Solar Victory & Celebration

Monday Sep 22 we met Gerrit's son's wife's parents (got all that?) in Pontevedra, Spain, directly north from us about an hour.  They are on a walking tour of part of the Camino de Santiago.  Other than getting a little lost getting there we had a great time.  It was fun to see them on the other side of the world here.  It was also a mutual grandson's birthday that day, so we sent him a short video of four of his grandparents together in Spain.

Getting the broken solar panels replaced was like the Keystone Kops.  They were supposed to be delivered Monday or Tuesday Sep 22 or 23, and true to form late on Tuesday we were told "sorry, maybe tomorrow or later this week".  Gerrit blew his stack at that point and demanded that they be here on Wednesday.  He was fed up with these months of stalling.  They scrambled around, found two different substitute types and lit a fire under the delivery service to get one pair here on Wednesday.  Our installer Nuno arrived early on Wednesday with the other type, so suddenly we were awash in panels and he was able to finish the installation.  As of 5 PM on Wednesday we were soaking up 2.7 kilowatts from the sun, powering the entire house and pool on solar, the batteries were two-thirds charged, and our grid power consumption was zero.  What a kick!  We are about to get the phone app to see the real time data.  Gerrit feels an obsession coming on.

Thursday Sep 25: it's been a full day now that we've had our new solar panels operating.  Nuno was here adding the final touches and explaining the system to Gerrit.  We now have the phone and laptop app which shows us every detail of the whole system in operation.  We can monitor every imaginable parameter and watch real time graphs and power flow diagrams.  Today was clear, end of September, and between 9:00 and noon the batteries went from fully discharged to fully charged while the panels powered the entire house and pool at the same time.  We'll run exclusively on solar power until sunset, and the batteries will easily take us through the night.  Fully off the grid!  This won't always be true once the dark short days set in, but even then the solar will contribute and reduce our grid reliance.

Friday Sep 26 we celebrated our not being tied to the house and also getting the solar panels installed by taking a scenic drive.  Our friend Maayan told Pat about a beautiful drive in the country to the town of Soajo along the Lima river, and she was right.  It is located in the Peneda Gerês National Park.  Here is the Lima River on the way there.

There is an excellent restaurant in Soajo called Videira which features cachena, the local variety of longhorn beef.  It was fantastic, tender and flavorful, with the light pink color of pork when medium rare.  And it's a good thing that a previous patron named Patrícia Pereira had more presence of mind than we did.  Our lunch looked exactly like this, honest.  Also pictured is some pre-steak on the hoof, and evidence of a local grammarian correcting the abbreviated town name on the entrance sign.

Soajo is famous for its granite granaries or espigueiros, used for drying corn since as early as 1782.  Their elevated construction and mushroom-shaped leg baffles repel rodents, and thin slats in the granite walls provide air circulation.

There is also a beautiful stream with pools nearby, suitable for swimming if you bring your swimsuit (and can tolerate the cold).  Listen to the soothing trickle in the video.

These are apparently known as Naked Lady Lilies.  Gerrit was disappointed.

And a field of wild autumn crocuses.

We found wandering bands of horses and sheep along the road.  A large dog was tending to the sheep all by himself, and he didn't care for us slowing down to take a look.  You can see his tail in the photo here as he chased us away.

And here's what you get when you buy a whole chicken at the supermarket.  It is, well, a whole chicken.  That pouch there contains fresh blood, there's a packet of innards, and the feet are stuffed into the body cavity.  It's the best chicken we've ever had though: flavorful, tender, and delicious.  We slow roast the whole thing (after removing the head, neck, and feet) at 150 C (300 F) for three hours.  There's a supermarket spice packet we use called segredos aves, or "secret birds" (we think that must mean "secret recipe for poultry"), which is really easy and good.

(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click outside a photo when you're done.  Also, you can click on the bold underlined phrases to play the audio.)

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More Festivals and Countryside

Thursday Sep 18 was the last day here for Nuno the solar panel installer, due to some other commitments he had.  He tidied up, finished most of the wiring, and got a few panels connected but left the project unfinished.  He will return (he hopes) on Monday.  Gerrit snooped around looking at his excellent workmanship and putting together a power wiring diagram of the house with the new photovoltaic system, which he'll confirm with him when he's back.

Friday Sep 19 marked the start of a three-day festival to honor Santa Eufémia (Festas em Honra de Santa Eufémia) in our little village of Calheiros.  This festival is also celebrated in other parts of Portugal.  There is a sanctuary here in town, Santuário de Eufémia (shown at left), which was commissioned in 1258 -- over 760 years ago!  There was music playing all afternoon and evening from the Santuário: Portuguese folk music, pop tunes, and sacred music.  There have been processions around the Santuário too.  There were speakers and a live pop band performing, and loads of big fireworks have been going off.  Here is a well-made video of the festival from 2016.  They do love their festivals here!

