Alentejo By Motorbike Ep #10 - Offroad, Urbex & Enchanted Village

Let's go, yeah Well, where were we? Ah yes, the Alentejo. On Jeff's advice, we walk along the coast on a road surrounded by forest. Suddenly, we come across a huge abandoned fort. We start by riding around to spot the places and then, let's go to the urbex. The spot is really cool and after having explored its bows from long to wide, the sun is about to end its race, so we get back on the road. We pass through the city of Setúbal where the decoration is, let's say, quite special. The dolphin, it's the smartest animal The dolphin, but it's also the most naughty With their big blue tails We stop in a nice little guesthouse. When it's really bad outside, there are always ways to find small alternatives. We don't have to visit all the Portuguese forts, we can also... Bang! Real PR! And while having a beer, we talk about our heavy load. The next day, we try to sort our stuff in our Zulupac bags and with our Tetris Master skills, we manage to put all of the black bag in our yellow bag. Loading in the rain is a program. Big improvement of the day. The black bag is totally empty. We are not lighter, but at least we seem less loaded. Well, don't think it's going to last. We only held one trip like that. The co-pilot can barely breathe given the size of the bag at the back. We have to face the obvious, we're going to have to do like the little one and sow our surplus on the road. Thanks to the kindness of Andrea and her family, they invite us to discover their little village in the Alentejo region. We are very grateful to be able to spend a few quiet nights here, but once again, our plans will not go as planned. Our stay in Entradas was rather surprising, let's say. 14 days that we are going to count in 4 acts. The first week in Entradas is rather special. We discover this small village of 700 inhabitants without meeting a single one. We wander in this magnificent colorful hammock with a peaceful and at the same time strange feeling. The streets are empty, the places are empty. We feel alone in the world. We pretend to be alone, but in fact we are not alone, there are cars here. We walk around on foot with Falkor to discover this beautiful region a little more and immerse ourselves in the places. Well, don't think we're just walking around either. We also spend days and evenings in the kitchen to advance our videos and projects. We also have to send a lot of pretty heavy video files online, so we will spend a long time switching between the 3G from the square in front of the church and the library of the village where we will really have the impression of having a pleasant time travel with old machines still running on Windows XP. It's sent! This is how we send slightly heavy files. Then, an event has totally changed the mood. Luis and Paola, Andrea's parents and by the way the owner of the house, arrive at their home. There, everything changes. The doors open, the languages ​​unravel, the invitations rain and the village of Entrada opens to us. We are invited to discover these typical houses as well as a part of their inhabitants who share a piece of their stories with us. We go from one home to another and try to understand the links that unite all these beautiful people and families. Most of them know Switzerland well and it makes us smile to sometimes cross the registration plates of our little country here. There is the menu and his wife who offers us the aperitif with their homemade wine. And in the local bar, Luis offers us honey from Joaquim Martins, the beekeeper who exploits the hives that belonged to Luis's father. And also Isabella, the grocer to whom we arouse curiosity by our way of consuming and our refusal of plastic bags. Of course, Filomena and her husband Enrique who welcomed us, kissed us and will even help us improve our SW Motec bags to add two hooks to it and thus transform it into a backpack when we have to take it with us. We will end the day at the village museum where we discover the history of the village in which Luis's family plays a major role. In short, lots of beautiful day and night encounters. One evening around 11 p.m., Vera arrives with her friend Manuela to show us something special. We drive through the village for 3 minutes and we stop in front of a large building that seems abandoned. We enter and here we are at the paradise of greed. It reminds us of the good memories of the end of the evening where we would fill ourselves with fat and sugar before having a well-deserved meal. Fat is life. A friend of the family offers us one day to go and discover where she works. Intrigued, we accept and slowly here we are in the middle of thousands of olive trees. We are not dealing here with a small local producer but with an intensive production. You can imagine that it is not something that we encourage but it is always interesting to discover the backstage behind the products that we all consume on a daily basis. We are therefore carried away by the different stages and aspects of the production of olive oil in this huge Portuguese company producing for Spain. We often have a hard time following the economic logics that take the lead of ecological and local needs and that make it a matter of irony that in the local grocery store we find olive oil from Spain. It makes me ask a lot of questions to tell me that each country exports in another instead of consuming the product at home. Business business. Here is Vincent's child's soul who could not resist the call of ... Flash info, we have the corona. Natha doesn't feel very well and we learn that we have been in contact with positive cases. It is the heat of the Sahara that joins us. Listen Natha of the past, 3 months later you are in the Sahara and frankly you are not ready. We lock ourselves in the room so that she can rest and I feel the sword of Damocles above my head. I therefore decide, like a prisoner sentenced to death, to give myself one last moment of fun before I too am nailed to the bed. I go on horseback and explore the surroundings of Entradas in search of off-road tracks. I'm really not an off-road expert and I really learn every day. This day allowed me to do a good training for the crossing of puddles or rivers. Finally, as you can see, it rather allowed me to know if I could pick up the bike alone in the mud. In short, the landscapes are superb, the track is really cool and I take full advantage of it before I gradually feel the fatigue coming. We will stay locked in our room for 3 days with the only distraction of observing through the window the merciless war that is waged by the Irondelles and Moineaux on the church square. We take advantage of our forced rest to concoct a little joke of April 1st on Insta. We start first with some old travel photos at the airport. And we continue with the photo of an abandoned club in Portugal with the theme of the pyramids. We add a few images from Google and finally an old photo of 2 million in Morocco and rejoice everything. Result, 66% of the people fall into the banner and even today we continue to receive messages with questions about our trip to Egypt. After a few days of rest, we are finally ready to start the adventure again. Thank you very much to the Costa Matos family for opening the doors of their house and their village. We pack our things and load Falkor and we are finally going down to the Algarve. When nothing is planned, everything is possible and this is largely thanks to the encounters that the trip puts on our road. We are really attracted by the south and the ocean after these few cool months in the north that marked our first nomadic winter on the road. We then drive south and try to imagine where we would like to spend our next winter. But all this is another story.