Shilin to Xingyi: Part 2 of China's Far Southwest

From the Stone Forest to the Guizhou Border and Beyond

China

In the morning, we set off for Xingyi, three hours away and just across the border into Guizhou Province. Here we would part with Wang and Mr Ma and pick up a new guide and driver for the next part of the journey. As we left, the clouds parted, the sun shone and the temperature started to pick itself up from the floor.

This post is about a journey from Shilin in Yunnan Province to Xingyi in Guizhou

Yunnan

Motorways and Countryside

Setting off along another empty motorway, Wang started giving us dire warnings about the state of the roads in Guizhou, a province he regarded as at least ‘backward’ and quite possibly ‘primitive’. The three lanes of the excellent Yunnanese road were labelled – in English and Chinese – ‘Overtaking Lane’, ‘Main Carriageway’ and ‘Non-motor Vehicle Lane’. This third lane was well populated by ox-carts. The Chinese economic miracle is something of an urban event and oxen, clearly, still played an important part in the agriculture of relatively advanced, civilized Yunnan.

Mr Ma drove us past pointy Karst mountains, and terraced fields. Tobacco, the main crop, had just been harvested and the leaves could be seen drying on balconies. The small fields contained rice, which was just being cut, maize and many other vegetables we could not recognise.

Stooks of rice straw after harvesting, Yunnan Province

Guizhou

We entered Guizhou about 11 o’clock. Although the motorway did indeed end, we continued on a well-surfaced two-lane road. Visiting China so often involves being whisked from one urban centre to another, and we were pleased to find ourselves in deep countryside winding through a series of agricultural villages. We overtook a string of packhorses hauling newly felled logs up to a village depot.

A Guizhou Village Market

Ten kilometres short of Xingyi we joined a traffic jam caused by a village market. We left the car and walked down the street. While the traffic hooted and snarled in the centre of the road, the edge was lined with stalls of all kinds. There were fruit and vegetable stalls, baskets of live chickens...

Chicken in a basket, Village market near Xingyi, Guizhou

... and a trestle table laden with pieces of pig.

A trestle table laden with pieces of pig, village market near Xingyi, Guizhou

There were wads of tobacco like ginger wool and the water pipes used to smoke it,...

Smoking a water pipe, village market near Xingyi

...cheap clothes and wooden ploughs and there were things we didn’t recognise or know the use for.

Ploughs on sale, village market near Xingyi

In urban China the time has long passed when foreigners were routinely stared at, but in this village Europeans features were still a novelty. One old man with a thin wispy beard stood in front of me, staring stony-faced. Realizing I was probably staring back I said, ‘Hello, ni hao, nice to meet you’ and stuck out my hand. He blinked and then his stare slowly turned into a beaming smile. He was a wizened old man, his Mao jacket hanging loosely on his thin frame, but the hand that shook mine was large and roughened by a lifetime’s hard work. I smiled back, not something my face does naturally, and wished him well. Unfortunately I had unwittingly ruined Lynne’s photograph by stepping in front of her subject, but I think it was worth it.

Spice stall, village market near Xingyi, Guizhou

Tiguan were available at several stalls. They resemble turnips, except for apparently having a root at each end, but are actually a fruit that, like the peanut, grows underground. They are easily peeled with your fingers and although it is disconcerting to bite into something that looks like a raw root vegetable, they are sweet and juicy. They have a texture somewhere between water chestnut and apple and a flavour between apple and melon. The Chinese call them ‘underground watermelon’. I know of no English name; typing ‘tiguan’ into Google leads only to the Volkswagen Tiguan, which is not, I think, the same thing at all.

A cart full of Tiguan, Village market neat Xingyi, Guizhou

To Xingyi for Lunch

Xingyi is a strange shaped town, penned into a series of valleys between the karst hills. Entering through the industrial quarter it looked grim, but after a tunnel took us into the next valley, we found ourselves in a pleasanter if still down at heal central area. After much asking of directions, we eventually drove out to a recent, smarter extension on the town’s eastern edge.

​We had been looking, Wang explained, for a particular eatery rather than a hotel, though when we found it, it seemed a small unexceptional family restaurant. We sat at a table, which had just been wiped with the usual filthy cloth and were handed a vacuum-packed plate, bowl and cup. It has become fashionable in the last year or two to take the crockery from the dishwasher – human or mechanical – and vacuum pack sets for each individual diner. It looks hygienic, maybe it is.