Pat's raised garden beds are taking off.  Here is what they look like after just a few weeks of good soil, September sun now and then, warm temperatures, and regular watering, along with her first harvest: fresh radishes.  Soon to come are lettuces and kale.

The day was clear and pleasant on Sunday Sep 21 so we went for a drive through the nearby countryside.  There are many roads we haven't explored even here in our local area.  We stopped across the valley from our house and took these pictures looking back.  You can see our house (red arrow) with the start of the solar panel array on the roof.

Gerrit superimposed the plot diagram we have of our recent land purchase over the Google Maps satellite view so we could visualize where exactly the boundaries are.  We were surprised to discover that we now own a significant chunk of the eucalyptus grove right across from us!  We thought the whole grove belonged to the neighbor, but not so.  Our portion is the most important to us, actually, providing most of our privacy screen to the other side of the hill and a beautiful forest view.  We want to get an official survey to confirm all this.  Also so we can put up a barbed-wire fence.

(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click outside a photo when you're done.  Also, you can click on the bold underlined phrases to play the audio.)

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Festivals and Solar Panels

On Monday Sep 15 we both both went to the last day of the Feiras Novas festival in Ponte de Lima.  We got there in the evening, wandered a while as the lights came on, got some street food, and had a great time people- and fair-watching.  The Portuguese are fond of their little draft beers (called um fino in the north and uma imperial in the south), and we stopped at a little beer booth for some.  Ice cold, refreshing, and nobody cared if we wandered around with our plastic cups of beer.  So sensible!

The ever-present googly-eyed Feiras Novas lady

Pat's loaded hotdog and um fino

We did verify that the many truckloads of grapes we keep seeing converging on Ponte de Lima are indeed for the vinho verde coop there in town.  Gerrit got lost in a maze of one-way streets trying to pick Pat up at the post office one day, and found himself behind a huge string of grape trucks.  He drove alongside them up around the corner to the coop, and there must have been 40 trucks making their way there.  The adega (wine cellar) was running full speed, with a big mound of grape stems piling up outside one of the big fermentation vessels.  What a sight!

We have finally gotten underway with our solar panel installation.  The installer contractor Nuno started on Monday Sep 15.  The panels themselves were not here, but he and his helper got started with the support structures for the panels.  It was an enormous amount of work to load forty 35 kg (77 lb) concrete blocks from their truck to the roof by hand.  You can see a stack of them in the middle of this picture.  They had to do it this way because no businesses were open to rent cranes due to the Ponte de Lima Feiras Novas festival underway.  Now that's dedication to the job!

Meanwhile we had not been able to get the panels delivered.  The delivery driver called on Friday Sep 12 saying his truck was too big to get to our house, and we hadn't seen an alternate truck appear as of Tuesday Sep 16.  The main solar panel vendor Voltaicos seems to be unable to make the delivery happen and Nuno is running out of time here due to other commitments.  After missing installation schedules for four months now it's time to git 'er done.  Nuno and his guy are shown on the job here, installing the inverter, batteries, and control box in the garage.

Late in the afternoon of Wednesday Sep 17 the 20 panels finally showed up.  Two of them were completely destroyed; it looked like someone had hurled bowling balls at them.  Nuno and his helper worked on the wiring and began moving the panels to the roof.  A question arose about automatic battery backup switchover, it was starting to look like it would be a really poor manual method, but fortunately we determined that it was automatic.  Nuno and crew continued to connect and install, but Thursday Sep 18 is the last day this week they can be here so they will have to return the following week to finish.  Annoying to be so near and yet so far, but they are doing a great job so we will be patient a few more days.

Now that we have a date for travel to Seattle, there is a lot to do to prepare.  Pat has been lining up travel insurance, we are printing receipts to prove to US Customs that some of the gadgets we'll have with us were purchased in Portugal, we're investigating places to stay and lining up visits, and making sure we have everything we'll need for the loadout and shutdown of the storage unit.

And 8-buck wine here is considered top drawer and given theft-protection caps.  (Price tags are usually above the items in the store, which takes some getting used to.)

(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click outside a photo when you're done.  Also, you can click on the bold underlined phrases to play the audio.)

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Flights & Festivals

Huge news: on Thursday Sep 11 we heard that our overseas shipment and customs paperwork is finally all in order, and the date is set to load from our Seattle storage unit to the shipping container!  Finally!  We'll fly back to Seattle a week or so beforehand, do some visiting, observe the loading process, and then stick around town for a couple weeks after that.  It's liable to take 6 - 8 weeks (optimistically) for the shipment to arrive in Portugal, then the shippers will deliver all our stuff to our house.  About 110 big boxes full!  We'll be busy for a while after that, unpacking and putting it all away.

