A Little Chaos, A Little Love

The timing of the day is immaculate. We couldn’t have planned it so perfectly, had we tried. We flow through the day as though it was designed for our easy enjoyment.

Check out of our Airbnb at 11am. Public bus to the big bus station. Cappuccinos in the plaza. Flixbus to Braga. We arrive, pile our bags on a platform, and check the marquee. There’s a bus to Geres in 10 minutes leaving from platform 18. No tickets? No problem, you can pay on the bus. We wind down luscious green mountain roads with scenic vistas.

“I have a feeling we should get off before Geres to find camping.” 

We push the button, exit the bus. There’s a municipal sign across the street, “Campismo”. We set off down the road.

After a minute of walking, a car stops beside us. He speaks out of the window in Portuguese, and we understand he’s asking if we’re walking to the camping.

His car is tiny, but he loads all our bags in for us, and Thomas squeezes in the front seat, leaving Maya and I to walk in peace without our luggage.

By the time we make it down the road, Thomas has all the information for the campsite and we throw up our hammocks and tent in less than 10 minutes. Base camp set.

So easy.

We hop along boulders in the river directly below our camp, find a nice puddle of sun and strip down, dunking our bodies in the water. Icy and refreshing. The perfect reward.

right before the car stopped and took our bags for us

The town nearby is tiny and quiet. Geres. We’ve essentially chosen it by looking at a map and pointing to a random place. It sounds ridiculous, but it worked splendidly. We knew we wanted to go to the Peneda-Geres National Park (Geres being the whole area, not just one town), so looked on the map and picked something close. Everyone in town stares at us when we go for dinner. At first for our english, later for our rambunctious laughter as we drink beers in the park and play on children's toys. I can’t blame them.

being ridiculous in the park

We see a flyer for a festival in Fafiao, a village I read about in a travel blog and wanted to check out. The village of the wolves. It begins tonight and goes three days. 25 kilometers away. Obviously, we’re meant to be there.

In the morning we pack up our hammocks and call a taxi to Fafiao. We try to speak with the driver, but the language barrier is quite thick. We ask him to take us to a campground we found online, about 5 kilometers from Fafiao. He looks confused. 

Aren’t we coming to the festival? He wants to know.

Yes, but there’s no camping in the town. We have to camp outside the town.

He’s more confused. It’s no good, he tells us, to stay in this campground. It’s too far away.

Now we’re confused about what we’re meant to do. 

He holds up a finger and calls a friend while speeding down a road so winding, Thomas and I are trying not to be sick in the backseat. He speaks rapidly into his cell, and all I really catch is “English” and “three” and “camping”. He hands the phone to Maya.

“Okay, guys,” she hangs up and addresses us, “the guy on the phone says not to go stay at this campsite. He says to come to the museum in town and ask for him and he will show us where we can put our tent for free.”

“It’s better,” our driver tells us in Portuguese, “not to pay, and to be in town, no?”

“Yes! Thank you so much.”

ready to move on with our pile of gear

He drops us in a car park full of camper vans with a few tents on the outskirts under trees. Shakes our hands, charges us less than his meter says we owe, and tells us we can get him a beer at the festival to make it up. We realize quickly how silly we were being, trying to go to an established campsite an hour's walk away, when all these people are sleeping in this lot and the surrounding forest. No wonder he was so confused.

a perfect spot (not ours though)

The parking lot itself is a party, and while we love the vibe, we head off up a road into the woods, perferring some privacy and the ability to sleep when we want.

The spot we find is perfect.

Everything is perfect.

Walking through the village, I'm immediately intrigued and drawn in. It’s truly a medieval village, you can feel it in the steep hills and stone houses. There are so few modern buildings that I feel somewhat transported back in time.  At the edge of the village, there’s a wolftrap. A local we meet at the pub takes us there and explains it. It’s two stone walls forming a “V” with a gap at the end. After the gap, lies a huge pit. The people of the village would drive the wolves into this V and send them falling to their doom in the pit. The story makes me sad, but it’s also some of the most medieval shit I’ve ever heard. Gotta do what you’ve gotta do.

only blurry photo I took of the wolftrap

camp view 😍

Next to the wolftrap, they’ve constructed a stage for the night time portion of the festival. The music starts at 9pm and goes until the sun comes up. Through our three days in this village, we never stop feeling surprised to have stumbled upon such a large event in such a tiny village. But it’s certainly thriving. Music pumps from 9am til nightfall through speakers spread throughout the town. Bands play in the narrow streets. Multiple stages are spread throughout the village. Beer and wine vendors line the town square.

By 3am on our first night, I’m spent. Maya has gone back to camp long ago, and both Thomas and I are pretty stumbly at this point. I grab his arm and we wind down the mountain from the wolftrap in the dark. Picking our way along narrow hiking trails, til we reach our clearing. We sit on a blanket outside Maya’s tent, digging through our food bag and devouring any snacks we find.

I wake to raindrops splattering my face in the dark, still on the blanket outside the tent, with hardly a recollection of falling asleep there. I sit up, disoriented, and notice Thomas beside me. I groggily weigh our options, as both Thomas and I are sleeping in hammocks, not tents, which makes the rain a bit of an issue.

The drops seem light, and likely to stop soon, so we drag the blanket under a large tree and try to fall back asleep. But the storm picks up quickly.

