I met 3 particularly great people in Lisbon whom I did the majority of my site seeing with, Maria, Angel and Simon. Maria and Angel were heading to lagos so we decided to take the train together. Angel and I had an impossible time finding a hostel to stay in so we booked an expensive guest house type thing but upon arriving to Lagos and bringing Maria to her hostel, "Mama" said she could fit us. I had read about this hostel, called "The Rising Cock," "Mama" herself and the crepes she makes every morning with her famous lemon tea. Mama insists on being called this and is like your mother whilst you’re away. I was skeptical at first but she was really there for me when I needed her- more about that later.
The hostel is infamous for crazy 24 hour parties but it seemed quite quiet. I could hear a movie playing in the background and few people were going in and out. It was mid day and super hot so I figured most people were at the beach. Mama had a double bed amongst a room for 8 for Angel and I so we took it without a question. It was so much cheaper than our other option and we were already there with our heavy packs! Yes! Maria was also placed in the same room so things were good! Angel and I had already developed a brother/sister relationship so it wasn't even weird. Once we got settled we went straight to the beach and from there waited in line at a restaurant for hours!
We didn't get back to the hostel until 11:30pm and everyone from the hostel had already left. We decided to take a look around just the 3 of us and went to the most famous of the bars called, "Monkey Bar." It is insane. The bar tenders act like they are on speed! They run around taking shots themselves, giving people funnels and weird things to drink from and not one was wearing a shirt. Within 5 minutes of being inside I got burned by a cigarette twice, got a beer spilled on me, got stepped on and then hit on by a midget. No judgments here but it was all a bit overwhelming. We had the distinct feeling of being too late for the party to catch up and thus way too sober for this so we went home with the intention of getting back to the hostel earlier tomorrow night in order to meet everyone and go out from there.
The next day we went to the beach of course and discovered some really, really beautiful ones! They had amazing rock formations and really cool caves. Lots of people were jumping from ledges and added to the cool, free atmosphere. Everyday we went to the beach with more and more people. Everyone would go out and drink together at night, eat Mama's crepes in the morning and maybe watch a movie before going to the beach. It was so chill! The hostel was not a crazy place this week because everyone was in Valencia for the famous tomato fights. The boys at the hostel were a bit disappointed with the odds, 3 girls and like 15-20 boys, but they had a good time anyway... and there were no shortage of girls at the bars. Lagos is known to be a crazy party town where crazy things happen! It is quite small and most capital is brought in from the fishing industry and tourists.
There were a few notable bars... one was Inside Out. They had fish bowls [scorpion bowls, aka loss of memory in liquid form] that are best shared between at least 4 people. Two girls in my room tried to share one and lets just say our room was a gross disaster in the morning. So one night we went out with the hostel and shared one... everyone had really strange nights that night. I woke up on the beach alone at 830 in the morning and returned to find Angel in the bed covered in blood. He still doesn't know what happened and Maria was quite naked in her bed. Everyone ate crepes and spent the next couple of hours piecing our night together. I had gone back to the hostel and told people that I wanted to write and draw and took my notebook. There was nothing in my notebook the next day. Hilarious! One guy remembered dancing in his underwear in a chair at a bar and one girl still wasn't home. We again went to the beach and took a boat tour through caves. It was fantastically beautiful and I am super tan!
The next night a great girl I met, named Sara (from Australia) and I decided to make our own fish bowls for the hostel.. but much lighter this time!! Everyone gave us 5 euro and we ended up with 100 euros and made 4 tasty fish bowls! I even managed to get Inside out to give us free huge straws! After drinking them some people went out early and some of us stayed. I stayed with Sara and some Australian boys to play some card games. When we went out we were stopped by this funny little guy and he invited us for free drinks, apparently that's what it takes to get people to his bar. First of all, it was called, "Smiles" and it had smiley faces everywhere and a stripper pole and seriously NO customers! The bar tender having nothing else to do decided to give me and a couple of the boys some lessons. It was so funny and so difficult, by the way. I am NOT sexy on a stripper pole but she said I did well because I have some upper body strength. Afterwards we found part of the group and had a good night dancing and talking until we left the bar at about 4am. I immediately spotted a beautiful white horse. The man must have noticed my instant love for the thing and motioned for me to get up on it. So this was random but amazing! He was an old man with a black suit and top hat. He put his hat on me and let me take the horse around the block by myself and didn't charge me a thing! My camera is pretty broken so the pics I have now are from other people's cameras. We all extended our stay a night (including Angel and Maria) and spent it at some other bars and restaurants. We went to the Nah Nah Bar every night for dinner... it was right across the street from our hostel and it served the best burgers I've ever had!
