SOUTH TO CARVOEIRO

We leapfrogged south from Porto, stopping in ancient towns to absorb some history and take in the views. It was becoming a happy-go-lucky blur, and we had plenty of gas.

Since heading south from Porto, we had discovered that the modern freeways running up the west coast along the Atlantic were few and far between on the east side of Portugal, along the Spanish border. There was really just one north/south freeway, the A2. The rest of the road network reflected the rural landscape, with uncrowded, undivided highways winding through the country’s agricultural heartland. There was very little traffic, mostly small trucks and white vans. The speed limit was generally fifty, and there were narrow shoulders.  The road surface was smooth and well-maintained.  Gravel roads appeared suddenly and were quickly swallowed up by the green and brown interior. Every once in a while, roundabouts interrupted the highway with several tongue-twisting choices and vague road signs, sometimes taking us through a small town with identical white stone homes capped with orange tile roofs, shouldering the road like walls with brightly painted doors.  It was a pleasant, very entertaining drive.

The journey south from Porto is essentially a tour through Portugal’s agricultural personality disorder. The north is fidgety and crowded — tiny plots stitched together like a mad quilt, vineyards tumbling down impossibly steep hillsides, farmers doing battle with gravity itself. Then, somewhere along the Tagus River, the landscape exhales. Dramatically. The Alentejo takes over, and suddenly you’re in a place so empty it makes the American Midwest feel like Manhattan. The first bit reminded me of a more verdant Northern New Mexico, but without the small roadside haciendas.

The crops between Porto and the Algarve read like a Mediterranean grocery list written by the rich red dirt. It is very productive land.

Up around Porto, the Douro Valley produces some of the world’s most celebrated wine grapes. The Portuguese, bless them, have been making wine longer than most civilizations have been doing anything, and they take it seriously. Further south, the Alentejo has become a powerhouse for olive oil, with vast groves producing some of the finest oils on the market.

Then comes cork — Portugal’s great gift to wine drinkers everywhere. Portugal is the world’s leading exporter of cork, and more than one-third of the country is forested with cork oaks, spreading across the Alentejo like elderly gentlemen who refuse to be hurried. The old trees on the hilltops are randomly spaced; it’s almost park-like. A cork tree can live 200 years and is harvested every nine years with the careful deliberateness of a surgeon. It’s one of agriculture’s genuinely sustainable miracles, though the tree itself always looks slightly embarrassed after its bark is stripped off — a raw, reddish nakedness that takes some getting used to — and then a white or black number is painted on the tree to indicate its next harvest year. It’s a loving business across the ages.

Portugal is also the world’s largest producer of carob.  Carob is a sweet, caffeine-free, low-fat chocolate substitute derived from the dried pods of the Mediterranean Ceratonia siliqua tree. Known for its toasty, sweet flavor, carob powder is popular in baking, while its syrup and fiber are used as sweeteners and thickeners. It is packed with fiber and calcium. We found it quite tasty, sort of like chocolate lite.

Portugal is also the 5th largest producer of tomatoes in Europe, mostly concentrated in the Alentejo.  The tomato processing industry is enormous and largely invisible — you’ve almost certainly eaten Portuguese tomato paste without knowing it.

Down toward the Algarve in southern Portugal, things sweeten considerably. Oranges from the Algarve are among Portugal’s most celebrated certified regional products, along with almonds, figs, and the kind of citrus that makes northern Europeans weep with envy as they peel their pale, flavorless supermarket specimens.

This is where the story gets genuinely interesting — and a little dark.

Before 1975, intensive cultivation in the south was prevented by the system of latifúndios — vast estates owned by absentee landlords who had absolutely no interest in investing in machinery, fertilizers, or anything that might actually improve productivity.  These were people who owned the land the way some people own a painting — to have it, not to use it. Nearly half of the agricultural labor force in 1973 consisted of landless, wage-earning, rural workers whose standard of living was extremely low.

The landowners were the backbone of the fascist dictatorship under Salazar, and state policies worked reliably to their benefit.  It was a cozy arrangement if you happened to own ten thousand acres. Less cozy if you were the person toiling on them.

Then came 1974 and the Carnation Revolution, when everything changed. Agrarian reforms were implemented south of the Tagus River, where about 3.2 million acres of land in large holdings were expropriated and nationalized.  The latifundiários were, to put it mildly, not pleased.

But the reforms didn’t stick cleanly. When Portugal joined the EEC (European Common Market) in 1986, the countryside was introduced to the European Common Agricultural Policy, which completely shifted the rural paradigm. Some large estates were modernized and intensified with EU funds, but, as a consequence, most small properties were abandoned, and depopulation became the rule.

The result? The Alentejo occupies 41 percent of Portugal’s territory but is home to only 7 percent of the country’s population.  And it shows. We drove for hours through stunning rolling hills of cork, olive, and wheat and only passed a handful of inhabited dwellings. It’s not neglect — it’s history, economics, and sunstroke all working together.

