Some of our image-laden pages may load more slowly depending on your internet service. Patience if they don't display immediately. You'll be glad you waited.

South Okanagan Photos

Rural report with Laird Smith

Before I get back into telling you about our two weeks in Portugal, I want to write about a personal subject.

I have been a nail biter for as long as I can remember. I have tried to quit many, many times. I even quit for 5 years once. Several years ago, while cleaning chewing gum off of an approach to the main doorway of a public building, it dawned on me that biting my fingernails was like licking the approach to the doorway.

I quit then and there! I was so disgusted with the thought of it! Not only did gum land there but people always spit as demonstrated by the hero hockey player who spits while playing the game. We see it all the time.

Within a week I observed something very strange happening in my body. My constantly aching stomach issues disappeared. I hadn’t ever stopped to think that my aching stomach was linked to my nail biting. As I thought about the issue, it made sense.

My fingers picked up all kinds of vermin as I went throughout my day. Then without thinking I would chew off a nail or a hangnail before I washed my hands. But even hand washing didn’t help that much because my body produces something toxic. When I rub my eyes with my fingers, my eyes burn.

So, even with washed hands that toxin goes into my stomach and irritates it. I always thought it was the coffee that bothered my stomach. Instead it was my nail biting habit all the while. Who would have guessed that?

The reason I bring this up is that I know of another former nail biter who has had the same results as I. I think it is a worthy discovery for sharing.

Resumption of the story of the two week stay in Portugal in 2006.

The trip from Lisbon to the relative’s village was 3.5 hours away, most of it was along a four lane highway. Everywhere we went the roads were paved, even high up in the mountains, it was very nice really. The Portuguese seem to have their roads all figured out for in all of our travels throughout  the country, we didn’t see one washout.

Near the highway we saw the towers supporting the electric transmission lines and on the towers were the usual dozens of stork nests. The storks have adapted very well to mans incursion into their environment.

High up on one of the hill tops, we saw the old style Dutch wind mills. Apparently there were a number of them up there, none working, we would visit the site later on.
The town we wound up in was called Carapinha, about 50 km from Coimbra. The home of our hosts was one km from the town. They had almost an acre of land with most of it planted in heather and pine trees. The heather was in bloom, it was a very pleasant setting and a wonderful sight to wake up to in the morning.

The first thing we did after having breakfast was to go to a restaurant called Maria’s, about a km from the house. We always walked over and drank espressos while we planned our day.

We went on several walking tours and always stopped in to a small eatery and had espressos or a bubbly drink and maybe some cake. On those tours we saw the oak trees that were being used for their cork. They all had sections of bark removed. The bark is harvested every 9 years.

One of the touring days was back to the Dutch wind mills. There were half a dozen of them with most in various stages of deterioration. There was one that that someone was making an effort to preserve. The buildings were very old.

We took a day and went to the village of Piodao. The whole village sits on a mountainside and the community was built entirely of slate. It was once surrounded by beautiful trees, then last year a wild fire went through the area and destroyed all the trees. For us, it was really quite a barren scene, but there was green grass growing everywhere.

Piodao had walking tours throughout the town, it was very interesting and worthwhile seeing. We had lunch there. We were told that tourism was way down since the fires came through. It has been 11 years since those fires, the area would be vastly different now and would be regaining its trees.

Another day we visited a mountain retreat beside a small river where you need a doctor’s note to enter the hot springs, of course we didn’t have that paper. Instead we ate in the restaurant.

The four of us had soup, main course, dessert, wine, and coffee for a price of 38 Euros, very reasonable I thought.

Too soon the two weeks went by and our hosts took us to Porto for our flight home. We checked in to our hotel to prepare for a next day flight back to Canada.

Our last supper was at the hotel. Our waiter was an older man who had once worked on the cruise ships. He gave us the best service of anyone during our three and one half weeks in Portugal.

In the morning we took a taxi to the airport and we were on our way.