Parque Natural do Alvão

While Portugal has only one “National Park,” it has a variety of “Nature Parks” (13 of them) to include several “International Nature Parks” shared with Spain.  The closest one to us in the mountains is the Park Natural do Alvão near Vila Real.  There’s a Parque natural do Litoral Norte (the north Littoral Natural park) on the coast by Esposende that’s probably a bit closer, but we wanted hills last weekend.

I guess the one thing we’re learning quickly is that pretty much everywhere you look, you’re bound to see evidence that people have been living here for quite some time and that the land has been worked.  We know we’re not going to find the wide open spaces of the American Southwest, that’s for sure.

Even in the Parque Natural do Alvão there were villages, and all you had to do was look off into the distance to see extensive development.  Still, the landscape, like all real landscapes, has a character of its own and nature is better than concrete.

One of our stops took us to an overlook for some well-known cascades.  We stopped there to see if we might (later) want to try the walk in (from a route several miles uphill) for some photography.  It was another reminder of just how steep these mountains get once the elevation starts changing.

Though the views in the other direction were spectacular and a lot less steep. 

As we headed towards our car Ann noticed a herd of goats coming down the hill.  We sat and watched them awhile, and then wound up going to grab our good cameras.

Unfortunately, some blimey idiot forgot to grab the bag with the super telephoto-zoom, even after Ann told him that there was a spider web on the bag (that he duly wiped off . . .).  So instead of face shots of the goats, we were limited to our moderate telephoto lenses and to taking group shots. 

Honestly, it was fun just to sit there and watch them butt heads (probably a couple of brothers doing what brothers do), and being shocked at some of the steep cliffs they’d climb down (or up) as if it was the most natural thing to do.

Eventually they headed back up hill and we headed down hill.  We figured that since we were not far from Vila Real, we might as well to see what the city had to offer for lunch.  From the last major hillside, we stopped to take a picture of the giant elevated bridge that spans the valley (Vila Real is just off to the left).  Unfortunately, we didn’t head far enough east to be able to take the bridge and wound up driving home along the valley floor on our way home. Oh well, there’s always next time.

We did, however luck out for lunch.  Terra da Montanha (Mountain Land) restaurant had the highest yelp rating and looked about as down to earth as one might hope.  I guess that’s if you consider eating while seated inside a wine barrel (we chose the half-cut instead of the fully enclosed) down to earth.

The food was as good as we’d hoped.  I must say that I have learned that the Portuguese really know how to cook their polvo and that when I can’t order the Robalo (sea bass [we tried to but as they explained, none had come in on their fish delivery, and they’ll only serve fresh]) the polvo is my standard go to.  So I ordered the grilled octopus (polvo).

It was another lovely drive followed by a lovely meal.  Unfortunately, it was a reminder that finding those incredible places to photograph is not going to be as easy as we’d hoped.  But with exploration trips like this to find those places, I don’t think we can complain too much.