RIDING BACK TO PORTO

RIDING BACK TO PORTO

As we have moved closer to the ocean, the temperature has improved and sitting on the deck was not as cold an experience.  I still liked being all wrapped in a couple layers up top, using the flyer style winter hat that snapped under my chin, and including the heavy scarf I brought. 

I was the best prepared for the cold weather. 

Others came out hatless and in light clothing.  They could not manage to stay very long.  Some saw me and remarked that I seemed dressed for the North Pole, but then they did not go up on the sundeck.

I stayed much longer on this last day of river travel and took photos along the way.  This was not the dramatic mountainous section of the Douro, not the stretches that made me feel I was hiking the Adirondacks without having to hike.  However, the beauty was still delightful.

What is missing in this blog photo experience is exactly what was missing when seeing these sights in the warmth of our cabin or from the lounge, there was no sense of the panoramic wrap around landscape except on the sundeck when in every directions these rural views filled our brains.

Here too I saw my second and third motorboat out on the river as well as the one shaped like the old rebelos.  A few workers worked in the vineyards, mostly pruning. Some small fires showed the burning of the pruned pieces.  At one point about a dozen girls leaned along a roadway railing and waved frantically.  And for the rest of it, I could only see the quiet farms, deserted houses and working buildings and the terraced hills of grapes that seemed to go on forever.

 

The natural color of these rocks looks as if someone wandered along the Douro with cans of spray paint.

  

On this stretch the land is more developed and populated.  Isolated buildings are replaced by populated area.  We see more people and more traffic along highways.

  I am ready to head back home now.  I'm not anxious, but I need some variety.  I have learned that I could not live on a boat.  It always seemed like a fine adventure, but it would be too close quarters for me.  I get a bit of feeling too tightly enclosed.