Chapter 1 – Faro and away.
In order to rendezvous with the cargo ship CMA-CGM Potomac which would afford me passage across the Atlantic to New York City, I first had to journey from Amsterdam, Holland, to Portugal. The least expensive flight I could find took me to Faro. Having never been there before, I was looking forward to seeing a bit of the Algarve before heading to Lisbon which would be my port of embarkation aboard the Potomac. On the first day of my coming eight-month journey, I was kindly transported to Schiphol Airport by Christa, boarded my plane and departed Holland, my home of eight years.
Arriving in Faro, Portugal, on Tuesday evening 18 April 2005, I came as I usually do - with only a vague sense of a plan. Using my best 9th grade Spanish, I inquired of the Portuguese taxi driver at the airport, "Habla Ingles?" hoping that Spanish was comprehensible to him. "No," was his curt reply, indicating that he had indeed understood me. "Quiero hotel centro" was all I could muster to convey my need of lodging for the evening. Hastily, I added, "no mucho dinero."
My chauffer drove me the 10 minutes from Faro Airport to the center of the city and implored my attention for approval of a very seedy looking hotel on a humble street in what looked strikingly like a recently transplanted section of 1980's Beruit. With nos, shaking of the head, and handgestures, I attempted to express that this was a little bit too much "no mucho dinero." With a sigh and a shrug of his shoulders, my driver took three left turns effectuating a right turn and we ventured further into the uncertain urban squalor of what was supposed to be Central Faro.
Three minutes later, I was looking at what appeared to be another disshevelled building in another nondescript and crumbling avenue and quickly hopped out to take a peek inside. A long staircase brought me to the first floor and I could find no one and no registration desk. However, the inside of the hotel looked well-kempt, freshly painted, and clean. This would do I thought.
Back outside to gather my bags (I had not packed lightly), I paid my driver the 4 euros 50 he was due and gave him a euro tip for which he seemed very grateful. I proceeded to heave my baggage across the small street and up the long stairs to reception. Anticipating my need to conserve funds while in America (afterall, I was now without a job or an income), I had packed my tent, sleeping bag, sleeping mat, as well as far too many t-shirts and jeans. I would be the best- and most variably-dressed hobo on America's highways in the coming eight months.
Finally upstairs, breathing and sweating like Michael Jackson at a day-care, I left my bags briefly by the stairs, walked down a long, slender hallway and found a man who passed as a hotel manager. Inquiring as to whether there were available rooms and whether he spoke English, he replied that, yes there were rooms available, and then, after that very intelligible reply, came the superfluous, "yes," he did speak English. Shown my possible rooms, I chose one and was told that 25 euros would be the price of my lodging for that night, in cash, paid in advance.
Depositing my baggage in the room and carefully removing my newly acquired MP3 player, my digital camera, my backup harddrive, my tickets for the ship, my passport and all other "cannot-be-lived-without" articles, I hid this underneath the bed, back in the corner. I brushed my teeth, changed my shirt and headed into the exotic world of Faro, Portugal. In the center I was indeed, for within 5 minutes of walking I ended up on a large square situated before the harbour. Some intricately tiled shopping streets leading back into a maze of alleys and byways seemed to promise what I sought - an Irish Pub, the international reconnaissance location of all native English speakers travelling in foreign lands.
Why, you may ask? First and foremost, Guinness; Second, the common language; and Third, the Irish love of gossip with which you will quickly learn all you need to know about your current surroundings with merely a few innocent inquiries. Alas, Faro didn't seem to be a gossipy sort of place as no Irish Pub was to be found in 45 minutes of wandering and going in circles. In fact, not a Pub of any kind was apparent and people on the streets were also seemingly scarce. A stray dog found me and perceived correctly that I was as stray as he was and began to hound me. It was 21:30 and Faro was a ghost town. Perhaps this was the ghost of a dog?
