Carrazedo - Week 1

Well that’s the end of our first week at our workaway.info host, and as usual it’s been fantastic. We are staying in a lovely little guest house, with its owner, her three dogs, & two cats and they are all amazing. 

So far the volunteering has all been about general garden maintenance, including turning an old oil barrel into a furnace to burn garden waste, and repairing the garden gate. The food that we have been given has been second to none, incorporating a wide range of dishes, some of which are of Portuguese origin along with some specialities from our host’s home country, the Netherlands. 

During our time off this week, we have been taken out to some of the surrounding area, including the local market in Vieira Do Minho (an essential place to visit to get a real feel for the place, and of course language practice), cake and a coffee for about one euro, and a working museum making woollen products for sale and still made in the traditional way, right from sheep to shelf! And a little trip out to a place called Rio Caldo, which is an extremely picturesque reservoir surrounded by mountains and a little town. 

An interesting thing happened last night however. Now we were both fully aware that when the weather is particularly dry in these areas, it can result in being the perfect fuel for massive hillside fires, and that is exactly what happened. The first fire I noticed was about 1km away, and it was absolutely raging, but then, as I sat down I noticed another, only about 300 metres away. A little startling at first, but perfectly safe for us given the direction of the wind. But it really was an instant realisation of what must be on people’s minds here. In addition to this the chats over dinner have been really insightful into the general way of life here and hints and tips on the language and its little colloquialisms. And also the realisations that phrase books can be pretty useless in rural areas and that you can really only learn by doing.