Day 9 (Thursday, October 7, 2021)
Costs for the Day are in the Table below:
Woke up at 6:30am today, made some scrambled eggs and toast with jam along with a coffee. Then I backed up my gear and surfboard and headed over to catch the ONDA bus from Lagos to Meia Praia. The bus schedule is here but they go about every hour starting from Lagos at 7:56am if you are going towards Meia Praia. If you go the other way out to Praia de Porto de Mos it starts at 7:22am from Lagos. I wanted to see if there were waves at Meia Praia and also to check out the beach since I had not been there before.
The bus was on time, clean and fairly fast. I would recommend it highly. The drivers were also nice even though I did not know the process and they let me take my surfboard on as well. Cost: 1.2 EUR each way and you just pay the driver in cash.
Meia Praia beach is long and wide and beautiful in the morning! Unfortunately, the waves were tiny.
Note the miniscule waves above. So, I checked out the beach for a while and then hopped on the bus back to Lagos.
Back at the apartment, I ate lunch – a burger Bi had made from yesterday for dinner. It was still quite delicious! Thanks Bi! FYI: Bi was out for a lunch meetup with an Expat group at Poke Lagos.
Then I did some more research on the wave situation.
Praia do Luz showed the above on Surf-Forecast.com (3.5ft -5ft waves, good energy, and minimal wind) so I packed my gear up again and headed out to catch the #4 Amarela bus to Praia do Luz.
Google maps seems to do a very good job on the ONDA bus schedules and locations so I will use that going forwards.
The bus was on time and clean again. The photo of the route and the inside of the bus is above. In my opinion, the buses here seem very good.
Soon I arrived at Praia do Luz!
Praia do Luz is a nice little beach with several cute restaurants overlooking the ocean. There were a few surfers on the left side of the beach so I tried that first. The waves would have been sufficient size but they broke right onto the beach so I only took one wave and nearly ran aground.
I noticed some surfers way out by the rocky point on the very far left side of the beach. You can’t really see it in the photo. The beach ends into the cliffs and they were quite a ways out after that. So, I grabbed my gear and moved it to the very far left end of the beach where it turns into rocks.
There was another guy at the end of the beach there so I asked how high it gets at high tide. He said he wasn’t sure but that he was about to paddle out as well and figured he could paddle back in time if the tide got too high. He suggested I put my backpack in my surf bag to weigh it down and so collecting it all would be easier if the tide did come all the way up. It seemed like a good suggestion so I did it and then grabbed my board and paddled out near the point. There were only a few surfers there and the waves were nice and clean but broke somewhat close to the rocks at times. Anyway, I caught some good waves so I was feeling good. You had to pick the larger waves that broke further out but you could take the wave to the right and far enough away from the rocky shoreline that it didn’t feel too sketchy. I did take one a bit close though and had to jump off into the wave face.
The other guy had paddled out as well and after a while it was just the two of us as the other surfers went in. I found out his name was Robin and that he is French but lives in Portugal for the moment and only 30 minutes away. When we came back in to the beach later, we exchanged information and agreed to try to meet up for a surf again.
Excited at having found a decent surf spot fairly close, I packed up my gear and headed back over to the bus stop.
I took the #4 Amarela line back to Lagos and then walked back to the apartment
Above is an ornate blue house I walked past on my way home from the bus stop. I thought it looked quite striking in the sunshine and against the blue sky.
In the evening, we went out for a date to Empanadas & Co.
I had the spicy chicken and spicy beef empanadas. Bi had two vegetarian empanadas and a salad. For dessert, we had the Maca e Canela (Apple and Cinnamon) empanada with vanilla ice cream. It was delicious!
After dinner we strolled home and checked out some more of the nearby streets.
