Southern beaches

When most people talk about Portuguese beaches they mention Algarve. That’s an overdeveloped area, with beautiful but crowded beaches and far too many hotels, restaurants and tourists.

Just North of Algarve is the Alentejo region. This one has been reasonably well preserved (so far) and the coast is as beautiful as Algarve’s, but much less populated.

This August I spent a few days with the family in Alentejo. After driving a few hundred meters on a dirt road and walking a short distance across sand dunes, we found the beach shown below.

Olympus E-P2 + Panasonic Lumix 20/1.7

I kid you not: this photo was taken in a hot Summer afternoon in mid August! There were maybe a dozen people along a few kilometres of golden sands.Two are visible in the photo.

It’s hard to be back at work...