Ilha Deserta, or Desert Island

Today we took the boat from Faro to Barreta, otherwise given the more gimmicky and touristy name of Ilha Deserta or Desert Island. The island is the southernmost tip of Portugal and is situated on the Atlantic Icean, at the mouth of the Ria Formosa river.


The river itself is a sanctuary, a national park, that supports a variety of wildlife. I got the impression that the wildlife has been growing steadily since the area was declared a national park. From the boat we managed to see some storks, terns, crabs, and other wildlife though to be honest it was quite sporadic and nowhere near as abundant as in the pictures in the flyers. That may have been due to seasonal fluctuations or anything really, but it was still okay. We saw a fisherman wading through the mud, the guide reckoned he would have been after oysters or clams.


We wre lucky that the weather was really good again today. It was warm and the breeze from the Atlantic was cool but not cold or strong. The beach was beautiful, several kilometres of it, and mostly there was no one there. Marianne decided to walk around the island. I walked for a couple of kilometres but decided that swimming was a far better option for me.

T
he sea was calm and the sun was out. Being the Atlantic I was expecting it to be petrifyingly cold, and as I'm a complete chicken when it comes to cold water I feared I wasn't going to get past wading in. I was wrong, the water was lovely. It did take a minute or two to adjust but not long, and it was beautiful.



I did eventually catch up with Marianne again. I found the boardwalk that takes you down to the southernmost tip of the island (and therefore Portugal), the Cape of Santa Maria. I came across Marianne on the boardwalk coming the other way, so we figured the cape was a good place to take our photos.


We finished the day off with another beautiful meal. I had a veal dish called a
picanha that comes from Brazil and Marianne had a beautiful piece of fish. Huge meal with starter, 2 beers and a coffee each, and we would have got change out of E30 had I not left it as a tip. It was an excellent way of reducing the pain from the woeful and embarrassing demolition of the Socceroos about the Germans, and that's all I have to say about that!