I spent some of Tuesday morning visiting the Parque Natural da Ria Formosa, which was beautiful, fascinating and entirely too hot. This is always the difficulty with nature reserves in southern Portugal, they contain wonderful landscapes, wildlife, salt marshes, mudflats and lots of crabs, as well as the quiet sense that one is somewhere ecologically important, but they also contain the sun, which can be rather insistent and, frankly, sub-optimal.
There was, however, a glorious two-minute period when it poured with rain and everything suddenly became lovely. The air cooled, the path freshened up and I briefly felt content with the weather arrangements. Then, naturally, it stopped, the sun returned and the whole landscape resumed to being too hot. But, full credit to the local authorities, they’ve created a long boardwalk and it made the whole area much more accessible.
Anyway, that’s enough weather narrative, so some photos….