Wang took us into the kitchen and we chose some smoked beef, chicken, mushrooms and broad beans. It takes a remarkably small time to turn simple ingredients into dishes that are complex and full of flavour. When the food turned up, a huge bowl of soup and a dish of minced beef had been added to the order. Buying lunches was Wang’s responsibility and he felt the need to compensate for yesterday’s very moderate fare. ‘Never eat in hotels’ he said, ‘unless you have to.’ We knew the general standard of cooking in China is high, but Wang wanted to prove a point, and we were delighted to let him.

With six dishes on the table, not to mention rice, Lynne, Mr Ma and I were full long before all the food had gone, but for some time after we had downed chopsticks Wang kept on picking a morsel from here and a bite from there as though he had not eaten for weeks. The driver thought it was as funny as we did but Wang just laughed along with us and kept picking away. He may have been slight, but he had a mighty appetite.

Goodbye to Wang and Mr Ma, Hello to 'Dylan'

Well fed, we checked in to the nearby Haiyu Hotle (sic). The automatic doors had ‘Welcome’ etched on them, and less explicably ‘Feeling Sea Treasure’.

Our Guizhou guide, a rotund and eager young man, introduced himself as Dylan. ‘I was late for class the day English names were handed out, and it was the only one left.’ he explained. We never quite got the hang of his real name, so Dylan he remained.

We said goodbye to Wang, whose name was easier to cope with, and Mr Ma (Mister Horse) our cheerful and friendly driver and, a freshen up and a rest later, set out with Dylan to see Xingyi.

China's Far South West (2010)

Part 1: Kunming and The Stone Forest
Part 2: Shilin to Xingyi
Part 3: Xingyi and on to Huangguoshu
Part 4: Qingyan, Guiyang and on to Kaili
Part 5: Kaili, Xijiang and Rongjiang
Part 6: Rongjiang, Zhaoxing and on to Guangxi
Part 7: Chengyang Dong Villages and the Longsheng Rice Terraces
Part 8: Guilin and the Li River
Part 9: Hong Kong
Part 10: Macau

Kunming and Shilin: Part 1 of China's Far Southwest

The City of Eternal Spring and a Stone Forest

27-Oct-2010

Kunming with the Glass Half Empty

China

Kunming, the capital of Yunnan, China’s most southwesterly province, styles itself the ‘City of Eternal Spring’. We stepped out of the airport into an afternoon of cold, hard drizzle. Eternal Spring is, I suppose, much the same as Eternal Autumn, in a glass-half-empty sort of way, and at that moment Kunming looked a glass-half-empty sort of place; its 3.5 million shivering inhabitants apparently wandering around in search of somewhere warm.

We checked into our hotel and had a nap. After twenty-eight hours travelling and a seven-hour time change even the pneumatic drill in the adjacent building site could not keep us awake. Later we went for a recce to find an ATM and choose a restaurant for dinner before returning for a cup of tea, more rest and a discussion about what time the man with the drill might knock off work.

Happily, drilling stopped before we went out. Most restaurants and many shops in Kunming are open-fronted and the main appeal of our selected restaurant was the wall between us and the elements. We sat down, eager to apply our limited knowledge of Chinese characters to the menu, only to discover there was no written menu. Fortunately, our waitress rose to the occasion and led us into the busy kitchen. In one corner a young man wielding a fearsome cleaver sliced bacon from a large joint. Another youth twirled what seemed a lifetime’s supply of noodles in an immense wok using drumstick-sized chopsticks, one held in each hand. On a shelf at the side lay a selection of cabbages. We pointed at the bacon, cabbage and noodles and returned to our table.

Dog tired but still eating - what a guy!

Choosing the basic ingredients was one thing, but by the time they had been prepared, sauced and spiced they had, as so often in China, turned into a sophisticated and satisfying meal. For the first time that day we began to feel glad to be back in the country.

