Ria Formosa

A third “report” from the south of Portugal. What you absolutely must visit is of course “Ria Formosa”, the coastal lagoon you find in front of Faro and Olhão. The tide is here in general limited to some 2 or 3 m (6 - 10 ft). It means however and of course that many of the "islands" disappear during part of the day, but there are also some real barrier islands. I visited two of them, Culatra and Deserta (also named Barreta). You can go by ferry, speedy taxi boats, slow special boats for bird watching… I tried them all. 

A first trip was from Olhão to the Culatra Island and its fishermen’s village… and a nice lunch…

… followed by a walk along the island and its beaches in the direction of Farrol , lighthouse and village.

I made a second trip, this time from Faro…

….by a slow boat to try to watch a little bit of the bird life. The lagoon is of course a birds’ paradise. Some 20 or 30.000 birds live here permanently, but the lagoon is also an important stop-over for migrating birds on their way between Europe and Africa.

This time I arrived at the Deserta (or Barreta) Island, where the only buildings are a few fishermen’s huts and a restaurant, where I had some local oysters and more.  

Then time for a nice walk admiring the scarce vegetation…

… the human and bird footprints and more…

When it is low tide you can see some people collecting what you will later find at the fish market or on your restaurant table. You may observe the little hole to the left of the feather? This is where the nice knife shells hide. There are different techniques to get them out of the hole.