Pat tried a language exchange session with friends Maayan and Luna (a native of Colombia).  The three of them spent an hour or so speaking as much Portuguese as they could to one another and playing word games.  It was fun and educational and they will get together again.

The biggest festival of all here in Ponte de Lima (already the Queen of Festivals) is Feiras Novas ("new trade fairs").  They last for about a week, starting each year in September, and were instituted by royal decree in 1826.  They started as livestock and agricultural fairs but they have evolved into a celebration of "culture, tradition, and joy", with parades, a carnival, millions of sparkling lights, music, open-air markets, food, performances, fireworks, and even a parade of prize bulls.  People flock from miles around, day and night, and it is a huge tourist attraction.

Friday night Sep 12 Pat wasn't up to it so Gerrit ventured into town alone.  Parking was difficult, so he had a little walking to do.  Below are some photos and video, just a little taste of the whole celebration after nightfall.  He watched a group of young men singing a traditional song on stage and realized that one of them was a familiar clerk from a local store.  That's one of the great things about living in a small town: how you see people in different roles, how it fills out their personality.

On the way back, about 11 PM, there were even more people flooding into town.  Parking had gotten unbelievably bad, with people walking in from 1.5 km (a mile) out of town.  We heard music coming from town even as late as 3 AM too.  Portugal, land of the late-night revelers!

   

(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click outside a photo when you're done.  Also, you can click on the bold underlined phrases to play the audio.)

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Bluegrass in Portugal?

We had been having rain on and off for a week or so prior to Friday Sep 4, but that day was clear and sunny.  Gerrit propped up and dried out the granite flagstones he needed to glue down at one end of the pool, and the following day was clear again so he did the deed.  It's all ready now for the wiring and pool cover installers.

Meanwhile Pat was conferring with our landscaper Alex about Phase 2 of our garden renovation.  They started putting plans together for the front yard and further enhancements in back.  Our own blueberry plants?  They're on the agenda.

Pat also picked (and picked up) a couple dozen apples from our little trees in front, for eating, desserts, and applesauce.  Her applesauce has no added sugar, just a delightful natural fruit sweetness with a hint of cinnamon.

On Saturday Sep 6 we went into Ponte de Lima for the Saturday Market, and also did some grocery shopping and picking up mail-order deliveries at a couple lockers.  We noticed about a dozen tractors with big trailers full of grape bunches converging on the town all morning.  We think it was harvesting day for the local Adega vinho verde coop, located there in Ponte de Lima, and the farmers were all bringing in their bounty.  Adega coop wines are great, we've enjoyed them from the supermarkets many times, and we'll soon be enjoying the fresh 2025 vintage too.  And we saw it when it was grapes!

At the market we met with our favorite farmer, the woman Pat now thinks of as her Portuguese mom.  We exchanged beijinhos (little kisses) and bought some beans from her.  We took some of her basket of them, then more, then all of them.  Gerrit, feeling sporty, said "Todos os feijões!" (all the beans!)  She looked quizzically at him, he repeated himself clearly in his flawless Portuguese, and she shrugged and looked at Pat like "do you have any idea what this guy is talking about?"  Total incomprehension.  This communication business is way harder than it looks.

The pool wiring installation has been delayed a week, so I guess it will be good that they won't be bumping into the solar panel installers...

...except that at 5 PM the evening before the installation was to take place we got a message that they will be delayed for five days.  And the panels which were to be delivered by the installer will be coming directly here, so we need to be home for two days for that.  Oh, and there is a SIM card and WiFi access required, which nobody mentioned until now.  It will be good to get all this over with.

On Monday night Sep 8 we went to a bluegrass concert which Pat had heard about and gotten tickets for.  Yes, bluegrass in Portugal!  It was a house concert hosted by some other American expats living about 20 minutes away.  They had a big room and loft at their place which was filled with about 40 guests, the lighting and sound were good, and the band, "Crying Uncle", was astounding!  They have a modern bluegrass style (alas no banjo), but they do old standards, rock ballads, and their own compositions too.  They are four wunderkinds from California, and this was their first visit to Portugal.  Portugal actually has a lively bluegrass scene, and Crying Uncle is here to appear in a show near Lisbon.  There will be bands from all over the world.  Who knew bluegrass was so popular worldwide?

Here is a link where you can see some YouTube videos of the band, and below is a few seconds of the show we attended.  What an unexpected treat!  We also saw many familiar faces there from the expat community and everyone had a great time.  The hosts served food and drinks too.

(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click outside a photo when you're done.  Also, you can click on the bold underlined phrases to play the audio.)

