We haven't been doing much outdoors lately because the wildfires here have been making the air very smoky. Bad to breathe and bad for sightseeing. There have been dozens of fires in northern Portugal the past week or two, some pretty close to us, but we're not in any danger. Today the air quality is better and the number of fires shown on fogos.pt has reduced, so we're hopeful that we're over the worst of it.
Most fire departments in Portugal are volunteer and largely supported by community donations. This is really a sweet way to do it and it makes you feel more connected. A member of the expat community here set up a GoFundMe site and has been buying and delivering supplies to the wildfire fighters, so we contributed to that. They exceeded their initial goal of €8000, now up to €11,000, and have delivered water, energy bars, milk and specifically requested supplies and equipment already. This fund is ongoing, and great to be a part of.
We did make a trip to the local Vodafone store to straighten out some billing and a service problem with our TV, which was quick and easy. Unfortunately the service phone number Gerrit was given does not in fact have an English option, so there's still some digging to do there.
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Her new hairdresser put mousse in her hair, and Pat asked if she could buy some. No, she replied, but you can find it anywhere. No rack of overpriced hair products as another income stream, no pressure, just a simple non-commercial friendly transaction. It's hard to convey how simple and sincere the people we've met have been, but we see it wherever we go.
We've done some other shopping in the last couple days, and Gerrit has been recovering from an external backup hard disk failure. Not very exciting for an adventure blog, but we wanted to let you know we're fine and we'll get back on the road as soon as the fires die down and the air clears.