Giving up all hope that I would be able to extract the necessary information of where the Faro train station was from a bartender at an Irish Pub, I was aimlessly walking down the main street back toward my hotel where my short venture into Faro had begun when I stumbled upon an Internet Cafe. Not as amiable as an Irish bartender, but certainly full of the type of infomation I was seeking. I ordered a beer, Sagres, and sat down to check my email and the train schedules between Faro and Lisbon. Eventually distilling the web address for the Portuguese Train Authority from cryptic clues and messages I discovered through Google, I typed in www.cp.pt and voilà! An online timetable. My train of choice would leave the next day at 14:10 and travel directly from Faro to Lisbon, a journey of about three and a half hours.
While I perused the latest Pope news online in the New York Times, two English speaking folks walked into the Internet Cafe and one of them had a distinctly American accent. Intrigued, I finished my Pope-check, ordered another Sagres and went outside hoping to invite myself into their company. Making my apologies for interrupting them, I asked whether they knew of any pubs of any kind in Faro. Their reply was a laugh indicating that they were on just such a quest as myself and had been likely as unsuccessful. Indeed, they informed me that the Internet Cafe was the only hope that they had found for frolic. Bleak news. Offering a round of beers as the price of further admission to their company, they gratiously accepted and I stepped back inside to acquire our libations. Three large glasses of Sagres extracted 6 euros from my funds.
Dawn and Drew were to be my companions of the next few hours and we exchanged stories of our travels, our lives, and our experiences. Dawn was from California and was travelling Europe for six months. Drew was from Swansea, Wales, and was doing likewise but for a shorter term of two weeks. Both were alone, as I, and had met each other in the Bus to Faro, and both, as I, had recently quit their jobs in order to be free. Drew had most recently worked as a baker and Dawn for a company that made aerospace equipment. Dawn had been travelling with her brother Chris, but he had recently returned back to the States. Drew had had a buddy who had saved up enough money to have two weeks' travel in Europe but who had managed to spend it all in 4 days and had already buggered-off back to Wales the day before. My two new-found friends and I purposed to forge a carousing crew for the evening and hung out buying rounds until midnight when it seemed that some of the dead of Faro came back to life and began to walk the streets seemingly in search of music and beer.
We followed a group of these gratefully dead and darted up an alley in which hung a sign stating simply, "Irish Pub." Hoorah! But alas, as much as we searched it was to no avail as still no Irish Pub was to be found. We did encounter a fraternal twin set of bars in this alley side by side. On the right side was a two-story bar with live, accoustic guitar music. Settling upon this as our beer provider, we entered, ordered, and angled ourselves against the wall to listen to the music and get to know one another a bit better. I soon discovered that Dawn was 27 years old, single, and a bit at a loss where her life was taking her. Asking her what her parents thought of her quitting her job and heading off for Europe, suddenly, for some reason, I felt my mouth opening wide and my tennis-shoed foot rising swiftly to cram itself fully into my gob. Dawn's parents were both dead and her father just the year previous. I apologised effusively for my insensitive question and Dawn graciously stated the obvious - I could not have known. Further, Dawn said she realised her need to talk about the death of her parents, desired to move on with her life and did not wish to dwell on the negative. 27 years old? She seemed an age-old sage to me.
Ready for some new surroundings, we exited our accoustic bar and went next door to the evil twin bar belching Rammstein from its dark and redly glowing interior. Contemporary Portuguese Gothic could be a phrase to describe the interior of the place. Strange paintings and drawings covered the walls, one of which was of a man, beer glass hoisted to his lips, gulping down the liquid as he pissed it out just as quickly. Interesting. Lord of the Rings was being shown on the Television. A few rounds more and we were another hour further and it was time to make our farewells. I asked Dawn and Drew for their email addresses, but I having nothing to write them down, they did not believe that I would remember them. But, when they receive and read this story, they will realise that my foggy wits were still about me as I committed their emails to memory.
Back to my hotel for some sleep, I quickly checked what Portuguese television had to proffer only to witness about 30 minutes of one of the worst movies I have ever seen - Demolition High. Don't ask me what the plot was, because I don't think there really was one. Off to slumberland.