28-Oct-2010

A Self-Guided Walking Tour of Kunming

Yuantong Buddhist Temple

Next morning, wrapped up well, we set off to see Kunmimg. We had decided to take a taxi to the north of the city and then walk south back towards the hotel. We have taken many taxis in China, but today’s was the first we had encountered driven by a woman, and not only that but a woman who understood my verbal request to be taken to the Yuantong Buddhist temple – though not until she had correct my pronunciation. The little bell hanging from her rear view mirror suggested she was herself a Buddhist. It ting-ed when she accelerated, it ting-ed when she braked and it ting-ed when she went round corners. Long before we reached the temple it had become quite an annoying little Buddhist bell.

The most ‘important Buddhist site in north Yunnan’ (rather faint praise, I think) is approached through an impressive marble archway...

Entrance to Yuantong Temple

..beyond which we picked our way round a partially constructed new hall to find the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) temple. Beyond an incense burner an octagonal pavilion sits in a startlingly green pond. Circumnavigating the pond in the approved clockwise direction, we came across of group of pilgrims in a side room chanting as they processed round and round in single file. We paused to listen and record.

'An octagonal pavilion in a startlingly green pond, Yuantong Temple, Kunming

In the main hall at the rear, two dragons support an ornate wooden ceiling over statues of the Buddha seated in front of faded thirteenth century frescoes.

Dragons supporting the ceiling, Yuantong Temple

Behind the main hall is a newer, smaller pavilion where fearsome stone animals protect a gilded bronze Buddha donated by the Thai government.

Guilded bronze Buddha, Yuantong Temple

All around people with burning incense sticks were kneeling before the Buddha or bowing in the cardinal directions. The Chinese are not a notably spiritual people – indeed Taoist devotion often seems entirely concerned with ensuring good luck - but Yuantong had a peaceful, even reverent air.

Much work with incense sticks, Yuantong Temple

Some Thoughts About the Pace of Change in China and the Dates of World War II

Having started in the north, we walked south through an area of modern apartment blocks and clean shops. We were heading for the Muslim quarter but found the promised maze of streets had been bulldozed and replaced by a shopping mall. We should not have been surprised, our Rough Guide is a few years out of date and nothing stands still in China.

A shiny new mosque stood next to an older Christian church dedicated to those who fell in the allied cause in the Second World War, 1937-45. The Sino-Japanese conflict was an integral part of that war and it was a reminder that our 1939 ‘starting date’ is somewhat parochial and euro-centric. the Japanese 'Rape of Nanjing' (Dec 1937-Jan 1938) is still a sore point to the Chinese, as we learned when we visited that city in 2016.

The Provincial Museum

The nearby Provincial Museum is crowned with a spire and a red star in the ‘Stalinist Gothic’ style we had only previously encountered in Russia and Poland (we later encountered the fabulously awful Academy of Science building in Riga). The museum should have been open, but the ticket office was deserted and the doors padlocked. Closer inspection, however, revealed another door hidden behind an advertisement for the ‘Accounting through the Ages’ exhibition. Inside, a notice told us that today the museum was free.

Yunnan Provincial Museum, Kunming

The journey from tally sticks to double entry booking was less than riveting, particularly told in a language I was too ignorant to read. The centrepiece was an elaborate cowry box, dating back to the Dian Kingdom, which ruled Yunnan two thousand years ago and used shells for money. Upstairs a much more interesting collection of Dian artefacts; bronze weapons, agricultural implements, grave goods and more cowry boxes, gave a fascinating insight into life in Yunnan’s earliest civilization.

A Spicy Lunch and Two Ancient, Though Rather Ugly Pagodas

Further south, we huddled on a bench in an open fronted restaurant. Choosing a dish of beef and chillies was easy, but ordering it presented a problem. It is well known by all educated Chinese that no Westerner likes spicy food, so the girl kept pointing at the symbol for chillies (one of the few we actually know) and I kept nodding my head and saying ‘yes’. The harder I nodded the more emphatically she pointed but eventually she gave in and we enjoyed an excellent - and distinctly spicy - lunch.

Continuing our progress, we visited two Tang Dynasty (618-1206) pagodas, standing fifty metres apart near the city centre. Despite their age, they are neither beautiful nor particularly interesting. One stands in a small garden, the other beside an alleyway. There is little more to be said.

