Hitchhiking Along the Mediterranean
I just got back from six months of travelling the world, starting in Europe this summer. In that time, you probably saw roughly one million Instagram stories of the Eiffel Tower or some beach in Italy. And have been lectured by your sophomore year roommate about how different they are after studying abroad. Now don’t get me wrong, I love to see and hear about any kind of travel or adventure. But I also think there is something to be said from getting off the beaten path occasionally.
So, that’s where I’ll start this blog, forcing myself off the beaten path, this time in the form of hitchhiking. After landing in Lisbon, falling in love with the city, and taking a bus south to Lagos. My sister, Lydia, and I wanted to explore more of southern Portugal. The only issue was public transport didn’t connect the places we wanted to visit. So, we figured maybe some nice strangers heading the same way could pick us up.
After riding a bus east, away from Lagos, we arrived at a bus station, still another thirty-minute drive from the coast. We checked the map for the general direction and started walking. After an hour or so with our thumbs out and some odd looks, we were in the back of a BMW driven by a very friendly Dutchman.
Just to preface, all actions in this story were performed by professionals. No seriously, hitchhiking has some obvious dangers, if you choose to do so, use sound judgement, and bring a friend.
But in my opinion, the beaches of Portugal are worth getting kidnapped over. Joking. But the southern coastline, called The Algarve, really is a special place. It’s lined with sea caves, isolated beaches, and bougee fishing towns. We spent the day walking along the cliffs, finally arriving at the famous Benagil cave. If you’re ever in the area, this popular tourist attraction totally lives up to the hype.
We spent the rest of the afternoon on a Portuguese backroad in hopes of reaching a campground we had been told about. Eventually, we get picked up by a Spanish man and his grandmother who spoke some basic English. Using our high school Spanish (finally), we started talking and get this: they’re staying at the same exact campground we were planning on. Seemed like fate, and we spent the night practicing Spanish con dos nuevos amigos.
That next day would become one of the most memorable of my whole trip, although I didn’t know this at the time. We ended up travelling by almost every means imaginable enroute to Seville, Spain. The journey by car should take someone roughly two and a half hours, but after catching 4 rides, an uber, a boat, and a bus, it took us eighteen hours.
The morning began with a lot of waiting, but we finally caught a ride with a man from Amsterdam. That was short lived as he was travelling elsewhere and dropped us off at a traffic circle. We soon learned these are very difficult places to get a ride from. Around noon, two local women who hitchhiked the same road decades earlier, empathetically picked us up. They drove us to the town of Faro, Portugal, and its train station, where tickets were sold out.
So, stuck in Faro and feeling a bit discouraged and tired, we regrouped at McDonald’s. A Portuguese Big Mac later we were ready to get back on the road. Hitchhiking out of a town is difficult because most people aren’t leaving town; even fewer are going in the direction you need.
With that in mind, we took an uber to the outskirts of town, unfortunately at another traffic circle. Slowed by our thirty-pound backpacks, we crossed traffic, trying to find the best spot. In our most difficult position yet, we didn’t even get a bite for two hours. But after one “Sorry no room”, the very next car to pull over was an amazing pair of Portuguese alcohol salesmen.
We climbed the guardrail, threw our bags in, and for the next two hours got a guided tour of the Algarve. They made a few stops for work, and a few stops just for us. These two guys (whose names I can’t remember) were just what we needed after a tough morning. They dropped us on the Spanish border and showed us to the ferry which would bring us to Spain.
Now at this point it’s around 5:00 PM and we’re approaching ten hours on the road, both our phones are dead and the only thing on our minds is “Seville or bust”. We gladly take a break waiting for the ferry, ride it to Ayamonte, Spain and figure we need just one more ride to get there.
Unfortunately, we were very wrong. After barely missing a bus, we waited two hours before hitching a ride, but only halfway to Huelva. The two college kids generously dropped us at a bus station in Huelva, Spain. Now it was just a shirt two hours to catch the last bus of the night towards Seville. In our eyes, that was more than enough time to eat dinner. One beer and some interesting bean-snack later, we decide to stroll back to the station and relax until departure.
And this is where sh*t almost hits the fan. We walk into the station to see our bus pulling away. We were not about to let our last chance for a ride drive off though. So, with the help of a stranger, we chased down and signaled the driver, bought two tickets, and walked down the aisle as bus full of Spaniards stared. See what happened was, we crossed a time zone and with no phones, it was an hour later than we thought. Very confusing, but lesson learned.
And that was it. Sitting in awe of what just happened we stared into the Spanish countryside and made it to Seville by 10:30 PM. Our Air BnB host may have not been stoked on our arrival, but we sure were. We took a break from hitchhiking for a while as we travelled through Spain and France, where we started a 140-mile hike to Switzerland. Stay tuned.
- Devan Sack
