Day 81, Merida, Spain to Algoz, Portugal

Bridge into Portugal

Yes, I have moved countries and am now in Portugal. Quite an adventurous (and a little stressful) day. First of all I must have had the noisiest room in the hotel last night, as I got woken at 2.30 by shouting and carrying on in the hallway, and thought it was time to get up. I usually hit the pillow and am dead until I wake again in the morning, but clearly not the case last night. Then getting ready this morning it dawned on me I should check about driving on roads in Portugal and how to go about paying for toll roads (especially after my Austrian disaster I like to be prepared).And ARGH it was complicated. Lots of websites explaining how to go about it, which is not a good sign if you need so many websites. And there were different kind of tolls as well. However, as I had agreed to meet the host at my Homestay between 2.00 and 2.30 and I had quite a drive ahead, I couldn't worry about it for too long and got on the road.

The drive was pretty but uneventful. The bridge into Portugal, over the river Guadiana is stunning, but unfortunately when you're driving you can't take photos, so this once I cheated and googled the picture! Very majestic.

Anyway, the whole toll thing turned out easy, obviously the web wasn't up to date, but they actually had people on the border to explain it to the tourists. Austria could learn something from that.

So Easy Toll works like this. Your credit card gets swiped at machine, which simultaneously reads your plate number. Every time you enter a toll road there are huge cameras over the road that read your plate number and automatically charge your credit card. Easy peasy.

However, finding my accommodation turned out to be a bit harder. I ended up going to a bar, as you do, and offered the waiter 5 euros for the use of this phone. He eagerly handed it over (I should have rung someone in NZ, haha) and contacted my host, who came and picked me up. No harm done, except for a frustrating hour driving around the village, feeling I was close, but couldn't quite find it. My home for the next 4 nights (maybe longer) is super duper, a fully equipped apartment, kitchen, lounge, huge deck out front, with view of the village, even a docking station for my IPod, My hosts are lovely and very keen to show me around, so I think I will enjoy my time here.

I did have a very confusing few minutes lining up the time on my IPad with the fact I arrived in the village at 2.00, drove around for an hour and now it was still 2.00? Well, I didn't know Portugal is an hour behind the rest of Europe!

View from my deck towards the village