First stop in Portugal is Faro in the south. I'm here with Gabrielle and Ness. Maybe I should say something about my companions seeing as how I am going to be travelling with them a while longer (we have rented a car and will be spending 2 weeks driving to the north of Portugal). Gabrielle is kinda crazy, but in a good way. Full of energy and very outgoing. Definitely fun to travel with, though potentially exhausting at times. Ness is from England but hasn't actually lived there for about a decade. She has been all over the place, living around a teaching English. She even has a 5 year plan to open a hostel in Bali. I'm really looking forward to going on a road trip with these two. Both seasoned travellers and I think both are going to help me have some experiences I wouldn't otherwise have which is always what I'm looking for.

Maybe I'll start this entry in Seville though. That was where I flew back to from Morocco and also where I met Ness (and her Mum) and caught back up with Gabrielle. After a couple of days of lounging around waiting from Gabrielle only to find she was already there (staying in the same hostel) we finally met up one night and went out for some dinner and drinks. We went out, also with Ness and her Mum, and had some awesome food. We ordered dishes of honey coated fried eggplant, chicken filled with bacon and cheese, some meat dish of some sort, and quail eggs. Gorram was it good. The eggplant especially, that stuff is amazing. But boy did we get far too much. The dishes were slightly larger than we expected (especially given the price) and we just simply got too many of them. As we were leaving we saw a couple at the table just across just realising they had made the same mistake as the first few dishes came to their table. We shared a good laugh over that. Then we went back to the hostel and played a drinking game I had learned of back in Vienna.

The game was Horse Races. Very simple game where you place a bet in drinks on one of the 4 aces. The aces then race moving forward when their suite comes out of the deck. The winners get to pay out double of what they drank at the start. We were drinking Tinto which is kind of a carbonated version of Sangria, then later moved on to beer. We were making plenty of noise cheering for our "horses" which we had named 'Hemorrhoids', 'Hemorrhoids Cream', 'My Little Pony' and Humpty Dumpty. So much noise in fact that some other people in the hostel decided to come and see what the fuss was about and joined in. After we ran out of booze in the hostel it was time to move into town. I don't really remember all the details of that night exactly. At one point there was a guy in a shark costume trying to get us to go to a club, but we had to pay to get in, so we went to a bar instead. I have no idea what time we go home, probably something like 4 or 5am. Unfortunately the next day was the day we were catching a bus to Faro. I don't like busses at the best of times, so doing it while hungover wasn't exactly something I was looking forward to.

We've been in Faro for a few days now and it's mostly been quite relaxing. The first day obviously was a bit of recovery after that last day in Seville. Quite surprised I made the bus trip pretty well intact to be honest. But the next day we caught a speed boat to a small island off the coast which had a nice seashell beach. From the dropoff point there is a wooden boardwalk going along one side of the island and then across to the beach. We walked the whole thing and then back along the beach which was a nice walk. And at the end we stopped at the only restaurant on the island and had some lunch and a couple of beers. The girls all collected a bunch of shells and Gabrielle in all her craziness chose instead to pick up a bunch of beach junk including rocks and string and other bits and pieces. We had to get the ferry back, but it was OK, the sea was calm.

Yesterday we went to a Carnaval parade in a town 40 minutes from here called Loule. It was pretty crazy. It was your pretty standard parade in that there were floats going around a circuit down the main road and back up again around and around. But it was the nature of the floats which made it somewhat different than what you'd expect to see back home. It's hard to put into words really, and most of the floats appeared to have some kinda political theme which you probably need to live here to understand. But it was one float in particular with scantily clad women and men and one nude woman which caught our eyes I guess you could say. This was a perfectly family friendly event based on the fact that plenty of families and kids were in attendance. Gotta love how free Europe is like this.

We also had a bit of fun with the confetti and streamers being thrown everywhere. We had gotten ourselves some beers which were served in plastic cups, so with confetti flying everywhere our beers were in danger. We were standing in front of the crowds along the side of the roads and it seemed as though the people on floats were aware of our weakness and would aim their confetti and streamers for the beer. Now remember how I said Gabrielle was a little crazy? Well she decided it would be a hilarious idea to grab a handful of confetti from a kid on one of the floats and put it straight into my beer when I wasn't looking. I only had a quarter of a cup or so left anyway though. But I got her back by pouring what was left of my beer into hers along with all the confetti. She continued to drink it despite the beer turning blue which she will tell you now wasn't the greatest of ideas. This morning we were still finding confetti in our clothes and on the floor and over our beds.