The east pagoda, Kunming

By this time we were flagging, so we taxied the rest of way to our hotel where we sat in the warm, had a cup of tea and listened to the pneumatic drill

Dynamic Yunnan

Later, after a bowl of warming soup in another cold, open-fronted restaurant, we rendezvous-ed with Wang, our guide for the next day’s journey to The Stone Forest. He had met us at the airport ans suggested we might like to see a show entitled 'Dynamic Yunnan' he had come with his driver to transport us to the theatre.

Dynamic Yunnan - some of the cast

The Chinese government recognises fifty-five ethnic minorities living alongside the Han majority, many of them in the southwest. ‘Dynamic Yunnan’ is a performance extravaganza based on the traditional dance, music and costumes of the local minorities. Choreographed by the ‘world famous’ Yang Liping the show has toured China, Europe and the USA. It was certainly very professional with a lot of high energy dancing, screechy singing and very loud drums. The brochure quotes the New York Times on Yang Liping’s Peacock Princess Dance: ‘she dances so fluently like a spirit from nature, using her slim figure, extending her arms, fingers and legs, resembling a youth full of live (sic).’ She was extraordinarily graceful, but my first reaction on seeing a woman that thin is to administer an emergency bowl of noodles, not watch her dance.

It was not raining when we came out, so we walked back. Watching people bedding down in doorways, reminded us how fortunate we were to have a warm hotel room waiting.

29-Oct-2010

Shilin, The Stone Forest

The drive to Shilin (literally: Stone Forest) took a couple of hours. The roads were motorway standard and, once we had left the city, largely empty. Kunming’s spring-like (or autumnal) climate is the result of its warm southerly location and its 1800 metre altitude. Our journey through rich agricultural land involved a number of long straight descents and we passed several lorries with smoke billowing from their brakes.

Shilin, The Stone Forest

Eating China's One and Only Cheese

Despite the drop in height, the temperature remained unchanged. At Shilin we checked into the only hotel and found our room had cooling but no heating. We mentioned this to Wang, then repaired to the unheated restaurant, which was full of tour parties from Korea, Taiwan and France. The food was mass catering and the duck was lukewarm but one dish was truly remarkable. Traditionally the Chinese have not used dairy products. In recent years, milk has been promoted as a health drink and is now frequently consumed at breakfast, but butter and cheese are unknown – except in Yunnan. The Yi (pronounced ‘jerr’) ethnic minority make China’s one and only cheese and Shilin is a Yi village. We ate a hard goat’s milk cheese pleasantly similar to Ribblesdale. The most exceptional thing about Yi cheese is that it is unexceptional.

The Great Stone Forest

Approaching Shilin the quality of the farmland had deteriorated and we had seen many fields containing tall stones, clustered like conferring menhirs. The National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site, covers 350 km² but at its heart, the Great Stone Forest is an area of stones, typically 4 or 5 metres high, crowding together like trees in a forest. It is an extreme example of Karst geology and a truly extraordinary sight.

Threading our way through the stones on well-made paths, there were corners that looked like the approach to ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ at Disneyland, and we had to keep reminding ourselves that that was fake and this was real. The crowds were reminiscent of Disneyland, too. We think of tourism in China as involving Europeans, North Americans or Australians, but one by-product of the Chinese economic miracle has been the explosion in home grown tourism. The few Westerners were vastly outnumbered by the Chinese visitors who arrived on tour buses in their thousands, each group obediently following its flag-wielding leader who kept up a running commentary via a portable loud speaker strapped to their waist.

'The Chinese do so like a crowd,'Shilin Stone Forest

The Chinese do so like a crowd, but Wang led us along quieter paths, past limpid pools and up low hills where we could see the forest without having to listen to five competing commentaries. In China there is always a crowd – and nearby there is always somewhere quiet and peaceful.

The 'Shadows' Walk', Shilin Stone Forest

This area was once farmed by the Yi, and a difficult task they had wresting a living from this stony land. There is little or no farming in Shilin now. There is plenty of work for attractive young women who dress up in brightly coloured traditional costume and act as guides. Every Chinese tour group acquires one, though what they can tell them that their voice-amplified, flag-toting commissars cannot is a mystery. Older women work as photographers, snapping each member of a tour party in front of their chosen rock. Their menfolk park their motorbikes on the nearby road (‘they’ve got better bikes than me’ said Wang with a touch of envy) and rush the camera cards to the printers in the village, returning before the group leaves the forest. Every tourist carries their own digital camera, but for reasons deep within the Chinese psyche, the business thrives. Elsewhere, four young men strummed three-string guitars while strutting ‘The Shadows’ Walk’ (for those old enough to remember) and a group of girls danced a homespun excerpt from ‘Dynamic Yunnan’. The older and less comely members of the Yi community can be observed in dirtier and less colourful versions of traditional dress, sweeping away litter or hacking back vegetation, but you are not supposed to notice them.