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August is Over

The hardest thing about our Portugal adventure has been the language barrier.  We knew it would be a lot of work to learn Portuguese, but it's slower and more difficult than we thought to actually get good at it.  It is so easy to be misunderstood or to not understand what's being said.  Both sides try with goodwill, but complex and nuanced communication is a tricky business.  We and they both use the wrong words for example (like the clerk who cheerfully said "Hello!" in English to us as we left), or not-quite-correct words which don't convey the right meaning, and we are getting very used to the uncomfortable blank looks given and received when communication stalls.

For example, we took the car in for its one-year service.  We thought that included an oil change, since we thought we understood that from a service rep some time ago.  We got the receipt and didn't understand it very well, but back home we discovered that the oil change hadn't been done.  We tried to set up another appointment but they didn't understand what we wanted and they just repeated to us what they had done.  Then we learned that the oil change interval is two years, and the dealer's one-year service which they had performed was just what it should have been.  Part of this was due to inconsistent information from Honda, but most of it was just garbled communication.  If we spoke Portuguese well we would have cleared it all up in a minute.

So don't underestimate the language barrier if you relocate!  We are determined, and doubling down on our lessons, because it will be so rewarding to be able to understand and communicate.  But it is indeed a tough job and takes years.

Here's an oddity of our bank here: cash from ATMs comes with no fee, but cash or change from a teller comes with a fee.  We wanted some small bills and coins, and we couldn't just withdraw cash in small bills from the teller without paying a fee.  So we got larger bills from the ATM in the lobby, "bought" the smaller values from the teller, and eventually those larger bills will probably end up right back in the ATM.  Crazy little cash loop there!

August is over and work is restarting.  We have the installation of our solar electric panels scheduled for the second week of September, so soon we will be (mostly) off the grid.  The installation will overlap with the project to lay the wiring for the pool cover, so contractors may be bumping elbows around here for a couple days.

Finally, after months of delay, on Friday Aug 29 we signed the deed giving us title to the lot of land just below us.  It's 3500 sq m (a little less than an acre) of undeveloped land running in an irregular strip along the southern border of our lot, but it is zoned as buildable.  It's a beautiful part of our view and now we can be sure that no one will park a trailer on it.  The sellers are a lovely British couple who have to move back to the UK, so they sold this land to us and their home to a Belgian couple.

We went out for some light lunch with friends at a nearby adventure park on the Lima river on Saturday Aug 30.  It was a beautiful setting, and full of cool activities like zip lines, trampolines with suspended bungee seats above them, tree cruising on suspended bridges, and rock climbing.  It will be great place to take the kids & grandkids when they visit.  Here are some stock photos plus one actual in-person shot by Grandpa (guess which).

Gerrit has been upgrading his electronic menagerie.  His phone is giving up the ghost so he ordered a new Google Pixel 9, and his laptop is an aging Dell which is not compatible with Windows 11, so before support for Windows 10 expires in October he got a new laptop too.  It's interesting what relocating halfway around the world will do for you.  New experiences and risks don't seem to be as daunting.  He has done the research and decided to go to an entirely new phone and laptop.  Let's hope that the experience will be as good as the rest of our Portuguese adventure.  Pat is starting to look for an iPhone upgrade too -- her iPhone SE is looking pretty wheezy.

Even after buying a utility to transfer smoothly from one Windows 10 laptop to another Windows 11 laptop, Gerrit has been doing damage control almost full time for a couple days now.  The new computer is finally working pretty well, and it's more compact and faster.  Still to come: the phone.

Meanwhile in the home project department, there are two steps to automating the solar water heater: turning on the heat pump in the late afternoon when solar heat hasn't been sufficient during the day, and preventing the collector panels from overheating when there's too much heat during the day.  Gerrit finished the first step (the easy one), it's working great, and he is still ordering parts for the second.

Pat has been coordinating getting our driver's licenses transferred to Portuguese licenses.  We are technically overdue on that.  She got us connected with an online doctor exam and has engaged our fixer Nia to handle the details.  We just did the doctor appointments today, Thursday Sep 4, so we should shortly have the new licenses if Nia can sweet-talk her way through the process.

Pat has been missing Mexican food here, so she has been rolling her own.  She can get many of the ingredients, including tortillas in the larger supermarkets, and the results have been delicious.  She's even making her own ground beef (low fat, no fillers or additives, best Gerrit has ever had), and she has tried homemade tortillas too.  Not only that, but she's making our own muesli for breakfast, again with all clean ingredients and no sugar.

Here is a typical home lunch.  The salad figs are homegrown, the cucumber and tomato come from the farmer's market, Pat made the yogurt & dill dressing, plus grilled chicken leg and vinho verde (local white wine).

(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click outside a photo when you're done.  Also, you can click on the bold underlined phrases to play the audio.)

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