The Crowded Cities Guide ® is tongue-in-cheek rip-off of the esteemed and very popular Lonely Planet Travel Guides. The team of editors and journalists that work long hours to produce these publications (me) would like you to know that, although comical, there are some excellent titbits of information for those intending to visit the "Crowded Cities".

August, 2002

Trip photos

Map of Portugal

Landed in Lisbon a few hours after being checked out of the funny farm...can tell you, it wasn’t funny. I managed very well considering my drugs made my vision blurry; I was driving on wrong side of the road; it was night time and I was in a strange city.

Nics and I picked up our hire car from Auto-Jordam at the airport and hit the road into Lisbon.... It was a short trip into town, but ended up taking ages to find the hotel.

Trev (aka Tyrone) had landed earlier and scoped out some of city. When we finally got there, he was chilling at the hotel having a few beers and some "for-free" smokes (no, not a new Portuguese brand, rather they were only €2 a box, and Trev kept saying, "they are for free boet, have one"). Nics and I got there at about 10pm and dumped our bags and joined him for a beer and, in my case, lemonade.

The next morning we woke to a nice breakfast and then headed for the beach on the south side of the city in pursuit of some waves. Not much luck for us on that front, but we did get a taste of beach tourism, Lisbon-style: brown water and dirty roads. Lucky the other parts of the coast away from the city were a far cry from that dirty panorama.

That afternoon we did the bus tour of the city. Have to stay that the city was pretty boring, although, in its defence, a long way from being my personal horror capital of the world which, incidentally is Rabat, capital city of Morocco.

After ticking Lisbon off our list we decided to hook up with mates of mine that were there at the same time (Nics and Mons Clausen, Kirst Ehlers, Katie Deale, Marina Morretti, Troy and Marco) down on the Algarve, at a place called Lagos (pronounced Largoosh). Once there, we managed to get into the same digs as them on the upper side of the city. Owned by a sweet, but very irritating old hen called Maria (one of Trevor’s ex-girlfriends, no doubt). No matter how much we said "non comprehendi" she still spoke at length to us in some guttural Portuguese and entered our rooms without any warning - with Tyrone’s proclivity to chase his hand around the room, this was particularly troubling.

Eventually, Tyrone and I engaged her in conversation...

"You smell like a silverback gorilla's armpits", Tyrone tried once.
"Ci, ci," Maria would reply...and then go off on one for Lagosian tangents.

"Hey, Maria.  Last night all of us got together and had group sex in your lounge room.  How do you feel about that?"  I said.
"Ohhh, ci, ci.  Comprehendi." She said she understood?!?
"Yeah, and then we invited your family over too, and they joined in as well!" Stirring the pot some more, with Nics punching me in the arm for being so rude, but at the same time trying to hide her laughter so as not to blow my cover.
"Ci, ci," she replied, and then started counting to ten in Pork and Cheese. I mean, what do you reckon she thought I said?  Hmmm…  weird lady.

Lagos is a very pretty seaside village. With cobbled streets in Romanesque fashion and building upon building, the city is not a place to be driving cars. Besides the narrow streets, the maze-like layout of roads makes it near impossible to get in and out of the walled part of the city. One time it took Trev and me almost half an hour of driving before we eventually escaped. Compare that to walking, which takes 5 minutes. To find our place was the greatest task of all and found us breaking all the Lagos road laws and some of the pavement and pedestrian-associated ones too. I also felt compelled to leave our mark on the city, so I intentionally scrapped the front fender of the car on one of the concrete pillars. Did I mention that I meant it? Even though Trevor told me it was all clear, I still meant it. Unlike Nics, however, who accidentally brushed a curb on one of the main roads going about 340 miles an hour and then paddling one of the side view mirrors flat as decided to slow dance with one of the city walls. But in her defence, she piloted us perfectly to the city of sun, unlike Tyrone who manage to pilot us onto the wrong freeway for 30 minutes until we hit a toll booth that cost us €30!?! Did I mention that none of this was my fault either? Once I gained control as co-pilot we were vooming toward our sunny locale down south.

Restaurants are a plenty there and of quality too, but don’t think of going at times that fall during their siesta. One example: we arrived with a headcount of 8 and three places turned us a away, despite the fact that they had only just finished the lunch session.  Think about it: half the gross national product of Lagos in one meal sitting and they turned us away...hmm. Brings to mind that age-old saying: "work to live, don’t live to work"... would be a nice philosophy to follow.

Digs activities included copious amounts of card games: eleven and arsehole. While Nicola and Trev shared domination in Eleven, I was clearly the dominant player in arsehole, with Trev clearly being the dominant arsehole (loser...something like 30 games straight, although Rhys made a valiant attempt to overtake on our return to London). Unfortunately for us, Tyrone took his role as Champion Arsehole too seriously and released significant amounts of carbon di-backside throughout the digs to force Nics and myself to don our Sarin Nerve Gas masks (always handy to have one these days).

We also found out that Nicola is actually a woman. Yes, yes I know. I have already phoned Ripley's "believe it or not" and they are sending a film crew. And yes, we have confirmed that the boobies do give it away. The proof for our postulation? She actually displayed demanding traits to the point where she had Tyrone and I ganging up on her in chorus by saying: "lets do everything youuuu wana do!" (think whiney voice, irritatingly teasing smiles). You, like us, must be surprised the most cool (and pretty) non-chick chick has some chickiness about her after all!? (I can just see your jaws dropping as you read...)

