July 21st - Guided Tour of Peneda-Gerês National Park

   

                   

     Today we woke up early and headed out to meet our tour guide Ines.  Eight of us packed into a old land rover and drone an hour and 45 minutes to Peneda-Gerês National Park.  It was beautiful!  We started the trip with a short hike down to a lagoon.  Ines was an amazing guide, pointing out frogs and so knowledgeable about the area.  At the bottom of the lagoon we explored and got into the chilly water.  Being early and a bit cloudy, I definitely was hesitant, but got in and enjoyed.  

    After hiking back up, we drove to the town of Fafiao, which means wolf trap.  Ines Guided us through the city showing us the wolf trap and explaining how they used it to trap and kill the wolves due to over population and the wolves killing the livestock they needed to eat.  Unfortunately they did not think about the repercussions of this and not only did they become almost extinct in the area, but without predators the other animals became overpopulated.  Now the town holds a festival to raise money so that they can repopulate the area with wolves.  They have gone from 500 to 4,000 wolves.  We continued to explore the area, learning about how they still use the Roman way to store corn and are working to repopulate the trees due to forest fires.

    Then we drove to a small restaurant and had an amazing lunch.  Most of the food is sourced from the village and we were introduced to green wine.  It is a wine that is not named for a color, but rather because it is served soon after it is bottled and is not aged.  It was very tasty and after a few too many glasses of green wine, we got back into the land Rover to drive to our second hike.  We walked down an easier, but longer path to another lagoon called the Emerald Pool.  All of the water is mountain runoff and the most clear, and chilly, water.  We enjoyed swimming, chatting and the sun!

    Finally we headed back up the trail where we filled our water bottles with natural run off.  We did one more short hike to a look point that gave an amazing view and headed to a local tavern to enjoy a beverage.  Then we piled back into the land rover for the ride home.  We were gone for 12.5 hours and it was such a great experience.  The park is so green and it was so nice to get out of the city and see another part of Portugal.  Kudos to Kate to signing us up.  We will sleep well tonight and have decided to have an easy morning tomorrow!

      

 Lower Lagoon

 

Fafaio

  

The Wolf Trap                                                    How they store Corn

 

 
   

Growing Trees to Replant                   How they change the flow of the water from one side of the

                                                                         town to the other...with a wooden plank!

Amazing Lunch                                                                    Wolf Festival Poster

Lower Lagoon and Views from the Look Out

This is a close up of where we swam first.  It is in the above picture above the orangish spot!