We found a hidden gem in the Costa Verde of Northern Portugal. Untrodden sandy beaches. Quaint villages. Mountain drives. Dramatic sunsets every night. Our first week exploring this perfect area made us yearn for more...
Image: Sunset on the Rio Minho -- Caminha to the left, and Spain to the right.
28 October 2021
The fog had lifted, and we owned a home in Northern Portugal. We had arrived for our first full week in the Costa Verde to finally explore our new home.
It only seems typical that we would have purchased a property in a place that we had only seen in the fog for one hour, months beforehand!
We knew there was a beach nearby, but we didn't realize that the Costa Verde was a chain of perfect beaches lining the Atlantic Ocean! We spent a day hopping from one to the next. We were surprised by the wide swaths of sand, not unlike those beaches on the South Carolina coast of the Southeastern US. However, these beaches were largely empty, save a few surfers and sunbathers lingering this late into the season. Coves, bounded by cliffs, were ours for the taking. I was used to beaches like this being lined with development: stores, apartment towers, hotels, traffic. Not here. We drove through corn fields to get to these beaches. A few were fronted by quaint little towns and a few restaurants. But all maintained the Costa's brand of quiet, pastoral, and perfect.
What surprised us more, perhaps, was our mountainous backdrop, which we really hadn't seen at all in the fog. And yet, just a 10-minute drive from Caminha, we were at a 1500 ft altitude in the heart of the Serra de Arga--rocky, granite balds that permeated wafts of eucalyptus from the surrounding forests. Blue mountains, not unlike my hometown in the Blue Ridge, lingered on the horizon for miles. Roads wound and took us through villages lost in time, places where houses were perched on (and some integral to) giant boulders on mountaintops.
We could hop across the Minho via ferry or bridge to Spain for dinner, if we wished. No customs patrol. Just an "Espana" sign welcoming us across an international border, a change of language, and a change in time.
Caminha sits at the ideal intersection of it all, just an hour's drive from Porto, and 90 minutes south of Santiago de Compostela. Squarely in the countryside, where roosters crowing woke us up on chilly mornings, by the afternoon, we were awash in warmth, and took strolls through hillside villages brimming with orange trees, bright persimmons, and fragrant flowering vines. The Atlantic salty air with a mountain backdrop and another nation in view, seemed to fulfill the dreams of our European wish list.
Images: Vila Praia de Ancora, a seaside town South of Caminha; Praia do Paco, one of the many perfect coves on the Atlantic; a winding road through the Serra de Arga mountains; the Serra de Arga; a view from Spain back towards Portugal and the Rio Minho; Praia do Camarido, Caminha's nearest beach, looking at Santa Trega Mountain in Spain.
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