We saw a lot of cool stuff out the windows of our car and we stopped a lot to visit with the locals. Even after struggling with our newly learned Portuguese and them showing off their Portu-English we learned a lot about the country. Portugal is in the Mediterranean Zone. The weather is mild and there are lots of sunny days, there is enough rain to make everything green.

There are wild flowers everywhere, bright red poppies, yellow buttercups, and bushes of bright yellow and white. Purples pop up here in there, making quite a color palate. There are lovely seaside towns and villages, they have great seafood as well a good pork and beef, did I mention ham?

Did I mention pastries? Beware of the “pastel de natal” which is a flaky tart filled with a creamy center, a little cinnamon. Really it’s a can’t eat just one love affair.

We were fascinated with the cork trees.  They only grow in this southern Mediterranean Zone, Hence this is the only place you can see the Cork Oak in it’s natural habitat. Portugal produces more than 50% of the worlds cork. It’s an amazing material. It’s extremely durable and is also compressable, elastic and flexible. It is impervious to liquids (which most are familiar with) but also is a poor conductor of electricity, heat, chemicals, sound, and has unlimited durability. Naturally we had to stop and shop, this is what we saw: cork shoes, boots, handbags, jackets, vests, jewelry, insulated mugs, stoppers of all kinds, mats, rugs, artwork, paper, printed postcards and other signage, cigarette and cigar tips. The shops did not cover many of the other uses; packing material, floor and wall coverings, mattresses, insulation, the list goes on and on. We bought a few things, ha ha.

A little about cork harvesting and production because it is truly an enviable balanced sustainable conservation of a natural material. When you harvest cork you don’t cut down the tree. It is actually illegal to cut down a cork oak (deal or alive) in any part of Portugal. The cork is harvested by hand with a hand axe. The Tiradors (cork strippers) are a lot that passes down the craft from generation to generation. They are the highest paid agricultural worker in the world. They work in pairs, one guy climbs the tree and the other works from the ground. Together they chop off the dead bark which is kind of grey-black. They peel off a door size rectangle portion. It peels like an orange and exposes a new yellow/ red bark underneath. It takes 9 to 10 years for the cork to grow back. The good cork called amadia doesn’t show up until the 3rd peel. That’s when it finally finds it’s way into a wine or champagne bottle or a new pair of shoes. The first 2 peels are used for more industrial purposes like insulation. Too much to know about cork? It’s harvest is directed by the first full moon in May. Ha ha we need to buy more cork to keep these guys in business.