Portugal, a pooch & a couple of crazy kitties - March 2019

Abondoned boat, Peniche

We left Spain in a Landrover Freelander we had purchased off a Brit expat.  It was an exceptionally good deal so we were a little apprehensive as to it's reliability!

We were headed for our next sit in Portugal and were all geared up for as much camping as we could manage around the weather.  We noticed the roads change considerably once we crossed the border.  They were a lot narrower and windier.  The Portuguese also have a smart way of keeping speed down through the villages.  Instead of judder bars or humps they have a set of traffic lights on the approach to each village and if your speed is too high they go amber then red and you have to stop and sit there like an idiot till the light goes green.  Not sure that the locals take any notice of them, but we were quick learn.

Just over the border we stopped at a campground for the night and pitched our tent for the first time.  We wondered up to the supermarket to purchase our favourite camping food .... cooked chicken (or similar), yummy crusty bread and a bag of salad.

We caught ourselves feeding the 'resident'
campground cats

The next day we headed for Lisbon.  We wouldn't normally  stay in the city but James had a medical appointment booked for his visa application to New Zealand.  With all his research he had discovered the medical was A LOT cheaper done here than in the UK, and as we were passing by it seemed logical to stop a night for this purpose.

The route we took into Lisbon took in the Vasco da Gama, one of the longest bridges in Europe.

We parked the car on a hill, and with some difficulty, outside our hostal then walked down to a local cafe for coffee and Portugese custard tarts :-)

Listening to the locals speaking in the cafe we wondered why they seemed to be speaking Russian.  They weren't!  After nearly a year floating around Spanish speaking countries we weren't quite prepared for the very marked difference that is the Portuguese language.  It is a lot more guttural and harsh than Spanish.  Not to mention the fact that we didn't speak a word of it.  Not to worry.  The Portuguese seemed a lot less 'tourist weary' than the Spanish and were very patient with us during our attempts at making ourselves understood.

Whilst speaking with the home owners we were to sit for north of Lisbon they had mentioned that the roads of Lisbon were a nightmare to negotiate.  How hard could this be, we thought.  We are often in the position of finding our way around unfamiliar territory and besides, we have Google Maps!  Hmmm, this place turned out to be another level tricky all together.  It seems they have built roads on top of each other that present a challenge to any online map app.  Finding the medical centre the next day turned into a comedy involving ending up in a tourist bus car park with the map trying to send us up a curb and over a bank, while a gaggle of bus drivers were trying to wave us out of their patch.  We pulled the 'dumb tourist' card and beat a hasty retreat ..... by road, not bank.

The view of Lisbon from our hostal

Our next stop was the gorgeous seaside resort town of Peniche, home to some of the best surfing in Portugal.  We pitched our tent in the local campground for a couple of nights and enjoyed walking the coast and streets of Peniche,  all the time thankful that we were here off-season.

There are sea walls around the harbour and leading to and from the two adjacent lighthouses.  A walk around them is a must.

Not to mention standing idly, gazing out to sea

The breakwaters along the walls are fascinating in themselves.

And, of course, a perfect canvas for the local artists!

The wall around the centre of town is pretty impressive too, seen here in the background.

Inside the fort walls

We even ventured out on a fishing expidition late one afternoon, having spotted some decent sized fish while walking.  We spoke with a German guy from the campground who fishes at Peniche every year.  We didn't catch anything but we never view time spent 'not catching' as a waste of time.

The ladder down to our fishing spot

During our walk around the town we came across the 'local' indoor food market where we stopped for a very cheap and cheerful cup of coffee, much to the owners delight.  He ran around trying to find something to play on the TV while his wife made the coffee.  We suspect they don't get a lot of tourists drinking their coffee.  They are more likely to frequent the trendy coffee shops on the high street.

At the local supermarket we found some delicious looking pastries called Feijaos.  In NZ a Feijoa is a popular edible fruit that hails from South America originally.  We love them.  So we bought the pastries thinking they may have just misspelt the name.  Ah, NO.  These were bean (as in legume!) paste sweet pastries.  Wrong on so many levels but the locals love them and .... waste not, want not, we ate them.

