Text & Photos: Marco Bucalossi | @marc_buca
From a surfing perspective, one of the most interesting things about Portugal is that it is a relatively small country with a rather irregular coastline. It is worth noting that within a 3-hour drive you can literally explore and surf 40 different waves or more, making Portugal the perfect destination for a surfing road trip, without grinding out miles in the desert like in West Oz or Baja California. Depending on the direction of the swell and the wind, you can easily decide whether to drive along the coast north or south to find the best conditions with the least amount of people possible, a combination that is very difficult to achieve these days.
Having lived near Lisbon for a few years now, whenever the opportunity arises, I don’t hesitate to load up the car with boards, wetsuits, and a few extra underwear to hit the road for a couple of days…or a couple of weeks, if it’s worth it, of course. The most obvious and convenient destinations are of course nearby Ericeira to surf the world-famous point breaks (or those few lesser-known but equally good beach breaks when God wants them) and Peniche, in the hope of getting some kind of “coverage” when the right swell lights up, or rather, ignites, the banks of Supertubos. Other times, however, driven more by the desire to stay on the road, immersed in nature, and have fewer people in the water regardless of the quality of the waves, I head south, towards the Algarve.
In the last few years I have done numerous guided trips to Sagres, The End of the World, the most extreme tip of the Algarve. Sometimes just for a couple of days in “strike mission mode” and other times to stay there for more than a month. Especially during the COVID period, the Algarve was the ideal destination to escape the restrictions of the more populated areas like Lisbon and still be able to enjoy the freedom of going surfing in the middle of nowhere. Often, in accordance with excellent forecasts, I was able to surf quality waves, which you would never think you could find in a place that is not particularly known for the quality of the waves anyway.
Other times it was a total flop. This story is not about how I surfed the craziest wave in the South, I think my local friends would kill me if they found out I wrote about such a wave… This time I prefer to tell how a trip that seemed to be going worse and worse turned out to be one of the best road trips I’ve ever done in Portugal, and all this only thanks to the people I experienced it with and our ability to keep the expectations lower and lower than the day before.
It’s early November and a violent storm is expected in the Lisbon area. Rain, endless wind, and big waves even in the most sheltered spots. My friend Fer came from Madrid with his girlfriend to visit me, we partied on October 31st but obviously he wants to surf and I don’t have many attractive options to offer him given the terrible forecast. I take a look at the forecast for the South, send two messages to Mo, a very good German friend of mine who moved there a couple of seasons ago, and it becomes clear that the best option is to go to the Algarve for a couple of weeks. It just so happens that on exactly the same days, Tobi, Mo’s brother and another very good friend of mine from university, his girlfriend Julez, and Freddy, both other friends from university, would be in the South in the following days.
We already knew in part that it wouldn’t be great, but you always hope that the forecast is wrong, that the wind will magically turn in the right direction, etc. etc. When we arrived at the designated spot the night before, the sea seemed nothing special, all choppy, a light onshore breeze, few people in the water, but also few waves that were actually surfable. We looked at each other discouraged, we sighed, and the hustle and bustle began, the so-called “surfer’s hassle”. We got behind the wheel and started checking literally every spot in the area, along the south coast and along the west coast. South coast, small and soft waves, west coast all blown away by the wind… there is no better option in reality. Julez convinced us to go for the “small waves – less wind” option and we managed to save the day at Zavial beach. We don’t even think about a second session since it also starts to rain, and we hide in one of the few restaurants still open in winter in the center of Sagres, to remember our days at university, in front of a grilled fish and a cold super bock. This becomes our routine in the following days, alternating hours of work with desperate searches for a surfable wave in the area, under the rain and the wind.
We see a peak of less than a meter with a few people in the water, some of them were definitely my friends from college. It seems to make a right that bounces against the side of the cliff creating a sort of “wedge”, but nothing special. Then, out of nowhere, we see a bodyboarder drop behind the peak, do a barreling for a few seconds, and poof, he comes out. We remain paralyzed for a second, Fer turns suddenly and starts marching towards the camper to get his board and wetsuit, “it’s barreling, let’s go”. We enter the water and meet the rest of my group. We basically conquer the right peak, hoping that another wave like the one we saw from outside will come in. We manage to catch some fun, clean, rippable right, definitely the best surfing since I arrived, no barreling though.