A massive rural exodus beginning in the 1960s led to the depopulation of 80 percent of the territory, and today, less than 20 percent of the Portuguese population lives in the interior regions.  The young left for Lisbon, Paris, or Brussels. In Alentejo, for every hundred young people, there are an average of 186 elderly residents, and in some municipalities, that ratio reaches 379 elderly per hundred young.  The villages that remain are essentially open-air retirement communities with excellent bread.

Both sheep and cattle are grazed across the region, and pigs remain central to Portuguese rural culture.  The black Alentejo pig — fed on acorns beneath the cork and holm oaks — produces some of the finest presunto (cured ham) in the world. Poultry is everywhere. The black Portuguese chicken, the Preta, has a cult following among foodies.

Agriculture contributes less than 3% of Portugal’s total economic output, which doesn’t sound like much, especially when you factor in how much of the country is composed of rural farmland. But not all agriculture is created equal. You can grow corn almost anywhere, but not cork. Almost every crop that Portugal harvests is in high demand worldwide.

Portugal is one of the world’s largest exporters of tomato paste and a leading exporter of wine. These export surpluses are a godsend because they help to offset the cost of imported wheat and meat.  It’s the agricultural equivalent of robbing Peter to pay Paulo.

Today it’s a three-way power struggle between old landed families (reconstituted after the post-revolutionary land returns); large agricultural corporations — many Dutch, German, and Saudi-backed — who have moved aggressively into olive and almond super-intensive plantations; and the European Union, whose subsidy protocols quietly determines what gets planted, what gets abandoned, and what gets preserved as a charming heritage product for tourists to photograph.

The EU has become the largest absentee landlord of them all — just one that sends checks instead of rent collectors. And they call all of the shots. As a result, there is an undercurrent of deep resentment running just below the surface of Portuguese agriculture.

The land of the Alentejo is extraordinary. The food is magnificent. The people who remain are stubborn, warm, and deeply proud. And the emptiness — that vast, cork-scented, golden-lit emptiness — is, paradoxically, the most compelling thing about it. It reminded me of the African savannah in Kenya or Tanzania, but without any of the big game animals.

We ended our dazzling drive in Carvoeiro, a bustling seaside town at the southern tip of Portugal, overlooking the turquoise Atlantic Ocean. We checked into our lovely hotel and then walked down a narrow, winding road, past gated villas, to the trailhead for the world-famous Seven Valleys Suspended Trail, a rocky cliffside path perched precariously above the pounding Atlantic Ocean.  We hiked along a sun-dried boardwalk that draped the signature cliffs that define the Algarve coast of Portugal, slowly working our way into town.

The cliffs around Carvoeiro are made of rough and oddly eroded limestone. Many happy tourons were roaming and climbing around the honeycomb rocks like playful chimps.

The origins of these formations date back over 200 million years to the Mesozoic era, when a shallow sea covered the region and deposited layers of sandstone, limestone, and marl. Over millennia, the ocean has carved the formations, creating a surreal landscape.

We were walking through a sculpted world where erosion had created rock pools, caves, windows, and balconies over the sea, in a landscape that resembled the surface of Mars. Tour boats cruised past as the sun began to set and a warm wind blew in from Africa. Shorebirds glided overhead, following a pack of Little Tunny, powerful predators that were boiling the water’s surface, creating flashes of silver as they shredded a school of smaller baitfish. I had witnessed such a feeding riot many times on the Chesapeake Bay when bluefish and stripers would attack a school of menhaden.

We hiked for about an hour and eventually reached an overlook above the city center, nestled in a small cove with a beautiful beach. The surrounding cliffs rose above the busy town like fortresses of rock.

We walked down a steep road into the square and then hiked back up the other side to the top of town, where the views toward Africa were jaw-dropping.  On our way back into town, we stopped for a rooftop dinner of fresh seafood at a family-run restaurant called Restaurante Don Carvoeiro, where the gracious owner brought us colorful handmade blankets to beat the evening chill as we dined.

After dinner, we strolled back up the main drag to our hotel.  It was a Saturday night, and the restaurants were packed with rollicking Brits on holiday.  The Algarve is filled with expats from Europe, seeking fun and sun.  They have built large paradise homes with infinity pools — nothing like we had seen anywhere else in Portugal.  It reminded me of Naples, Florida. To each his own, I guess.

The small towns of the Algarve are being transformed into places where money is absorbing the old Portugal, leaving locals scratching their heads. It’s not bad or good.  Rich folk want to retire somewhere nice, and the southern coast of Portugal fits the bill. Jobs and new businesses are created. The natives adapt. Some rise, some fall.  Friction and traffic become the rhythm of the day.  And the EU marches on, like some grand religious crusade from Portugal’s glorious past.

As I stood above the ocean, watching a burnt orange moon rise through the wispy clouds, I thought I could almost hear Joni Mitchell softly singing,

“The wind is in from Africa;

Last night I couldn’t sleep.

Oh, you know, it’s really hard to leave here, Carey,

but it’s really not my home.”

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