Living in Portugal has its trials and tribulations and it's different ways of working and culture. A couple of things that I miss are the local postman, who mostly delivers the mail on a daily basis in the UK, right to your front door and he was always up for a chat. There is nothing like that in Portugal, you may be one of the fortunate ones that has a mail box somewhere near your home, ready for any unscrupulous individual to rifle through. We decided that the safer option was to have a personal mail box inside the local post office, but then we have to collect this on a regular basis (if we remember).

The second is the now disappearing in the UK, the milkman, who would rise every day at three in the morning, rain or shine, just to deliver milk to your doorstep. In Portugal as with the post and if you want milk, you have to fetch it.

........................so there I was, car keys in hand, about to exit the front door, when I was approached by the Kamp Kommandant asking where I was going. Not realising that I was under house arrest and needing permission to leave the "kamp" and, that I was required to fill in a daily activity sheet, I replied that I was off to the Post Office to collect the mail.

“O'”, the Kommandant said, "in that case, can you call at the supermarket and get some milk".
Ja vol mein fuhrer, I replied.

To which she said, "and if they have eggs, get six". I acknowledged my orders, clicked my heels and set off about my task.

When I returned, she asked me why I had bought six cartons of milk.

Because they had eggs I said.

What?

Is it me?

A22 Motorway Toll Update

How to put off people thinking of coming to Portugal; Lesson 1.

Recently the Portuguese population went to the polls to elect a new government and just like the UK, the populous decided that all politicians are a waste of time and couldn't elect a party with an overall majority.
A coalition has now been formed and the new government has given the go ahead for tolls to be introduced on the motorway that the previous government suspended as being unfair to introduce something whilst the then current government was in a state of suspension.
The currently "Toll Free" motorway runs the length of the Algarve, all the way across the border to Spain, who apparently have no intention of introducing a toll.
Even more sickening is the road was built with money from the European Union, which the Portuguese government has now sold to a third party (Via Verde) who have taken responsibility for maintaining the motorway and the gathering of all tolls.
No toll booths have been installed, this type of toll uses what they call a transponder, which you buy or hire and this clips on the inside of your windscreen. If you buy a transponder, and if you have more than one vehicle, you have to buy one for each, as they are married to the car, truck, van number plate. You pay around €27 and then you get billed for using the motorway by Direct Debit, unlike normal toll roads were you pay at the gate.
If you have a non-Portuguese registered vehicle, you have to rent the transponder by paying a deposit of €27 and a further down payment of €50, how you get billed or if this includes the use of the motorway, I know not. Either way it is going to make hiring a car at the airport very expensive.
If your car is not Portuguese registered; it’s a big brother way of checking up on you to see if you have outstayed your allotted 183 days per year in Portugal as the maximum period of renting a transponder is set to 90 days.
If you have no transponder, your number plate will be photographed as you pass under the registration point of which there are over 30 along the length of the A22 and your car could be impounded. Likewise, is another way of checking how fast and at what average speed you have been travelling between checkpoints.

Unlike most other places around the world, there is always an alternative to using the toll road, however on this occasion the only alternative is the death trap of a road called the N125. The N125 already has one of the highest mortality rates for any road in Europe and with the implementation of tolls on the A22, it is set to get worse.
Coincidentally, Portuguese Telecom are currently installing fibre optic cable along the 150 kilometre length of the N125, which means currently that the road is being dug up in kilometre length sections.
As if this were not enough to put people off coming to Portugal, the authorities have decided that traffic lights in a number of situations on the N125 are not a good idea and are removing them and replacing them with traffic islands. This is because a number of Portuguese do not understand the traffic light system and think that the Red light means that it’s safe to continue. Unfortunately, when they are following a tourist, the tourist stops at the lights and the closely following Portuguese driver is going so fast and is so far up the car in front’s backside, that he cannot stop in time and causes an accident.
All this together should make the normal 1 hour drive from one end of the Algarve to Faro airport something more like 5 hours when it only took 2 and a half hours 20 years ago if you choose not to use the motorway. Gotcha, and that’s progress.

Nice one Portugal.

It's getting too hot for the budgie

Things are really warming up now in the Algarve, even Dino, fondly called the budgie, is needing to cool down and stripping off for summer.

Macaw's are not sun loving birds like most people think, in fact Dino positively hates the sun and will not come out during the day unless he can find some shade. In their native climate in the Brazilian rainforest, they can usually be found in the tree top canopy out of the direct sunlight.

The picture on the left is some of Dino's recent molt.
So if you are into fly fishing or need a new pen, as you can see I have shed loads.

Erection in Progress

These are called Sisal plants, sometimes called Agar. It's a kind of cactus and you will have seen them when travelling in most hot climate countries. In fact some countries farm these plants and after many years they are harvested and shrredded then turned into string or rope.

We have a number of them around the garden and this particular one is getting excited, it seems to be getting an erection.

It normally looks like the one on the right in the first picture, then after a number of years, no one seems to know how many, it starts to shoot this enormous projectile from the centre of the plant which then grows at a rapid rate of knots.
The second picture on the right is only one week later and it must have grown at least 2 or 3 metres. After only 3 weeks from the start of its flowering, its starts to shoot the branches of its flowers.
After a few weeks of showing off it's flowers, the flower stalk will topple over and die. Sadly it will take the rest of the plant with it and this particular sisal will be no more.
Fortunately along the way, it's legacy will continue as it will have left behind loads of baby sisals which form around the base of the plant. In fact there are hundreds of the dam things which form from the roots of the plant and you can't get rid of them fast enough.