Until, after catching a wave, I start paddling back to the line up and see a bigger set than usual coming. No one is in position except Fer, who doesn’t hesitate a second and launches himself behind the peak, disappears behind the lip, and just like the bodyboarder, poof, he comes out of it, exactly a few meters away from me. We laugh and scream like two idiots, knowing that that was probably the wave of the day and there was no other wave to come. Despite my jealousy for not having had the same wave, part of me was extremely happy that at least my advice had served a friend to get a tube even on the “shittiest” day in Portugal.
More rainy days follow, while the swell changes direction and we start surfing more often the most famous spots, like Tonel and Beliche, to catch waves with a bit more force despite the wind. More than once after our surfing sessions, Fer’s camper served as life support in the parking lot, where Claudia offered us cold beers and jamon iberico directly from Spain while we sheltered from the rain and the cold before returning to our little house in Raposeria to continue The Bear with a hot herbal tea…
We find ourselves surfing a secondary peak along the Castelejo beach, just beyond the rock that characterizes the beach, with the aim of avoiding the crowds of the main peak. The conditions are not epic, but the light offshore breeze cleans the sets giving us easy and fun half-meter waves, those perfect conditions to chat with friends while waiting for the next set, catch waves one after the other, and start the conversation again once back in the line-up. Sometimes it takes little to be truly happy…
The next day we try to repeat, but the swell has dropped dramatically and we are not even sure it is big enough to be surfable. However, being a sunny and warm weekend in November, it seemed like a waste to waste the day out of the water. So we take the boards and walk along the beach do Castelejo in search of any peak. We find ourselves surfing a micro-right, so micro that it was often better to surf it in body (lying down) and try to get into the final section, just to eat a bit of sand. Sometimes we managed to do a couple of maneuvers, but with a lot of effort. Now defeated we were about to return to the beach, when Alejandro’s friend, alone in the line up, sees a set slightly bigger than the others coming, we yell at him to go, he takes off, and who knows how, he finds himself in a micro-tube. Micro-wave of the day. We can pack up and eat like rednecks at Lidl before Alejandro and his friend head home to Carcavelos. We close the day still laughing about the last session, while eating pão com chouriço and energy drinks leaning on the roof of the car. In truth, I ate pão com chouriço, Alejandro being a true athlete only ate protein drinks.
According to the forecast, our last day in the Algarve seemed to be the best of the last two weeks, no wind, swells of 4-6ft along the whole south coast, the opportunity to surf quality waves without too many crowds. The only problem was that it was also the last day in Portugal for my group, who were supposed to leave Lisbon airport in the late afternoon. Consequently, we had to get up early, surf in the morning, and without wasting too much time talking, drive the three hours to Lisbon before they could miss their flight. Everything planned down to the second, Freddy and I get in my car while Tobi and Jules in theirs. We set off to check out the spots along the south coast. First Praia da Salema, we observe for a few minutes, almost no one out, but the wave is nothing special, soft or close-out… we don’t know, it doesn’t convince us.
We head to the hippie beach, which was also the most promising spot according to the forecast. We arrive, already a little nervous, we observe, we wait… and nothing, honestly there was nothing to be desired even there… We have another very promising option, Beliche, classic tubular triangles, “maybe it is not really that big” says Tobi. So we quickly get into the car and start driving along the dirt road. Out of nowhere I start to feel a strange sensation on the steering wheel, something is wrong, and I already knew what it could be.
In the meantime, the three of us “big guys” are having a wheel change and discussing what to do to get home on time. One thing is certain, we lost the best day of surfing of the trip, for a damn flat tire… Since it was Sunday, no tire shop or mechanic was open, which meant we had to drive to Lisbon with the spare wheel, at 80, maximum 100km/h. It would have taken 4 hours or more instead of 3 to get back… the times were very tight. And if you’re wondering, no, we couldn’t take Tobi’s car, too battered to do such a long trip and it would be needed by his brother Mo in the following days anyway. We load the car, boards inside and boards outside on the roof, and leave without even having lunch. The driving is so slow and boring that we all start watching The Bear on my phone stuck to the dashboard, episode after episode, including me even though I was driving. The traffic was non-existent and a horse would have gone faster. An ultra frustrating drive from a driving point of view, but equally enjoyable in terms of company. Being stuck in a car with your best friends, especially best friends you haven’t seen in a long time, is a great way to spend time in the end. Having nothing to do but talk and share the things that have happened in each other’s lives, meeting up and reconnecting as if not a day had passed since they left Portugal… I had driven south for this reason too in the end.