The next morning, I packed my things and at 12:00 headed for the train station five minutes from my hotel. I purchased my ticket for the 14:10 to Lisbon for 15 euros and settled in at a cafe for a pastry, a sandwich, some coffee and some more Sagres. Two hours gave me much time for contemplation and I thought about what lay behind me and before me. Behind me lay almost eight years of my life spent in Holland, the friends I had made in that time, and the experiences I had had travelling to places which had existed for me as a child only in fairy tales and history books. Eight years. I had just turned 37 years old and I realised that this was more than 1/5 of my life. But, now it was time for change, renewal.
My purpose was to travel by freight ship from Lisbon to New York City and from there, again, I had only vaguely a plan. I would purchase an old Toyota pickup truck, and journey from the East Coast to the West Coast of America in the coming eight months. What this journey held for me, I had merely an inkling. Let things develop as they will, as they must. Along the way, I would be a detective investigating the varied and storied history of my family. Immigrants, warriors, social reformers, scientists, baseball players, whalers, pioneers, inventors, doctors, scholars, actors, politicians, vampires, gangsters, facilitators of new religions, builders, and billionaires. Plenty of material for me to chase in my pursuit of writing a book of history. But first, I must get to Lisbon.
14:00 and the alarm on my telephone sounded rousing me from my musing and warning me to make my way to the train on platform 4. Heaving and dragging my bags to the train, I found my way to my seat and sat back to enjoy watching the farmland and villages of Portugal pass as we set out for Lisbon, the capital of Portugal. Ahhh, the train cars were very modern and nicely air-conditioned. It was not yet hot outside, but a constant cool temperature in the train was already welcome in late April. And, a bar car. Sagres.
Before I had left my home in the Netherlands, I had taken the painstaking task of ripping every one of my 300 some-odd CDs to MP3s and loading them onto my new Creative Zen Touch MP3 player equipped with a 20 gigabyte harddrive. Of the 20GBs, I used 15 and brought with me some 3700 songs. It was a repetitive, boring activity to place one CD after another into my computer, but now that I had three and a half hours ahead of me, it was all worthwhile as I had every type of music imaginable at ready beck and call. Selecting some appropriate "leaving-Faro-by-train" music, I reclined and relaxed.
The landscape of the parts of Portugal through which we travelled was rugged, alternatingly rusty brown-red and lush verdure, and always starkly beautiful. Entranced with the passing scene, I saw villages, cobbled together over the centuries, hurry past us between the fields of grasses and orchards of olives and groves of oranges. Small hills to each side of the track, and larger mountains in the distance, cast shadows beside us and over us moving up and down as the sunlight broke through intermittantly outside of our windows as we snaked our way through the countryside. Flit, flit, flash – flit, flit, flash. Before long, a funny little paved road appeared out of nowhere and the asphault gave up abruptly. Someone had been so thoughtful as to place a STOP sign at the end of the road as if some sad soul may think of continuing on a way that did not exist further. A small motorcycle hove into view, sitting still to the left side of our path, devoid of rider, no one to be seen. Old men walked slowly along the dusty roads and old women hung their laundry out to dry. Decrepit bridges crossing small rivers and streams had remnants of an old track resting upon them. Having long since been replaced, the old bridges still sat beside the new train track, never again to convey anything or anybody but perhaps a few adventurous boys wanting a close up look at the train as it passes.
Stopping occassionally at the larger villages along the way, we let out and picked up the various passengers all the whilefor me accompanied by the sounds of music and the cool, sweet wetness of Sagres. Finally approaching Lisbon, we conveyed ourselves across a gigantic bridge suspended above a waterway far, far below us. Blue sky sank into blue sea as the city bespeckled the mountains on either side. Spectacular. Lisbon was far larger than I had expected and strangely, the first thought that came to my mind was that I would probably be able to find an Irish Pub here!
Copyright © 2005 Estey Wijaks, All Rights Reserved, Permission required for reprinting or distributing.
