A day in Porto

April 30, 2025

Boat tour day

Unsurprisingly, there was more sun to start the morning, and some very happy birds that started singing early. We had a nice slow start to the day because we weren’t packing up to go anywhere.

The first order of business was to get some laundry into the campground machine, then enjoy a cappuccino at their cafe. I wore my rain pants for the morning so that I could wash everything I’ve been wearing. Did anyone notice, I wonder?

Mel biked the short distance to the bike shop in town to check the air in her tires while I waited for the laundry.

Our campground is an interesting place with lots of private treed van and tent sites, a restaurant and a swimming pool. It’s not terribly busy this time of year, but among the vans there are several shiny new VW camper vans for North Americans to be jealous of. Too bad they won’t sell them on our side of the Atlantic. Plus the campground has dozens of small cabins. Some are pretty nice looking wooden buildings, and ours is a newer looking two bedroom prefab building that’s just perfect as long as you don’t mind paper thin walls. We have a deck with patio furniture and a charcoal grill too. The facility has site-wide wifi that is better near the entrance, but still mostly okay at our cabin.

Yet another Genoese tower. They were built in sight of each other to allow the use of fire signals to warn of pirate invaders.

We headed down to the beach and port area at around 11 am to meet up for our 12:30 boat trip to Capo Rosso and the Calanques de Piana. This area is a UNESCO world heritage site. What’s a calanque? Wikipedia describes them as ‘narrow, steep walled inlets’.

There were only two other guests on our zodiac boat that could hold twelve. We had a guide, Thomas, who spoke very good English, plus a driver, Nico, who was being trained up for the summer. It was entertaining, and the views were stunning. I’m running out of words to describe how beautiful it is here.

This waterfall was flowing thanks to recent rains.

Trainee captain Nico passed his test, I think. We didn’t hit anything.

There weren’t that many boats around today, but we heard that the summer crowds are ridiculous.

We saw a couple of golden eagle nests up on the rocks, but didn’t see any eagles or many other birds. Just a couple of gulls and one cormorant.

After the boat trip we each had one scoop of ice cream, and we supplemented our groceries for another big salad dinner at our cabin, plus dessert to make sure that Mel is fuelled up for her big ride into the mountains tomorrow.

I was happy to enjoy a quiet couple of hours before dinner, including drinking a local IPA on our deck. It was a nice afternoon, but not warm enough to tempt me into the cool ocean for a swim. A few clouds built up mid day, but there was no thunderstorm today.

Road sign (3rd from the bottom) showing the GT20 cyclists that they’re en route.

Our route to Capo Rosso. It would be nice to sea kayak in this area, but there’s pretty much nowhere to camp.

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