It is a small town on the south coast of Portugal in an incredible scenic location. The population in the summer is 10X what it is during the non-tourist times of the year.
I arrived at the hostel I booked from Lisbon called the Olinda, and it just so happens a sweet old lady named Olinda owns and runs the place.
I knew I was in for a tough couple of days when the first people I met were some canadians from ontario. One of them had just come in to the hostel was telling a story about how he had woken up that morning in a bush outside with his glasses gone and his pockets ripped off. He was robbed when he had passed out, obviously.
Despite this, he didnīt seem to be the least bit upset, and they were already planning that nightīs activities. They told me that the previous 5 nights they had started a tradition of after the bars closed-well, some bars did anyway-they went to the beach at 5-6 oclock, and dove off a 50 foot cliff and that I had to join them that night. Yeah, thatīs going to happen.
My hostel was full of hard-core party people, 6 canadians, 2 english, 4 austrailans, 1 dutch, 1 peruvian, and one other american. All were nice enough, but just about everyone acted like it was spring break all the time! I could not hang with these guys for more than a couple days. It was drinking games and bar crawls every night. I was so ready to go on the 4th day.
When you go out to the bars in Lagos, itīs rare that you hear anything but english. Itīs mostly australians and english and a mix of europeans coming down to party.
There are a mix of people that are living there, working in the bars and internet cafes, that likely came down to vacation, and somehow got it in their heads that it would be a good idea to LIVE there. Probably not. These people all talked about Che and Marley and Phish (didnīt hear much else discussed) and were not all there as you might expect. This group was pretty sad.
Iīm not painting a pretty picture of the place, but really if you want a place to party, Lagos is a great place to do that.
Besides the party atmosphere (which 95% of the people must come for), the beaches have to be among the most beautiful in the world. They are small and broken up into little coves that have been worn away by centuries of ocean pressure. Thereīs a little oceanography lesson! You can swim between the beaches in many instances as there are natural caves that exist between some of the beaches. I took some good pictures of the beaches.
I met a few guys from Melbourne in my hostel that I fell in with really well. We went out to dinner almost every night, and would go to the beaches to swim or to hike during the day. They were really a lot of fun. One of the guys was dating a local Portugese girl, so she took us to some great restaurants. In Portugal they serve this roast chicken with Piri-Piri sauce (pepper) that is spicy and incredible. We had that a couple nights I was there and some great seafood the other nights. Portugal is known for Verde (wine) from green grapes that is pretty decent. It tastes much like white wine which I donīt like that much, but the others really liked it.
Iīm going to travel with these guys for a bit in Spain, we are all taking off to go to Sevilla tomorrow. It is supposed to be hot, so Iīm interested to see if I can take it.