Undoubtedly most of the Yi in Shilin are financially better off and have much easier lives than they did before the tourists came. Perhaps they sometimes wonder how living in a World Heritage Site came to destroy their heritage. I have no idea if they ever regret it.

We returned to the hotel to find a heater had been placed in our room. Whether any of the other guests had one, we do not know and decided not to ask.

China's Far South West (2010)

Part 1: Kunming and The Stone Forest
Part 2: Shilin to Xingyi
Part 3: Xingyi and on to Huangguoshu
Part 4: Qingyan, Guiyang and on to Kaili
Part 5: Kaili, Xijiang and Rongjiang
Part 6: Rongjiang, Zhaoxing and on to Guangxi
Part 7: Chengyang Dong Villages and the Longsheng Rice Terraces
Part 8: Guilin and the Li River
Part 9: Hong Kong
Part 10: Macau

Huizhou

With our fifth trip to China imminent, it seems an appropriate moment to write a paragraph or two about Huizhou, the city that started it all. Huizhou is pronounced 'way-jo'; pedants and scholars might care that the first syllable is second (rising) tone while the 'jo' is third (falling-rising). My inability to cope with tones doubtless accounts for the incomprehension that greets any attempt to deploy my very limited Mandarin vocabulary.

The Xiapu district of Huizhou.
Siân & James lived on the nth floor of one of these blocks

Huizhou has less than a handful of sites to attract tourists. Although it is hardly remote, 160 km east of Guangzhou and 60 km north east of Hong Kong, few foreigners ever visit; perhaps that is the best reason for going there. If you want to watch the Chinese going about their business undistorted by the mirror of mass tourism, then Huizhou is the place to go. If you want to see the Chinese economic miracle in a small city on the edge of the Special Economic Zone, then there is no better place than Huizhou. If you want to relax somewhere inexpensive surrounded by lakes and parks, then I recommend Huizhou.


Ren Ren Le, Huizhou's main supermarket

A city of 500 000 people is only a dot on the map by Chinese standards, though Huizhou is the capital of a prefecture of several million. Looking south and west from the upper floors of the Noble Jasper Hotel, it is possible to see the steep, wooded hills that mark the city’s edge. In other directions, the urban sprawl of Guangdong Province is more persistent.

Huizhou

Sitting on the confluence of two rivers and wrapped around two lakes, Huizhou is a city of water. Strolling round Nan Hu (South Lake) you can watch old men playing Chinese chess or listen to impromptu concerts, while in the early mornings half the population turns out for their daily exercises. Some merely stand among the shrubs twirling their arms, others practise the slow controlled movements of Tai Chi, while a group of ladies lunge and parry in carefully choreographed swordplay.


Choreographed swordplay by South Lake, Huizhou

The area surrounding the larger lake, Xi Hu (West Lake, no expense was spared in the naming) was laid out as a park during the Song dynasty (10th and 11th centuries). For a few Yuan you may stroll among the gardens, see a statue of the poet/administrator Su Dongpo and climb a wooden pagoda. From the top there is a fine view over the lake and the five-hundred-metre causeway that crosses it. The numerous right angle turns deny demons access to the central pavilion, while the small, marble humpback bridge was built by Su Dongpo in 1096.



West Lake, Huizhou

In 2004 I had never heard of Huizhou. Our daughter Siân, with a freshly minted MA in her hand and uncertainty as to what to do with it in her head, decided it might be interesting to go somewhere and teach English. With the whole world to chose from, Huizhou was where she and boyfriend James found jobs. They stayed a year, came home and got married, then returned for six months. Lynne and I visited twice, using Huizhou as a jumping off point for trips further north and west, and as a point of return before heading back to Hong Kong and thence home. It is special to us because Siân lived there, and because it was the first Chinese city we stayed in, its calmness a relief after the aggressive chaos of Shenzhen’s Lo Wu bus station.