Our housesit was on the Atlantic coast at a rather famous golf resort, the Praia del Rey.  What a wonderful coast line this is.  Much more interesting than the calm waters of the Med!

Our charges were Coco, the elderly Labrador

Ari cat

And Little, the crazy cat!

As a house/pet sit, this would rate as one of the easier we have done.  As it was off-season, we pretty much had no neighbours .... apart from the English yobos who came to stay for a week at "Daddy's" holiday home.  Coco didn't require much walking so we went on several small jaunts a day, accompanied by the kitties of an evening.  Little took a little while to come round (as some cats do), but once she did she became a constant source of amusement.

This is her giving James what-for because
he was taking too long with her dinner :-)

Ari was pretty chilled all of the time ......

And, although Coco was old and slow, she still like to dance around the yard at times.

We enjoyed the local food A LOT.  The breads and cheeses from the local market in Obidos were cheap and extremely good.

The displays at the supermarket rather amused us.

And we finally found our beloved quail at a reasonable cost.  James got to it and created a masterpiece for dinner.

We never did figure our what their obsession with salted fish is though.  And we never did try it, which is not like us.  It just looks wholeheartedly unappealing.  We even spotted a ceramic salted fish in a souvenir shop.  What's with that!

We went fishing one day down at the inlet.  Again we failed to catch, but neither were any of the locals.

But mostly we just enjoyed the peace and tranquillity of the lovely home and the companionable pets.

This photo was taken through the window as we arrived
home one day.  Coco isn't really supposed to be on the
furniture ;-) 

Oh, and some knitting by Clare too :-)

Portugal, we loved you!  We will be back sometime.

Saving Scooby .... and hopefully Vinny too!

One of the (only) heartbreaking things we come across on our travels around the world, is the way animals are treated in some less 'developed' countries.  Having just come away from six months in South America we saw so many street dogs in such terrible condition.   These countries aren't able to look after their poor people, let alone manage the stray dog population and the problems it brings.  If a dog is lucky (?) enough to have a home it is generally for security and it is common that they are chained up at the property or fenced into an avocado (or similar) orchard and rarely, if ever, let free or given much human affection.  They are also generally not well fed, not provided with shots, flea and tick treatment etc.  They are also not treated as pets and certainly not as part of the 'family'

 It is not often we stay somewhere long enough to become involved in the really sad cases but an extra long sit in the south of Spain provided just such an opportunity.  When we first arrived at the sit we were kept pretty busy with the two dogs and four cats we were caring for.  However, we did notice a very scared wee dog had moved into the no-mans-land between our property and the neighbour's on the quiet rural road where we were.   He remained there until he found a hidey-hole in the basement underneath the neighbour's house.  Many Spanish people are scared of dogs and behave aggressively toward them if they consider them to be a nuisance.  Fortunately not our neighbour, who let the dog stay and provided him with shelter, at least. 

Halfway through our sit the homeowners, of the place we were house and pet sitting, returned and collected the two dogs and their camper van and headed for the UK for a couple of months.   This left us at a loose doggy-end and we were able to turn our full attention to the problem of the little dog that had moved in next door.

We called him Scabby (and later Scooby) as he had a terrible looking skin condition that we initially thought may have been mange.  We had been feeding him daily for a few weeks and continued doing so in an attempt to win him over so that we could handle him and get him treated.  The neighbours have two small dogs of their own and, not only were we worried that all the neighbourhood dogs were at risk of infection, but whatever was wrong with him was making him miserable.  He was also very, very afraid of human contact which led us to believe he had been treated really badly by humans for most of his wee life.

Some time during this period of befriending Scooby, a gorgeous Podenco pup moved in with him.  It quickly became apparent that he, too, was a homeless waif.  We called him Skinny (for obvious reasons!), later changing it to Vinny.  Unlike Scoobs, he was full of character with a larger than life personality and playful enough for us to assume he was still a pup.  Like Scooby, he was also very wary of human contact.

