Pieces of Portugal – Part 12 – Benagil and Beyond

It was yet another early morning wake up call (we got up early every morning though) to head to Benagil for our dolphin and sea cave explorations. Benagil is a fishing town in the Algarve, but it is also known for its beautiful sea caves that dot the Algarve coastline between Lagos and Albufeira. We got to see those sea caves and a pod of about 30 common dolphins on our boat cruise out of Benagil. The caves were great, but I was there for the dolphins. 🙂

Our cruise was a 2 or 3 hour cruise. We were looking for dolphins first, but none came out to play with us for quite some time. Fortunately all the boats in the area communicate with each other and someone a little further out from us spotted a pod of about 30 common dolphins. They waited for us to arrive, since the dolphins love to play between the boats and their wakes. Most of us on the boat were VERY happy with this decision, but there are always those who object. Believe it or not, someone on the boat was disappointed we were spending more time finding dolphins than visiting the caves. I wanted to throw her off the boat and let her find the caves on her own. I will ALWAYS take the dolphins and whales. Dolphins are one of my spirit animals. 🙂

When we did find the dolphins, they were so fun and friendly and were swimming all around the boat, for quite some time too. I would have loved to be in the water swimming along beside them. (We’ve done that quite a few times).

The dolphins disappeared as quickly as they came. Once they were gone we went in to see the caves (from afar) too. The caves were impressive and beautiful, and I am very glad we got to see them, but I will still take the dolphins over caves ANYDAY! 🙂

This is Marcos, our guide for the trip. He too was great and very knowledgeable and entertaining. We shared a lot of our adventures with him and got to talk to him quite a bit. We got very lucky. All of our guides were great. Most usually are, though we have had some bad ones too; fortunately NOT on this trip though. 🙂

After getting off the boat, we decided to drive around as much as we could, since we only had o sapo for a limited time. We stayed along the coastal roads and just enjoyed the ride.

There was yet another castle we were trying to go see, but this is as close as we got. So many of the roads are VERY narrow Medieval roads, and are not really meant for cars. We tried very hard to find roads that would take up us to the castle, but we literally kept running into dead ends. One “road” we ended up taking led us straight to a staircase. Larry had a hard time getting us out of that one. But he did. All the walking paths to the castle were up very steep hills, so we declined (plus we were desperate need for the facilities, so walking up steep hills was NOT an option at this time).

We finally just had to give up on the castle. We had other pressing matters that needs to be attended to. 🙂 We stopped at the local visitor’s center and took a few minutes to check out their cultural displays.

The whole eastern part and southern part of Portugal borders Spain. This is one of the bridges at one of the many border crossings.

Our boat cruise was the main thing we did this day. Our hotel had laundry facilities and we thought it was a good idea to take advantage of them and do our laundry, so we would have clean clothes for the rest of our trip. So this is a good place to stop for now. Don’t worry, I have lots more in store. 🙂

Have a great day and make everyday great. Live life to the fullest. It’s not the destination that matters, but the journey. Enjoy the ride. ‘Til next time.