Planning a visit round a pure spectacle is a dangerous enterprise. How many individuals have deliberate a visit to see the northern lights, hoping to witness nature at its most dramatic, lovely and extraordinary, solely to come back house disenchanted?
Lately, the big Atlantic waves of Nazaré have been added to the traveller’s bucket checklist of seasonal phenomena. The Portuguese seaside city is the right spot to observe the towering behemoths of white water that stand up from Europe’s largest and deepest underwater canyon, 5,000 metres beneath the floor.
From November to March, the city turns into a magnet for big-wave surfers, a rare group of women and men who’re towed to the crest of the wave by a jetski accomplice, earlier than hurtling down its face. As longtime sea lovers who’ve holidayed in Croyde and Newquay numerous occasions, my accomplice and I can’t resist the possibility of watching somebody surf a wave 3 times the peak of our home (and cracking alongside at over 50mph), significantly if it means escaping to Portugal within the depths of winter.
From the second we e-book our journey, we monitor Wind Guru, hoping for the proper mixture of swell and winds to energy the good tranches of water up from the canyon. I ponder, too, what else there might be to do in Nazaré in February, significantly if the seas are calm. Are we going to pitch up in a city snoozing by way of the colder months, ready for spring’s first wave of vacationers.
It’s all blue skies and sunshine after we arrive in Lisbon, and after a few days exploring on foot, fuelled by too many pasteis de nata, we hit empty roads for the two-hour drive north. After we attain Nazaré, wehead straight for the outdated city, Sitio, on the 300-metre-high headland that separates the calm waters of Praia de Nazaré from the tempestuous breaks of Praia do Norte. It’s the best viewpoint for watching the monster waves roll in.
In a stroke of luck, we’ve timed our go to to coincide with such a serious swell that the browsing powers-that-be have determined to carry the Nazaré Tow Problem throughout our keep. A lot for a snoozy out-of-season city. We park on the Sitio to search out pop-up food-trucks lining the trail to the headland, TV vans rumbling previous, and dozens of different guests – many carrying critical cameras – heading in the direction of the lighthouse.
Nothing prepares you for the primary glimpse of Praia do Norte. It’s a huge expanse of seaside – a large curve of sand stretching right down to broiling, frothing white water that rushes in from totally different angles, colliding with itself, crashing on to the shore. The waves themselves are genuinely breathtaking – nice, glittering partitions of water that rise and teeter, then curl in on themselves, filling the air round us with a deep, shuddering roar and a fantastic mist of spray.
They’re 10 or 12 metres excessive on our first day – small beans for Nazaré, however gargantuan to us. After gazing for an hour or so, we stroll 10 minutes inland to Sitio’s busy sq., with its whitewashed homes and widescreen views. We seize the final desk at Casa Pires, a small, low-slung restaurant reverse the city’s imposing church. Contemporary sardines include selfmade chips and a pile of salad; round us, households and teams of associates are diving into platters of recent fish, and passing spherical sizable carafes of wine.
Our resort is to the south, in the primary a part of Nazaré. It’s a protracted sprawl of low-rise homes and store alongside the vast Praia da Nazaré. In summer season, the seaside attracts Portuguese guests who come for the acres of sand and calm, clear sea that give little clue to the drama happening on the opposite aspect of the headland. Even in off-season, the memento outlets and ice-cream parlours alongside the entrance are busy and eating places are full. Solely after we enterprise out within the night does it really feel a bit abandoned, with many eating places within the tangle of lanes behind the seafront nearly empty.
We occur throughout one buzzy spot, restaurant Canastra a Grelha, and settle in to eat succulent carabineros – big prawns – and a steaming cauldron of caldeirada, a traditional fish stew of monkfish, prawns and pleasingly nutty rice. The broth is so wealthy and flavoursome that we spoon it up greedily, mopping the final of it with bread. But it surely’s dessert that’s the most uncommon: molotof is a rare meringue pudding, baked in a bain-marie to maintain it comfortable, slathered with a wealthy caramel sauce.
With all of the consuming, the stiff half-hour stroll forwards and backwards to the headland proves to be an excellent factor. On the day of the Tow Problem, we take the funicular as much as Sitio, gliding slowly previous the whitewashed homes that cling to the vertiginous slopes. After we arrive on the lighthouse, a number of hundred individuals are already sitting on the grassy slope above Praia do Norte, all with their gaze fastened on the surreal spectacle of towering waves bisected by a minuscule white line, as a surfer hurtles down its face.
4 hours later, when we’ve sat, unmoving, watching wave after wave, we agree it is among the most unbelievable spectacles we’ve ever seen. It helps that Nazaré remains to be not commercialised: there is no such thing as a charge to stroll out on to the headland, the place you may sit the place your like, no memento outlets or cheesy cafes. There are only a couple of makeshift stalls and a lone guitarist, sitting on the hillside singing surf-hippy songs. It strikes me that even when we had arrived to search out calm seas and small waves, it will nonetheless have been a pleasant break from the gloom of an English winter.
The journey was organised by Portuguese Vacationer Board. Lodging was offered by Emerald Home Lisbon (doubles from €133 room-only) and Lodge Maré in Nazare (doubles from €80 B&B)