Keeping Huizhou tidy

In Huizhou, under Siân’s tutelage, we learned how to survive as foreigners in China. We learned about buses and the etiquette of taxis and discovered that you can walk into the most basic restaurant, or occupy a table outside what seems only a hole in the wall and not only will you not be poisoned, but you will be served a meal that is skilfully cooked, full of flavour and extraordinarily cheap.

Frog cooked in a big leaf, Huizhou

The climate in August is far from ideal. It is certainly warm enough, the temperature reaching the low thirties, but it is usually overcast and often raining. Occasionally there is a storm, sometimes a typhoon. Even on sunny days the air is laden with moisture and to avoid being bathed in sweat you learn to walk slowly. Most things in Huizhou happen slowly, even the traffic.



West Lake, the pagoda from the middle of the lake, Huizhou

The city is nothing special, but it sowed the seeds of an obsession with China that has seen us return again and again. Despite the weather, I like the place.


The Algarve: Depredations and Delights

What's Gone Wrong with the Algarve, and Why We Keep Coming Back Anyway

September 2021

We have passed our 'fit to fly' Covid test, so very soon (barring unforeseen circumstances), we will be arriving in the Algarve for our 21st autumn visit this century (not to mention occasional spring visits in the 80s and 90s). This is, of course the 22nd autumn since January 2000, so we missed one. No prizes for guessing it was last year when our flight was cancelled just weeks before departure. We are fortunate, as this blog testifies, to have been able to visit many other countries, but we keep returning to the Algarve. This post was written 11 years ago to explain why we still find this over-exploited coast a place of delight - and it now also has to explain why we missed it so much last year.

October 2010

First published on the 6th of October 2010, this post now has several updates and many later pictures
Links are to other Algarve posts on this blog

The unhealthily pale old man and the sea, Algarve Oct 2010

We have just returned from our seventeenth trip to the Algarve. It was simply a holiday; unless you hail from Ulan Bator or the Kamchatka Peninsula it is impossible to pretend you are a traveller in southern Portugal, there are only locals, expatriates and tourists.

It was different thirty years ago when my father retired and bought a house by a golf course in the new development of Vale do Lobo. In 1982 we drove through the scruffy town of Almançil, skirted a sun blasted vineyard and passed several shepherds watching their grazing flocks before reaching the half finished ‘luxury resort’. There we left Portugal and entered never-never land. It is a long time now since that road has seen a shepherd. New villas, a dozen restaurants, an outbreak of tennis courts and a chic garden centre jostle for space where once there was only dust. Freshly painted Almançil is today packed with estate agents’ offices, banks and golf equipment shops. The N125 – the main road running the length of the Algarve - by-passed the town centre long ago and has itself been reduced to the status of a country road by the construction of the A22 motorway. Val do Lobo is no longer half finished, but runs into Dunas Douradas, which runs into Quinta de Lago, equally upmarket but becoming more and more characterless with each successive building phase.

That house on a golf course and a much younger me, Val do Lobo, April 1992

And it is not just this corner of the Algarve that has seen the developer’s bulldozers. Villas have sprouted from Vila Real on the Spanish border to Sagres in the west, leaving only windswept Cape St Vincent untouched. New resorts like Vilamoura and Praia de Rocha have sprung up, while old fishing towns like Albufeira and Quateira have blossomed into major holiday centres.

My parents’ house was sold years ago. In 2005 Lynne and I found a comfortable ground floor apartment with a pleasant garden in Carvoeiro, and we have returned to it year after year. [And returned again in 2021, our landlords are now long-standing friends]. Situated in a narrow ravine running down to a beach that is little more than a breach in the cliffs, Carvoeiro has managed to retain more of a village feel than its larger neighbours. But even here, in defiance of geography, villas have climbed the walls of the ravine and spread along the cliff tops. In the streets you hear more English and German than Portuguese and in the summer the locals, as in much of the Algarve, are a minority in their own town. Even in winter there is no relief as the extensive and largely grey-haired expatriate community – British, German, Dutch, Irish, Scandinavian – avoid the rigours of the Northern winter in a region where frost is virtually unknown and even in January temperatures reach 17°.

