Up the river

 Started the day as late as possible, defined by breakfast availability and checkout times. After packing up and performing the aforementioned we loaded ourselves into a prebooked van and headed to the airport to pick up our own wheels to journey up the river. Based onvhge advice if the hire car dude we started off heading to the beach and thus followed the river from the mouth to the Pinhao -  way upstream.

This actually meant we ended up spending more than an hour diving though the the same areas we had treaked two days earlier. All good though as we were not in any particular hurry and so took the scenic route which turned a 2 hour trip into a 4 and a half one. Nick studiously at the wheel squeezing the oversized jalopy through some seriously tight gaps whilst Blogger navigated and recorded the journey. The girls sat in the back soaking up the unfolding vista's.
The Douro river is extraordinary. The geographical juxpositions were sorted. Basically the entire country is mountains, from the desert plains of Spain to the sea, the river carves it's way though them in spectacular style.
Evidence of mankind's dominance of the landscape is everywhere. Mostly is the significant engineering which makes the river a series of lakes due to the installation of dams. These have locks which allow the cruise boats to pass through them. We passed one which actually had the boat in the lock. Lots of peeps stopped to watch so it looked like something that may not happen on  a frequent basis. We didn’t stop, we were on a mission.
Today is Sunday so everything is really quiet, especially the roads, tomorrow being the national public holiday it probably makes it even quieter. Luckily,  as the scenic route took a long time with only a couple of tardy tourists in front of us.

The river winds its picturesque way through the mountains with signs of civilization dotted along both banks. Small village after small village adorn its sides. Most of them not tourist related and therefore looking all the better for it. All the locals appear well dressed, suspect this is due to it being Sunday. Some villages have marinas, given the engineering feats it looks like the levels don't change that often so they effectively live next to lakes. We stopped off at a local Cafe for break and coffee hit. Pretty sure by the time we wereleaving the locals were ok with us being there. Power lines criss cross the valleys and hills indicating wind and hydro electricity is being generated in abundance. There is green foliage in abundance with tropical rainforest complexity as we started off, the appearance of eucalyptus (obviously imported in order to feed the saw mills) and as we rose higher and higher grape vines started to dominate. By the time we reached Pinhao they are everywhere. This hills are manicured terraces enabling the vines to be tended to. This is where all the port is made. Eventually shipped down to Porto for aging in the long term storage that we experienced the day before. Luckily some of it makes its way back up here in bottles as well. A couple more hours upstream and we'd be in the desert in Spain, so you can see the climate is changing as we head towards it. Weird that the higher we go the mobre sparse and hotter it gets.

Our accommodation is seemingly brand new and very luxurious, our hosts can't speak English and we can't speak Portuguese. It's kinda wierd how we get by.
Wandered down into the apparently deserted town for dinner and were extremely successful in snagging a great table with wonderful food as the sun sank below the high hill tops.

The walk home in the fading light was pleasant,  taking yet more pictures of the Romanesque bridge that dominates the views from our accommodation.