Lagos '09

That's right. Lagos '09. An expression I probably would never have used and will never use again. But that was the name of this past weekend, as coined by my new friend Liz.

At 6:40 in the morning, I left my house in pursuit of the bus station. It was still dark, and I walked by a group of boys who I had to assume were still out from the night before. I surprisingly was the first one at the bus station out of my friends--Papa, I hope you are proud of me. I was then met by Alli and Liz, followed by Mackenna and Flor. It was getting close to the time that the bus was supposed to leave, so we decided to go down and wait for it, even though Kate and Lauren hadn't shown up yet. We started to board the bus at 7:30, and finally, but just barely, we were greeted by Kate and Lauren. From there, we embarked upon our Lagos, Portugal adventure.

The bus stopped a few times and we finally got to Portugal at 11:30 (which was one hour behind [ahead or behind? I never understand those expressions of time] of Sevilla). So really the bus was about 5 hours. We didn't have anything planned for this trip, it was kind of going to be, let's do what we feel like when the time comes. It was nice to go into a trip with that kind of mentality, but because of that, I didn't even bother to look into things we could do, or look into phrases in Portuguese. Flor had a phrase book, which ended up being somewhat helpful, but it was definitely weird being in a country that we couldn't understand the language. I mean, I thought about it, but it didn't actually hit me until I crossed the border. Luckily, along the way some people spoke english, but even though Portuguese is a romance language, and even though some of the words spelled out look like spanish, that language was crazyyy to understand. It sounded like a russian spanish speaker. They have so many "sh" noises in their spectrum, and there was just not a way that I could understand it. Anyway, we were about to get off the bus when we realized that we didn't even know where our hostel was. Good thing Alli wrote down the address, because then all we needed to do was actually find it. The center city was actually pretty small, which was nice for us because we didn't get lost and everything was easy to find. We got to the hostel, where I paid 12 euro to sleep each night, and then walked around for a bit. The weather wasn't so great, and it was off-season, but we were all so happy to be there.

Saturday had much better weather and Flor, Mackenna, Alli, Liz and I decided to go on a boat tour to the famous geological/rock formation sites that make up the Algarve coast. We took a very small boat for an hour (no, it wasn't a three hour tour), and we got to see all of these beautiful rocks, caves, cliffs, and the ocean. It really did look like what you imagine a post card to look like--true to their word!






That's me driving our little boat.

When we finished our little ride, we headed over to a small, quiet beach which was just as beautiful as the rest of the landscape. From there, we just hung out for a few hours, took some pictures, read, chatted, and whatever else you want to through in there. We met a stray dog, apparently there are a ton of stray dogs in Lagos, of all different varieties--that was very interesting/concerning to me. This one approached us and she looked preggers or something. She also had the body of a lab, but I swear to you her face looked like Whoopi Goldberg's hyena voice character in the Lion King. The same face, seriously. She was pretty sweet and wasn't really bothering us, just sitting with us, but then these three other dogs (who were with an owner) started getting all up in her face and her territory and she started to growl/make the scariest face ever, which is why she looked like a hyena, and that is when I got over her. But I still named her Whoopi and I thought that was crucial to my blog this evening.







EDIT: Due to popular demand (yes, apparently I have a popular demand!!) here is a picture I scrounged up of Whoopi. It doesn't show exactly her Whoopi face, but maybe it is good enough.


And finally, we got up to leave on Sunday--the hostel kicked us out at 12, but our bus wasn't leaving until 3 or 4. We weren't sure because Portugal was an hour ahead of Spain, so we figured that we would just go a little early. Well, we didn't go early enough because apparently the bus left at 1:45 and we definitely missed it. There were no other buses going anywhere near Spain/Sevilla, so we were forced to go back to the hostel and stay another night in Lagos. A few of the girls were pretty bummed, but there was really nothing we could do. So we hung out and did nothing for a while, got our rooms back at the hostel (luckily it was off-season and no one was there) and then we woke up at 5:15 to be on the bus (and make sure we got to the bus) by 6:30. The ride was an hour longer going back because we hit traffic and then I rushed to my second class after I missed my first one. Overall, the going back part wasn't great, but we had a fantastic weekend, even with the mess ups in schedules. And what's more is that I am so proud of myself for blogging about it immediately instead of waiting 2 weeks to fill you in on everything.

This Saturday I am going to Gibraltar!

LAGOS '09!
Haley