Last week, the New York Times published a love letter to a stretch of Portuguese coast south of Lisbon. In two weeks, I’m sailing straight through it.
I don’t love the piece. It focuses on Melides—a tiny village on the Alentejo coast, about 80 miles south of Lisbon. Think rice fields, bird-filled wetlands and fewer than 1,500 full-time residents. They quoted someone calling it “the last exotic place in Europe.” Yikes. In fact, they mostly center on foreigners who have made this place their home, and now the home of their artist residency, etc.
So much of travel is go big—resorts, itineraries, checklists—then go home and collapse. But that’s really just not my style. This trip features a private 43 foot sail boat, five travelers max, and real food cooked by someone who actually knows the region (Austin is Portuguese and should have a PhD in loving food instead of the esoteric one he actually has). It’s swimming when we feel like it. Dolphins, if we’re lucky. And many long, languid lunches at the local tascas.
The sailboat is our home for the week. We eat from the same Sado estuary, home to an oyster that was once the most sought-after in France, nearly wiped out, and now back on the menu. We pass the same fishing towns mentioned in the article. The same beaches that can “still feel untouched.” But we’re not reading about this coast—we’re gonna be fucking on it.
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