Maya’s tent is small and cramped already with her and all of our large backpacks, but we don’t see what choice we really have. We unzip it as quietly as we can, and she’s instantly awake, beckoning us inside.

Thomas attempts to lay beside Maya at an awkward angle and I curl into a ball near the door, using her thigh as a pillow.

I’ve slept better. But I’ve certainly slept worse. At least we're dry.

Maya and I rise in the morning, desperate for food. We leave Thomas sleeping and head to the only pub we know of in the village. We order coffee and toast and the woman tells us the kitchen is closed. Our faces fall. It’s the third time we’ve tried to eat here, each time with no luck, and though we came with some groceries and snacks, they are quickly running out between the three of us. We ask for the coffee and take a seat, feeling dumbfounded as to where people find food in this place. We’ve checked google maps on Maya’s phone, but found nothing except this pub, and while the festival has some food trucks in the town square, we’ve yet to see them open.

The woman comes to drop the coffees on our table, and our faces must be devastated, because she hesitates a moment before lowering her face towards Maya and dropping her voice. 

“I know you really want to eat here and you keep asking about the kitchen…”

“It’s not that it has to be here, I just don’t know where to eat in this town and there’s no shops and we’re just really hungry. We don’t understand.”

“Okay, listen…I will make you food, but it will take at least 30 minutes and you have to take it away. You can’t eat here, because other people will see and ask and we’re not open. Okay?”

“Okay,” we agree, “thank you so much. All we want is a toasta. One with cheese and one with ham and cheese.”

We figure it’s not putting her out too much…we’ve been eating toastas for weeks now…just two slices of bread and some cheese. So simple.

30 minutes later, she nods conspiratorially to us and Maya gets up to pay. We’re handed two styrofoam boxes and urged out of the pub quickly. We walk a few feet and Maya opens one of the boxes.

“They’re hamburgers,” she states flatly. 

“Oh, shit…”

She’s a vegetarian.

She sighs.

I know she’ll eat it anyway, because she believes it’s worse to waste the meat now that it’s in her possession, and I have to agree, but I feel terrible for her. We just wanted some toast.

“Come on, let’s go eat it up there. Like wolves. We’ll drag our prey atop the mountain.” We both laugh and start climbing. Perch upon a rock overlooking the village and devour the meat we’ve been handed. We were desperate for food, and beggars can’t be choosers, you know.

I let myself feel like some sort of wild hunter, in this wild place.

Maya the warrior elf

“Hey, wait, look,” Maya shows us her phone. “It looks like there’s a hostel that might have a kitchen! Let’s see if we can go eat dinner there!”

The three of us head up the hill and Maya and I are ecstatic when the kid inside the cafe confirms that they are serving food. 

“Look at their kitchen hours,” Maya says, “it’s open like all the time. I can’t believe we didn’t know about this.”

“Wait, you guys didn’t know this was here? I’ve known the whole time,” Thomas says.

“You’ve what??” We exclaim.

“Dude! We practically had to beg the woman in that pub to feed us this morning because we thought it was the only restaurant.”

“Huh…yeah, I’ve known. Guess we were just never together at meal times in the last few days,” Thomas shrugs.

“I must have sounded so dramatic to that woman this morning, going on about how there’s nowhere to eat, when there was literally an open restaurant around the corner,” Maya says, somewhat distressed.

“We definitely looked like silly Americans.”

We shake our heads, laughing at the situation, stuck between being bewildered and amused.

That night, we all manage to fall asleep where we’re supposed to. In our hammocks and tent. But again, in the middle of the night, drops stain my face and pull me from my dreams. Shit. 

Thomas has stated the night before that if it rains again, he’ll wait it out, but I’m not so tough. Or stubborn. I unzip the bug net of my hammock as the drops get bigger and hurry to Maya’s tent. 

We’ve arranged the bags better this time, in case of a repeat emergency, and I’m able to stretch out beside her instead of curled at her feet.

The rain turns heavy. The wind picks up. I start to worry about Thomas as I drift in and out of sleep. Just as I’m wondering if I should call out to him, I hear the zipper undone. He squeezes in, cold and wet, and we all pass out.

In the morning, we seem to have a water bed beneath us, and find we're in the only spot of the field where the water gathers. We laugh at ourselves, spread our things to dry in the sun, and head out for breakfast.

dumping water out of the tent

“Ugh, it’s already Sunday, and I like to post my blog on Tuesday. I should be back at camp writing, not sat here drinking a beer.”

“What are you talking about? You should be here experiencing life so you have something to write about! Order another!”

If my 2018 trip to Europe was about finding myself... About growing into a person I could trust and rely on. If it was about being comfortable all on my own. It seems perhaps my 2022 trip is about learning to act in a group. To be together. To trust and rely on those who love me. To stop trying to be a solo act. 

I’ve only been alone here one night in the last three weeks and even then, I wasn’t truly. I met strangers who treated me like a friend. 

Maybe if my first long trip here was to show myself that I’m capable of succeeding on my own, this trip is to show me that it’s not always necessary. That being stubbornly a solo act isn’t strength, it’s foolishness.

Because the truth is, life is easier with a helping hand and a splash of love.

“I get by with a little help from my friends.”