Another night that was random and funny was a night we went out and had fun but came back relatively early and went to bed. Sara and I woke up at the same time and both wanted to take a walk. We left in our PJ's (Mom, I was wearing that funny Animal t-shirt you gave me haha) and we stumbled across a foam party! A foam party! And we went in, of course. They didn't charge us anything. We walked in and it was like a crazy dream. People were drinking, it was 5am and they were completely covered in soapy foam, except the girls tried to keep it off their pretty make up faces. Everyone looked RIDICULOUS and some were taking themselves and their foamy dance skills seriously which made Sara and I laugh so hard. We decided that this was insane and since we had an early night and the rest of the group hadn't and actually went skinny dipping we were up for the foamy craziness. We were both really sleepy and for some reason thought that since the foam looked soft that it actually was and decided to wrestle in it... we stopped when I pinned Sara and realized that actually the floor was covered in water and I almost drowned her. LOL The foam kept getting above our heads and was almost suffocating but so funny at the same time. We saw one guy from our hostel and apparently he had been there for hours. We decided to bring the foam party back to the hostel and loaded are arms with foam and then put it on people's faces and jumped in their beds... I hugged the guy at the front desk.. he spent the rest of the night wet but said this was not even a little bit surprising or weird compared to the things he's seen. The poor guy! He turned out to be as awesome as Mama... again more about that later.
The beauty about Lagos is that there really isn’t much to see aside from the beaches so I didn’t feel that pressure to see all of the sites, there were none. The group I had been with had to go to their next destinations on Thursday but I didn’t need to be at work for another day so rather than pack up my stuff and find a city closer to my work location for one night I decided to stay in Lagos. The Australians from Smiles, 2 guys from England and one Spanish guy were the only people left that I knew so I went surfing with them in a city about 30 minutes away on the coast. We left in time to see the most beautiful sunset ever in another town that the Spanish guy, "Toba" knew of. It was nice to be in a car again driving on an open road, as opposed to always being on a bus.
That night we all went out. I ran out of cash so I brought my debit card to get a little money out for some drinks, big mistake! We had a good night out and one of the Australians and I went to the beach because we heard cool music. There were tons of hippy people there playing instruments and camping out on the beach w/ their dogs. It was really cool- they sounded great. Upon getting back to my room I noticed that I didn't have my debit card. I got online and cancelled it immediately and then realized that I had only gotten 30 euro out because I didn't want to walk around with a bunch of cash in case I lost it. Well, that didn't work out well. Now I had about 23 euro and I still hadn't paid for the 2 extra nights I had stayed. I owed 60 euro and still hadn't paid for my train ticket to get to Santa Clara, Portugal for work and I didn't have money for food. All of a sudden I was in a bad place. I decided to freak out about it in the morning. I wasn't ready to except that all of a sudden I was up shit creek without a paddle!
So, in the morning I had crepes as usual and went downstairs to tell the hostel my problem. The guy at the desk Nick said he'd have to talk to Mama about it. He walked away and I was really embarrassed. I felt like I was taking advantage of them not making me pay when I added nights and I was a bit scared that I was to get 4 hours away by train with no money. What if I missed the train. I knew I had to take 2, so if I missed the connection I wouldn't have any money to stay anywhere or any money for food. My cell phone was dead. I was all alone. Ahhh!! So obviously I cried! It was a bit overwhelming, being in Europe with no money. Mama, bless her, let me pay like 18 euro and said it's ok because she knows I will be back again. She let me keep 5 for the train fare. I walked the 20 minutes to the train station and was pretty upset. I had 5 euro and I wasn't even sure that I would make this train let alone the connection. When I arrived I paid the train fare and had trouble understanding when my train was leaving. Finally I found someone who spoke English and they told me I still had an hour and a half so I conjured up all the Portuguese I knew and asked if I could leave my bag at the station so I could go get food. Well, in reality I didn't have money for food but it was the only Portuguese I knew. What I really wanted to do was go back to the hostel because I left so upset that I forgot to say goodbye to the Australians and Toba, the Spanish guy. Also I needed to call home to get my debit card straightened out. They let me leave it there which was great. That meant I could walk a bit faster and not sweat bullets- it was 100 degrees after all.
When I got back a girl who works at the hostel had heard about my situation and gave me 20 euro for my trip. I told her I would pay her back but she told me not to worry about it because good karma would come back her way. This made me cry too, because it was so nice of her. Actually, everyone was really nice and said that I'd be ok. I found the Australians and lost my shit again with them. I began to realize it wasn't just the debit card situation that I was upset about. I was ending a chapter and beginning a new one and that's always hard for me. Transition. Ew. I was worried about the train transfer because Angel (from Cali), Maria (from New York) and I had been waiting for our train for 30 minutes in Lisbon to go to Lagos and it stopped so far up the track from where we were standing that we had to run with our 30 pound backpacks to catch it. It was so close that my bag actually shut in the door... my heart was beating so fast that I thought I was going to die. Also it was difficult understanding which platform to be at... and on top of everything I didn't know what to expect with work. I hadn't thought about it at all. I was living in the moment the whole time and didn't learn any Portuguese, did no research on the area and didn't read the Quinta's website as well as I should have. I was scared and I was sad to leave my friends. They split up in 2 groups, half went to Sevilla, Spain and the others to Lisbon, Portugal... and I was headed to small town Portugal which it turns out is WAY, WAY smaller than I thought.
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