Vinny

Morning feed routine

When it became apparent we were running out of time to catch Scooby before we were to be moving on, we went to the local vet to see if they could give us some broad spectrum oral medication, that could be slipped into his food, for control of the pests that were harbouring in his fur.  He was starting to lose the hair on his body too.  The vet didn't want to prescribe anything (understandably) without diagnosis but gave us the fortuitous idea to contact the local rescue center, Axarquia Animal Rescue (AAR).  

We made an impassioned email plea for Scooby's rescue, providing lots of photographic evidence of his ill health.  And it worked!   The committee made the decision to provide the medical care he needed IF we could catch him. 

Our first plan was to sedate him with Calmivet pills provided by the vet.  People use them to calm their dogs for long car journeys.  This didn't work so well when we failed to give the medication long enough to take effect (relying on the information provided by the vet nurse!) and tried to catch him in a blanket.  We abandoned the project when he became too distressed, for fear of losing his trust completely.  He wasn't particularly fazed though and came straight away for his breakfast the next morning.  All was forgiven.

To cut a loooong story short, we ended up borrowing a carry cage and dog trap from AAR. We decided to bait the trap with his favourite food, boiled chicken, during his normal feed time. Instead of setting the trip mechanism, which would be quite scary for him, James tied some fishing line to the door, stood out of site on a wall above the trap and gently let it close when he went in for his chicken.  He hardly reacted at all and sat quietly while we all took a deep breath.  (This makes it sound easy.  It was not!  There was a lot more planning involved to ensure our success and the least possible stress on Scoobs.)

Off to the vet we all went, Scooby making no fuss at all which surprised us.  He stayed the weekend having all manner of immediate treatments and blood tests.  On the Monday we received the call to pick him up and take him to a local shelter way out in the country.  When we picked him up we couldn't believe how much better he was already looking!  The shelter, Sam and Jo's Doggy Ranch was going to be the perfect place for Scooby's recovery.  He had a lovely big kennel, with a day bed   AND a night bed and lots of love heading his way.

Peace at last!  Scoobs as we introduce him
to his first home

During this process we had also asked AAR if they would be able to find Vinny a forever home so he too could look forward to a better life.  Their response was that the Spanish didn't much care for Podencos, they were all too common in the Spain.   They were not meaning to be unhelpful, but resources are tight and it was Scooby who really needed the intervention on offer.

The day after we dropped Scooby off at his new hotel, we received the delightful news that AAR were offering to help Vinny too.  The neighbours were delighted when we went to tell them as Vinny was making a mess of their yard with his chewing and playful adventures.  Weirdly enough, Vinny succumbed to being picked up in Clare's arms and put into the carry case without any fuss at all.  We were expecting to have to go through the trap fiasco again.  It was almost as if both these babies knew that whilst it was a little scary initially, they would eventually be better off!

Outside the vets, waiting for the fleas to vacate
so we can get back in the car

A quick trip to the vet to deal with his fleas, ticks, worms and blood tests and we were off to reunite him with his buddy.  He was impeccably behaved throughout and again made no fuss during the half hour journey to the shelter.

A little bit shy

The two amigos together again

Scooby was delighted to see both us and Vinny and made an approach for affection for the first time ever in the months we had been feeding him.  Heart melting moment right there!

That wee smile on his face :-)

Butter wouldn't melt ;-)

We stayed long enough to put on their first ever collars.  They seemed really happy, especially to be back together.

We were delighted to be able to move on from here with a feeling of great relief that these worthy pups were receiving the help they so desperately needed.  We feel very privileged to have met these two adorable souls and wish them all the very best for the future.

A video of the lads venturing out of their room for the first time :-)

POST SCRIPTS

Scooby's blood results came back positive for Leishmaniasis, a nasty infection responsible for his skin condition.  Very common in Spain, it is carried by the common sandfly.   He will be on a pill a day for the rest of his life. He was also infected with heart-worm, carried by the mosquito, for which he would take a heavy dose of medication over a seven week period.  All paid for by AAR - Legends!

