August 1 - Salema, Portugal

Praia de Salema

The rocky end of the beach

The jumping rock

The Walls go paddle-boating!

            This morning we all slept in late. We ate breakfast and hung around playing cards and backgammon until about 11. Then we got our beach stuff ready for the day and headed down to the beach. We bought one of those umbrellas the beach has set up with chairs underneath, 10 euros for the whole day, quite a deal. It wasn’t that warm out yet, seeing as it was only like 11:30 so the water was kind of chilly, but it felt good. I don’t really like swimming in salt water because every time you swim to the surface you have salt in your mouth and you have to wipe your eyes in order not to get water in them.

Yesterday Ryan, Trevor and I walked out towards all the rocks looking for a good place to jump in the water. We found a good rock but this morning since the tide was out, it wasn’t a good one to jump off of. The sky was so blue, there were no clouds to be seen and the weather was warming up too, it was a very nice day. We’ve seen a lot of people playing beach paddle board, where 2 people each have a paddle and hit a rubber ball back and forth. We swam and hung around until about 1 and then we rented one of the paddle rafts. They are pretty much paddle boats wheels and a slide. We paddled out really far, to the point where when I jumped from the top of the slide I couldn’t even touch the bottom. It was really fun we dove off the side, slid off the slide and jumped from the top. We got an hour and then we had to go back in. While paddling back in, instead of sitting on the boat, I hung onto the ladder on the back. About halfway there I climbed on and did one last slide off the slide and then swam back to the beach. After that we walked back up to our apartment and ate lunch. We had peanut butter and jelly, nectarine and Pringles for lunch. After lunch we went back to the beach where we hung out for the rest of the day.

Ryan, Trevor and I went back to the rocks and found an even better one to jump off of. The waves over there were huge and they would come crashing into the rocks and splash whoever was standing on top of the rock. When you were on top of the rock, you waited until a big wave came towards you and then jumped into the wave, then you waited for a wave to push you back onto the rock. It was really fun! At around 5 we were done beaching and went back. We snacked on red peppers, carrots, cheese and crackers while we made some noodles and everyone showered. Our dinner was supposed to be noodles with red sauce but after the sauce was done heating up my dad tried it and it tasted like acid. I didn’t try it, but it smelled so gross. So instead we just had plain noodles with Italian salad dressing. It was kind of gross. After dinner we headed over to the bar next door and paid 50 euro cents for 13 foosball balls. Ryan and Trevor were on a team and Dad and I were a team. My dad and I beat them. After some foosball and darts we headed home for the night.

Katie