Day 7 was at our friends, Seana & Harry, at their lovely house close to Oliveira de Hospital. We spent the day chatting, making friends with their dog Bella and 2 cats- Minky & Lily, exploring their beautiful garden, swimming in the pool, eating lovely food, more chatting, wine drinking and generally chilling and resting...
The next day we went for an adventure... The company Rock and River, run by Harry & Seana's friend, Matt, organizes a bunch of outdoor activities, including kayaking trips and camping in wilderness... something right up our street. Matt picked us up in chosen spot, organized the equipment, explained the route and dropped us at the starting point... It was really hard and frustrating on the beginning, the boat kept turning all directions except the one I wanted to go and it was really really hot! But after a while I got the hang of the paddling and it became really enjoyable. We had 2 stops on the way, 1 on an uninhabited island, 1 on the shore, had something to eat from our extensive pantry full of rolls and had a dip in the clear waters of the river Mondego. We encountered schools of wild fish,flocks of red kites and a myriad of different insects...
We wanted to get off the boat and onto the shore to find a place suitable for a camping but...there was no such place! The shore was at a very steep angle, almost impossible to pull up the kayak, not to mention setting a tent! Eventually we found a good spot- very secluded and quiet. After clearing the ground of branches, we set the tent, had a snack and we decided to paddle back to a nearby restaurant... I got changed, packed a few necessities, threw my phone on the seat (as I wanted to take some photos of the river at the dusk... I started getting carefully into the boat, not to wet my sandals, and then everything started to wobble... And the kayak turned over and off I went to the water...with my phone! Got it quickly and turned it off, and we asked for a bag of rice at the restaurant to dry it up... And the old trick seemed to work!
On the way back from the dinner (I had grilled salmon, C had grilled chicken, both very nice and staff very helpful) we kayaked back to our tent, it was getting quite dark and pretty scary! I wouldn't have made it back without C. But when we settled back, we actually started to appreciate how beautiful the place was- myriads and myriads of stars, very quiet except for the crickets and the occasional fish jumping out of the water, and just the two of us... There is no one else I would rather be with at this particular moment in time... I'm so blessed 😍. No more photos tho as the phone was dead for that night... Maybe that's even better?😉
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