We are awaiting clearance for Vinny's blood tests, and all going well, he will hopefully be headed for a forever home in the Netherlands :-)

Oh, and the biggest surprise of all was discovering that Vinny was a girl!!!!

POST POST SCRIPT

Vinny's name has been changed to Minnie and her blood tests came back all clear.

Enjoying their rawhide chews at the 'Hilton'

Gorgeous girl

Heart breaker

Andalucia Part 2 - Jan/Feb 2019

The city of Granada as seen from the highest point of Alhambra

The best thing about the start 2019 for us was a visit by James's sister, Louise.  Fortunately, Lou is an animal lover too (having a number of her own at a small holding in the UK) because these guys weren't holding anything back ....

We spent a large amount of the week relaxing in the sun by the pool ... Louise even went for a couple of swims at a rather cool 12degrees C!!!!

Titus even has his own poolside chair.  We joke about him being up early to put his towel on it :-)

We walked on the beach, of course.  Tiffany was extra pleased about this, as always.

From the pool deck we have been seeing a village perched on the very top of a mountain in the distance.  We finally found out the name of if from an Australian woman we met in the dog park and decided to take a trip to it.  What a treat Comares turned out to be.  Parking is at the entranceway to the village, no vehicle access.

We walked to the top of the village to enjoy the views.

And the artwork in the square

Then found a fabulous cafe back at the bottom to enjoy coffee in the courtyard.

Rose between two thorns .... !!!

A view of the mountains on the way up

Not long after Lou went home, our home owners returned for a few days, leaving again for the UK in their campervan .... taking 'our' Lily and Tiffany with them. It was a really strange time.  Usually it is us that leaves a sit and we miss the pets for a few days.  So staying behind while we waved the doggies off was extra sad.  Fortunately we were left with our four kitties to keep us company for the rest of the sit.

So, to turn lemons in lemonade, so to speak, we took the opportunity to do some fishing.  We had already identified that Tiffany was not the sort of dog to enjoy sitting on the beach for a few hours so had saved this particular activity for after her departure.  Lily would have coped well with it though, realising every opportunity to welcome fellow beach goers with her trademark enthusiasm.

James in his happy place

One evening, we were entertained by the guys flying over head on their motor propelled paragliders.
The other interesting story behind this picture, is that in the background you can see a baby grand piano on the waters edge.  A Swedish film crew had carried it down and was filming an elegant young woman in an evening dress sitting at it.  Rather cool temperature that this kind of carry on!

We also found the port at Velez de Caleta where we spent a few evenings lure fishing .... with more success than our beach fishing.

Octopus

Cuttlefish

Disclaimer: no sea creature was harmed on the performance of these activities.  They all went back to live another day (or more).

Another activity we left for our dog free time, because we would need to be away for a whole day, was a journey to Granada to visit the Alhambra.  We have spoken before about our aversion to tourist destinations, but this is another of those famous sites that we couldn't be so close to and not visit.  It was quite thought provoking to be standing in a collection of buildings around 700 years old.

And what a view from the highest tower ....

Snow capped mountains

One of the most intriguing sights was this Bathing House

And this little cutie wishing he wasn't so averse to water ;-)

Here are the rest of the photos .....

We came home from Granada via the back roads so that we could drive through the Zafarraya Pass, another Andalucian landmark that we can see from our house here.  We love any opportunity to drive through the middle of the country rather than the motorways, and although it took us twice as long to get home, the journey did not disappoint. Driving through the pass itself (more a gap really) was less spectacular than the roads leading to and from it.

One of the most charming things about the approaching spring in Andalusia were the almond trees coming into blossom.

And the abundance of citrus available.

Making fresh orange juice

Both properties we were caring for were on the market so we spent some time keeping them clean and tidy for showings.

Clearing the steps down to the poolroom

There was always plenty of time for playing hide and seek with Maribel

Enjoying the view with/of Titus

 And two at a time tummy tickles with Cleo and Delilah at Bambu

We have only a couple of weeks more to enjoy this fabulous area.  As usual we will leave with a of sadness at leaving the furbies we have come to love so tinged with the excitement for our next adventure.  Portugal, are you ready for us?!?!?!