The final surprise of the Lagos part of the journey was finding out that Trev also likes to sniff women's panties as a past time. I know, I was as disgusted as you. How do I know? Well, let me relate a story that I swear is true: I walked into Trev's room to ask him a question and there, low and behold, lying in his vanity bag, was a pair of, you guessed it, Nic’s white panties. Yes, this is true. In HIS bag was a pair or HER undergarments. If you look up weirdo in the dictionary there is a picture of Tyrone with a pair of panties on his head... seriously.**

Each morning was started with obligatory team breakfast including chocolate croissants, yoghurt drinks, fruit and juice. Once consumed, the crew then headed to Our Beach. So named because we dominated it for five days: books, towels, boobies, swimming... you name it, we dominated. (I have to say that we did have one old man who dominated the completely naked category with his wrinkled package and hairy
bottom... the chicks loved it)

<Side note to guys - you missed out. The chicks tanned topless! Boobies galore! Sorry, no photos available.>

Night times were spent looking for a restaurant to eat at. If the girls (Nicola, Nics and Mons Clausen especially – and colloquially known as the Prawnies) had their way they would have eaten a kg of prawns every night.  Luckily Kirst, Trev and myself made a duck and headed for some good old westernised fast-food... no, unfortunately not. No Burger King (did get McDonalds right toward end though), but we did get Pizza Hut and chocolate fudge cake with vanilla ice cream. As one of my respected idols (Jim Carrey) would say: YEEERUMMAY! 

One night back from chowing with the gang I started having one of my Cipromil induced serotonin highs. So I decided to busk. I mean, with a voice like mine, I should busk professionally – or sing in a boy band, or something like that – but this night was purely for pleasure. So I laid my bum bag out in front on this raised piece of concrete and burst into song:

"I don't care if it raaaaains or freeeeezes,
I’m in the haaaaaands of my friend jeeeeeeesus.
wowowowoyeah (higher pitch)"

The money flowed... "At this rate, I should be able to buy a nice property in Chelsea," I thought... "in about 9000 years." I received 3 cents in total, and only from my friends! Pfff. But let’s face it, for all their strengths, the Pork and Cheeses do have a problem recognising talent. Name just a single number one singer from Portugal? Ha. None. See!

After dinner the gang hit the streets to find booze and some tonsil hockey. News about town was that the chicks had done very well the night before we arrived on boat cruise. Monique scored a German guy called Laser-Beam (yes, as in Doctor Evil). Stories of naked pissed people on the boat also filtered back, but none of our gang had their reputation tarnished (allegedly). Trev and I were bummed though – me because I missed the naked chicks and Trev, the naked guys.

Unfortunately (for me, fortunately for the others I guess), I was still suffering from my Black Fog, so most nights I went home to read my books or play cards. Tales of debauchery did trickle back, however. One night Trev decided to de-pant the surfer mannequin at one of the nightclubs. One minute it had boardshorts, the next its plastic bulge was hanging out for everyone to see. Lovely. The funny part is that one of the barmen from the club saw Trev out later that night and turned to him and said: "Wow! Hey, we have a mannequin at work that has a pair of shorts just like that!" "Really?!" Trev sputtered as he tried not to wet himself.

On the last couple of days we met up with two guys, one Polish and the other Swedish, who ended up playing cards with us prior to going into town and getting trashed with Tyrone. The Swede was interesting to talk too; however, the Pole, outside of his native language only knew the 673 variants of the "f" word. No, not forlorn. The naughty "f" word.

After a few days of getting bronzed on the beaches Trev and I decided to make like an elephant’s penis and hit the road. Sagres was our destination of choice, about 50kms away, and the most south western part of Europe. It was stunning there, but we wanted waves, so we headed north until we ran into some surfer dudes who directed us to Bondiera beach, a place on the west coast of Portugal. The surf was a nice 3 to 4 foot breaking out at backline. Was a little messy due to onshore winds, but we were stoked anyway. We suited up and hit the waves. Trev was almost out the back when he ducked under a biggish wave to find his boardshorts had been stripped off him. I was behind him unfortunately, so was stricken by the sight of his rusty sheriff’s badge. Eck!  Luckily for him (or me, I guess), he saw them surface and lunged at them. He mentioned the cold water felt quite nice around his privates... bit like skinny-dipping I guess. Kewl.

After the surf we found a nice restaurant overlooking the Atlantic with nothing surrounding it except scrub, rocky cliffs and ocean. I had one of those hippy moments where I felt in touch with mother nature.  Weird.  We ordered the grilled chicken which went down like your mom's undies on fathers’ day… oh, and the peach iced tea was like mother’s milk. Ahhh... (big reminiscent smiles).

We brought Nics out there the day after and did the same. She had the prawns, believe it or not! Very serene and idyllic. Much-needed relaxation time. The only point of stress was when Nics shat on me for rally car driving on the dirt roads. I mean, what was the problem? Nothing like the feel of loose gravel and dirt under the wheels of a car that you don’t own... :)

Eventually we had had enough of Lagos and hopped in our motie and drove north of Lisbon to a place called Ericiera. Another nice little costal village with, believe it or not, great seafood, surf and sun. We hit the jackpot when we went looking for accommodation by scoring the main house in the town. This little old lady (all seem to own a house in Portugal) had a spot right on the main drag in the town, and on top of that (terrible pun) we had the penthouse suite. Many a card game was played there with Tyrone, yet again, clearly dominating the category of arsehole, although the di-backside abated.

One day while we were there, we saw an asp (world body of surf pros) surf event sponsored by O'Neil. As per usual, the Ozzies dominated all categories and had two guys in the final. Ozzie, Ozzie, Ozzie. Oi, Oi, Oi.  (Very irritating Ozzie sporting chant.  Irritating because we sing it when we win at something, and we win a lot of the time.)

After some yummy meals, chilling out and some surfing in Ericera for two days, we headed back to the airport for our flight out.   The cherry on the cake-trip was the indulgence of MacDonald’s, keeping in tact my record of eating Mac’ers in every country I have been too J
 

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** One part I left out: I planted them there :)