
Tales of Romans and Moorish invaders, shellfish and sea views draw me to Caçela Velha, a tiny hamlet perched on a cliff above the eastern Algarve coast, 20 kilometers (12 miles) from Portugal’s border with Spain. I have always been a history buff.
Cacela Velha’s origins date back before the Romans, when Phoenician sailors ventured along the coast. After the Romans came the Moors, attracted by the rich soils of the area and plentiful fishing along the coast.
Because of this, the Algarve has a definitely different vibe. I live in a town in central Portugal and I felt the difference as soon as I arrived in nearby Tavira.
A Poet of the Revolution
The maps app on my phone guides me down a road named after for Sophia de Mello Breyner Anderson, the poet who celebrated Portugal’s 1974 Carnation Revolution from the Salazar dictatorship with the lines that touched my heart, “Esta é a madrugada que eu esperava, o dia inicial inteiro e limpo, onde emergimos da noite e do silencio”, roughly translated it reads, “This is the dawn I longed for, the first day complete and clean, when we emerge from the night and silence”.
I park in the shade of a small olive tree. A bus stops in front of my car to disgorge a group of students of around 10 years old. On the way to the village, I pass a blackboard at the entrance to a restaurant. The message scrawled it says, ‘W.C. 5 Euros’. Luckily, I don’t need feel the call of nature.
The village is a collection of houses, mostly white and a blue the same color as the Atlantic below. Curious about the name of the road, I stop to ask at the nameless cafe beside the square. The woman who serves me the large back coffee I have learned to call ‘abatinado’, doesn’t know. However, the cafe holds another reference to the dictatorship. On the wall beside the counter, is a yellowed newspaper article from 1988 that mentions a secret meeting in the village between Salazar and the contemporary Spanish dictator, Francisco Franco.

Funeral Traditions in Portugal
As I walk around the church of Nossa Senhora da Conceicão that dominates the praça, a large silver Citroen van pulls up. I recognize it as a hearse. Four black-suited men emerge bearing flowers. In the back I can see the brown gleam of a coffin. A notice at the church entrance shows the picture of a 91-year-old man who died in Tavira two days before. Funerals happen quickly in Portugal’s hot climate.
In the corner of the praça stands an old-style public phone box sits. It serves as a free library and lo and behold, I see a book about the prehistory of the area around the Nabão, the region in central Portugal where I live.
However, I don’t have time to linger. Low tide is the best time to see the famed shellfish that emerge from the sands along the Ria Formosa beneath the town. Low tide is in one hour, according to the tide tables I consulted.
A New Use for Salt
A flight of shallow steps descends to the sand flats. Tourists speaking Dutch and German wade across the shallow waters and sand flats toward the open sea. I spot a lone man bending over the water, remove my socks and shoes and approach him. He is pouring something into the water. When I reach him, I see it is a small container of salt. Tavira is known for its nearby salt pans.
Carlos, who is from nearby Altura, explains that the salt encourages the razor clams to emerge from their holes. He demonstrates, searching for a telltale dimple in the sand, pours the salt and waits. A second later, a ripple of movement, then a slim shape pops out, he snatches it and shows me the “Lingeirão”. “They serve them with rice here,” he says.



Suddenly, a small crab, “caranguejo”, appears. He tries to snatch it while it fights him off with his claws. Finally, he grabs it and proudly shows it to me.
I continue further along the sand flat exposed at low tide, eager for a different view of the fortifications from below. The massive slope-sided walls remind me of fortifications I have seen elsewhere on the Portuguese coast, in Peniche and the Berlengas islands where a guide said they were built to repel pirates that roamed the Mediterranean and Altlantic coast.

Suddenly I spot a host of tiny sand balls scattered in front of me. Curious, I squat to peer more closely at them and see a palm-sized crab appear from a hole. All at once, the ground in front of me is moving with dozens of crabs. The balls are the detritus of sand formed by the crabs when they dug their holes.
I head back up a sandy path toward the village. A cat meets me on the way. There are always cats in Portugal.
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