no matter where you go there is an espresso machine and a full bar with all sorts of hard alcohol. And when I say no matter where you go, I mean no matter where you go. One day Ben and I were looking for batteries and inside was the espresso machine and hard alcohol. We went next door for ice cream and there they were again, espresso and hard alcohol. Anyway, just a digression...
Oh, my time is up...I gotta go.