Today and yesterday the weather has perked up a bit, though it's still pretty overcast. Yesterday we had a trip to Lousa, which takes just over an hour. The plan was to find the information centre, get maps and guides for the walks that we have seen on the Lousa tourist information site and do two geocaches.
Lousa is quite a large place though not too scary to drive around. We parked easily enough for free. Tuesday is supposed to be a market day, as well as Saturday, but there was no market that we could see and we arrived at 11am.
We wandered the town, looking for the information centre, and marvelled at some of the very old beautiful buildings. But after a while we still couldn't find the information centre. The girl on the reception in the library gave us a map of the town and pointed us in the right direction. Lots of times when you say obrigada, thanking them for their help, they seem embarrassed and say Nao, nada (no, it's nothing), but it is to us!
So we wandered further afield and found the information centre tucked on the outskirts of town (handy!) and looked around the eco museum. We were the only people there. The chap in the info centre spoke very good English, but when we asked for walking maps, guides etc, he couldn't really help us that much. He did give us some leaflets and a basic map, but not really what we needed.
We went back to the car and set off up into the mountains to do our geocaches. Our printer that we brought is currently out of ink (waiting for an order from UK to arrive). Therefore, we were struggling a little to manage without the full geocache information. The parking co-ordinates kept depositing us at the viewpoint (miradouro) above the village we were trying to reach by road. Our satnav was telling us that it had arrived at its destination. What is actually the case, and we have had this twice now, is that you are at the co-ordinates but not at the right altitude. Looking down into the valley below we could see roads to Sra Da Piedade, and that was indeed where we were supposed to park, but we didn't have good enough maps showing us how to reach it.
Still, we were both up for a walk and had sturdy footwear on, so we ventured down a path at the side of the viewpoint, past fallen trees and all. We explored the castle and then set off to find the cache. But we went the wrong way, or, tried to go the hard way! After fording a stream, and then trying to climb slimy rocks at the side of the waterfalls (all in a day's outing for us usually), we realised that we would have to go back across the waterfalls further up. So back down the waterfall, over the stream, then back up to the castle to find the way to the mountain shrine.
To say this place is beautiful is an understatement. It's like being in a fairytale. We had the place to ourselves, but in summer this is probably bursting at the seams with people.
Hot and exhausted from our exploring of Lousa and the village, and knowing we have to climb the hill back to the car, we decided against the second geocache that would involve at least another hour and half walk.
On our way back home we stopped off at Arganil and ventured into the information centre there. We asked the girl, who spoke excellent English, for walking maps and guides in the locality. Again, she could not really help us, though the council is putting walks in place there is no supporting literature at this time. Maybe next year we will have more luck.