Carvoeiro Beach

It is not just their languages the tourists bring with them, it is also their food. Carvoeiro’s out of town supermarkets sell sliced white bread, baked beans, pastis and gouda cheese. The village boasts an ‘English Restaurant’ and other establishments offer ‘all day English breakfast’ or ‘traditional Sunday roasts.’ ‘Pubs’ sell beer to foreigners and entertain them with all the premiership football matches that Sky Sport can provide.

And do the locals complain? They must do, it is human nature, but they do so quietly and among themselves. Within a generation tourism has turned the Algarve from a forgotten backwater of Western Europe’s poorest country into a thriving, prosperous province with a quality of life outsiders envy.

In the 1980s old ladies wore black dresses and thick stockings with little black trilbies - always a size too small – perched on their heads and secured by a scarf tied beneath the chin. Picking one’s way through the potholes - a major feature of any road other than the N125 (and of that, too, west of Lagos) – the sight of horses pulling brightly painted traditional carts was commonplace. Back then, the carts were painted, but little else was. Buildings were usually grubby and dilapidated, chipped azulejo tiles and sagging roofs were normal. Now the black dresses, trilbies, potholes and carts have gone. Even the remotest village has a good road, and the houses are gleaming with white paint; tiled façades are grouted and washed, one wall often painted in a pastel blue or pink.

The old cuboid fishermans' cottages of Olhão, now all smart and clean (2010).

There are improvements every year. Loulé market, for many years our first port of call from the airport, was closed in 2006 and 2007. It reopened in a bright, clean and airy new building. Everything was back as it was, only its soul was missing. Between 2008 and 2009 the centre of Carvoeiro was extensively remodelled. In 2010, when Portugal had theoretically run out of money for public works, we arrived to find Loulé’s main thoroughfare closed and workmen busy laying the small grey cobbles that are Portugal’s favoured surface for pedestrian areas.

Carcoeiro's new centre (Oct 2009)

I preferred the old unimproved Algarve, the Algarve that did not pander to north European tastes, the Algarve where it was possible to feel like a traveller not merely a holidaymaker. I must not be unreasonable, deprivation may not have been abolished but you have to look harder to find it, and I cannot expect people to live in picturesque poverty to please me. But something has been lost in the process.

So if the Algarve has been comprehensively built over and ruined, why do we continue to visit? Why have we been there every year for the last eleven years? [now 21 out of 22 this century]

Because despite the depredations of the developers, despite the efforts of those tourists who arrive in a foreign country and try to make it exactly like the one they just left (except for the climate!), most of what made the Algarve great remains intact.

Maria’s restaurant, which has stood on the beach at Dunas Douradas for over thirty years, provides a fine example (well, it did until 2012). In the early nineties, as the picture shows, we approached the then isolated beach hut via a cliff top path. By 2000, erosion required us to take a route through woods behind. One year we arrived to find building plots staked out among the pines and a year later Maria’s had become fully integrated into the urbanizacão.

The path to Maria's in 1992

In 2008, we went there after our first visit to the newly reopened Loulé market. ‘I expect,’ I said, in jest while driving through Dunas Douradas, ‘we’ll find Maria’s has been knocked down and rebuilt, too.’ And, of course, it had. The old wooden hut had been replaced by a new structure, still wooden, but no longer a hut.

Until 2008 Maria's was a hut, then this happened

What had not changed, though, was the quality of the food. Maria’s grilled squid is so fresh it could almost swim, so perfectly cooked its flesh is firm, yet yielding. Served with boiled potatoes, a glass of white wine and a view of the sun sparkling on the sea, it is a simple yet deeply satisfying pleasure. [Sadly, Maria's changed hands and name in 2012. The magic went and we no longer go there].

Maria's same food in a smart new building, Oct 2011 - the year before Maria's sad demise

And then there is the climate. The Algarve enjoys more sunshine than anywhere else in Europe and in autumn, when we usually visit, the temperature reaches a pleasant 25° or more. A laze on the beach and a dip in the sea are quite possible well into November. Then, just as autumn becomes chilly, spring arrives; there is no winter. But it is not only temperatures. The gentle blueness of the sky and the extraordinary quality of the light lift the soul, while the white painted buildings shimmer in the sun, and bougainvillea trails a purple blaze across the walls.

