Vila Nova de Milfontes

Yesterday was a jam packed day! We left the Cascais guest house that we stayed in for the last 4 days and the owner gladly offered to drive us to the train station. We caught the next hour long train ride back to Lisbon around 10:30am and watched out the window looking at the beaches and small towns as we rode alone the coast. We met the owner of the previous apartment we stayed at in Lisbon near the train station so he could give me the jacket I left behind. He was also kind enough to drive us to the airport about 30 minutes away so that we could pick up our rental car. Portuguese are extremely nice, from what we’ve found. We're constantly impressed by their ability to have long in depth conversations and provide top quality hospitality. Fantastic conversations and quick friendships formed all around.

Once we got to the Lisbon airport, he dropped us off at the car rental area and we picked up a VW Golf that we plan to keep for the next 12 days. Tyson had been napping since he picked us up at the train station, but we somehow successfully transferred him from his car, to his stroller, to the rental car without him waking up. We then headed to a small town called Vila Nova de Milfontes that is about two hours south of Lisbon.

About half way to the town we passed a sign and dirt road pointing towards a Safari! We had to turn around because Tyson is obsessed with animals and he’d never been on a ‘safari’ before. We passed through the epic safari gates, drove past a random church with a priest dressed to the 9’s randomly walking around in the woods, and parked next to about 20 school buses (this was definitely the field trip day). The safari place was definitely a step up from the random aquarium we found in Italy with the snail covered rubber dinosaurs. There were several exhibits you could walk around to check out along with a safari ride that is a tractor that takes you to see all the larger animals. We got there around 3pm and the safaris only run every 45 minutes. The ‘last’ one was due to start at 3:45, but we hadn’t eaten a proper lunch that day and were starving so we high tailed it to the restaurant. We crossed our fingers that the service would be super quick so we could get to the safari ride on time. The restaurant ended up being buffet style, but since it was way after their normal lunch time the server said that the food was cold and would be willing to make us whatever we wanted from the buffet fresh. I just wanted the African chicken with rice and Marshall wanted…well to sample everything: hamburger, sausage, pork, chicken salad, and some beans. They ended up bringing us enough food for a family of 10! We had to literally make X’s with our fingers so they would stop bringing us more food. We were so stuffed and it looked like we had hardly made a dent in our meal so we did the scatter your food around your plate to make it look like you actually at something trick. At least we know there are plenty of animals nearby and hopefully they can eat our leftovers.

We realized shortly after getting our food that there was no way we could make the 3:45 safari so Marshall ran back to the entrance window and asked what they could do since we’d miss the last tour of the day. The lady set us up for the 4:30 tour, which wasn’t even displaying on her screen. We gladly accepted, finished up our meal, and then started walking over to the safari pick up spot. When we got there we noticed that we were the only ones there, or within ear shot for that matter. We sat down on a bench and let Tyson run around as we waited for the safari guide to drive up. As we were waiting Tyson was running around playing in the sand and got so excited that he started running and tripped on a pile of dirt. He took in a huge mouth full of dirt and was covered from head to toe and not too happy about it. We busted out the multi-purpose baby wipes to wipe him down and gave him a big helping of water that seemed to do the trick. A few minutes later, the tractor started to pull up and about 75 elementary age kids and a few chaperones hopped off. They made their way to the exit leaving us with our pick of seats of the entire tractor/train. The driver saw there was only the 3 of us going on the ride and I'm sure he thought he was done for the day, but he was a great guy and seemed happy to take us. (Side note: Traveling with a toddler definitely has its perks…everyone loves when you walk into a room and greets you with a smile. You typically get great service wherever you go and sometimes  Tyson gets to leave with a sucker or some other type of candy for desert).

Turns out, we actually did end up getting to have the entire safari to ourselves! The best part about having the ride by ourselves is that the driver did the safari in English just for us instead of Portuguese, which I’m sure we would skipped if it was packed full of school kids. Tyson absolutely loved the first half of the trip. We saw giraffes, zebra, buffalo, tigers, antelopes, wild boar, exotic birds, and some other animals none of us have ever seen before. About 5:30, half way through the tour, Tyson started to get tired from an already very busy day and was ready to be done. We kindly asked the driver to take us to the end early. He still pointed out animals as we passed and got us back in a jiffy. We all had a blast from the random safari and are glad stopped to check it out!

We arrived in Vila Nova de Milfontes, the first stop on our drive that was recommended by the owner of the Cascais guest house, around 6:30 and stopped for groceries to bring back to the hotel for dinner. We all were exhausted from the day so we hit the hay shortly after getting to the hotel and were excited for the next day’s adventure driving along the coast of Portugal.

The next morning we strolled around the town center and enjoyed the unique style of it's buildings and color scheme. Almost all the buildings are white with a brightly colored border (Blue, Yellow, Orange, etc). We noticed that almost every storefront had a scarecrow dressed up all crazy so we think that the town had some kind of scarecrow decorating competition going on. There were five scarecrows hanging from a clothes line above the main street that kind of looked like huge voodoo dolls....little creepy, but again, very unique!

Today we are going to do a quick stop in a town called Odeceixe to check out the beach and have lunch on our way down to Algarve. We have the car for another 11 days, so we plan to use it to it's full potential and check out most of the Southern coast and hit all of the recommended places you've been suggesting (Sagres, St. Vincent, Faro, etc)!!

Next stop: Lagos, Portugal