One of best places to learn surf, with massive beaches perfect to stay in the sunny days, a great Natural Reserve Park with crystal clear water and an iconic fort that sits alone out in the Atlantic Ocean -> this is Peniche!
We were leaving Obidos, by car, continuing towards Lisbon, and while looking at the GPS map, we saw a huge green square in the middle of the Ocean.
Wondering what could it be, we decided to make a stop there and see for ourselves.
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| 013.1 Mesembryanthemum - also known as ice plant |
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| 013.2 Eroded Portuguese coast with millions of ice-plants (very few are magenta like in the picture from above the article). |
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| 013.3 That green square is actually the Natural Reserve of Berlengas. From Peniche we can see the lighthouse (no trees...) but also, at the base of that big island, there is another man made structure - Fortress São João Baptista (also a prison during the communist regime). At the hour we came, there was no big boat to get us to the island to see the Fortress so we instead glanced from the European coast. |
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| 013.4 A small inflatable speed boat with tourists; when we saw how badly that thing was shaking we said, we should better get going towards Lisbon than risk getting sea sick 😂 Next time we should actually stay at Peniche for a few nights, and tempt a visit of the island (we visited many of these natural reserve islands, see future articles). |
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| 013.5 It wasn't just the small boats that went and came by from the island, that really put us down. No, it was the waves! Once is Galicia, we took a smaller than usual boat to get to Ons Island and I really got sick after about 30 minutes. This wears of easily, once on land, but is not pleasant to take photos (or record video) while being very dizzy, on the boat. |
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| 013.6 Cabo Carvoeiro - I wonder why they did not use this natural structure as a lighthouse ... |
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| 013.7 Cabo Carvoeiro Lighthouse - not the most iconic Portuguese lighthouse... |
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| 013.8 One of the millions of ice plants that ornate the Portuguese coasts. Residents are not really happy on how easy this plant spreads everywhere and endanger local vegetation... |
A few thoughts of Peniche:
While we stood here literally half an hour, because of the extremely dense traffic, we did not enjoy much... We could not park almost anywhere and we went guided by the convoy towards the cape area. (we parked in the bushes, like most)
A trip to Peniche should be complete with a visit to the island, that while being barren of trees, it does have a beautiful fortress that is filled with history. We regret somewhat not being able to find a parking place, but instead be "pushed" towards another place.
The coast, here at the cape, was packed with signs that alerted people not to roam to close to the edge so we did not even walk that far.
While this article might not show much of Peniche, it does say that even in April, this place is packed with tourists (probably from Lisbon)
Hope you found useful this article and if so, glad it served it's purpose!
MiDe.