Bougainvillea on a vila in Carvoeiro - its not all purple (2010)

The very air is a delight. I know of no other country where it is a pleasure simply to breath. The scented air is obvious from the moment you step from the plane, even over the jet fuel smells of the airport. Wafts of scent pass over you everywhere, and if you become habituated during the day, just walking into the early morning garden provides an instant reminder that you are living somewhere special.

Ferragudo 2007

To get away from the coastal strip and drive along a country road is a journey among delights. Nothing matches an orange orchard in spring, but the warm woods - eucalyptus, figs, olives, pines, and, higher up, the gnarled cork oaks - are a pleasure to the eye and nose in every season. Huge cactuses and prickly pears cling to old walls and villages bask in the sun.

Away from the coast and off the beaten track, October 2011

‘Traditional Sunday roast’ may be available, but the overwhelming majority of the Algarve’s many hundreds of restaurants are more tipico, specialising in fish as fresh as it can only be within minutes of the fishing port. After so many visits we have inevitably developed favourites. A visit to Dona Barca in in Portimão for sardines is a must. The décor is functional - they retain the once typical long communal tables - the fish are barbecued outside in the square and the prices are low enough to be reminiscent of the good old days.

Sardines at Dona Barca with Mike and Alison (Oct 2016) I am delighted to say that since we first ate here in 2003, the prices have risen (but not by much) and nothing else has changed. Why should it when they are packed on a Thursday lunchtime

At Dois Irmão in Faro, another venerable restaurant, I can recommend to the pork and clams, while Lynne has particularly enjoyed both grilled cuttlefish and goat cutlets. Somewhat exceptionally, these restaurants are frequented by locals as much as tourists.

Lynne and a cuttlefish Dois Irmão, Faro (Oct 2013)

Elsewhere the fish of the day – usually sea bass, or golden bream - is reliably excellent as are swordfish or tuna steaks. Fish stews and cataplanas using the wonderful Portuguese refogado are based on olive oil, tomatoes and garlic as is the delightfully messy seafood rice. Salt cod - the local staple - is always worth a try, and Portugsl, not Nando's, is the home of chicken piri-piri. I shudder at cafés offering ‘all day English breakfast’, but mainly I feel sorry for their customers. When it comes to the pleasures of the table, the Algarve ranks with the best in the world.

Fish Cataplana, Restaurant Vimar, Carvoeiro Oct 2011

You do not have to eat in restaurants to eat well. Every town and village has a market selling the freshest of fish. Chouriço (sausage) and presunto (air dried ham) are wonderful, the scrawny looking chickens have more meat than you could imagine and taste like chicken used to. There are olives and salted almonds which go down so well with a glass of port, as do the cheeses which range from the mildest, youngest goat curd, to curado cheeses matured to a rich stinkiness.

A light lunch of Chouriço, Cheese and salad

Portugal’s inexplicably underrated wines are available at all prices from negligible to eye-watering. Even the wines of the Algarve, long ignored (and with good reason), are improving. I am not a Cliff Richard fan, but his Quinta do Cantor started a trend that has benefiting producers and drinkers alike.

It may be grossly overdeveloped, but nothing can change the sunshine and the scented air and nothing has changed the quiet and unassuming people of the Algarve who the vast occupying army of tourists with good humour and courtesy. With rare exceptions, they deal honestly and fairly with all – which cannot be easy, given the profound ignorance and ingrained idiocy of some tourists. For all its imported faults, the heart of the Algarve still beats strongly. As long as there are squids at Marias in the sea we will return and return again. [OK, Maria's went 5 years ago but Martin's in Carvoeiro grills a pretty fair squid]

This post was (2010) featured on the Algarve Daily News

Algarve Posts

The Algarve: Delights and Depredations(2010)
Mexilhoeira Grande and a Long Lost Cousin (2013)
The West Coast (2013)
Lagos (2014)
Castro Marim and Vila Real do Santo António (2015)
The Boxes of Carvoeiro (2016)
Mertola and Alcoutim: Strongholds by the Guadiana River (2017) - Also under Alentejo
Silves, Former Capital of the Algarve (2018)
Drinking the Algarve (2022)
Eating the Algarve (2024)