Me and Jack parted ways after Utopia, he was heading up to Porto and, since I was really close, headed to the permaculture farm that I had stayed on months earlier with Felix. I stayed there for a few days before setting off down to Evora for a party organised by Noisy Radicals. A South African dark trance record label. The cycle down there was one of my most beautiful (yet again), the beauty of the cycle was summed up perfectly in one memory; I had been spending all day cycling up a mountain. It had been raining non stop, the mountain was harsh and the road kind of dull. Untill I got to the top of the mountain, suddenly the sun came out, the combination of the hot sun shinning down on the wet eucalyptus trees surrounding me filled the air with a rich eucalyptus oil aroma. Portugal stretched out below me, rolling pine forests embraced the curving hills and sparkling lakes dotted the scene. I was bursting with elation. I spent the next hour crusing all the way down the mountain in now uninterrupted sun shine.
On my arrival at Noisy Radicals I enlisted as a helper of the festival and made my way in for free. It wasn't long before a shinning beacon of light who everyone called Captain, came up to me and started talking. He was from the Shakzuka Project. One of the loveliest bunch of gypsies, light warriors and general saints I've ever met. They had a beautiful red dome that they called "A Home Away From Home", and it was true, you walked in to the dome and instantly felt at home. I spent much time there over the festival and towards the end they asked me if I wanted to travel with them to some more festivals spreading their native shakshukery goodness. So we strapped my bike on to their time altering campervan and I joined the 7 people already on board. There was Captain, Master, Purple-Haze, Machine, Superfly, all fresh out of Israel and Patricia and Ricardo a Portuguese couple. The festival itself was a little bit of a disaster. Only about 500 people turned up out of an expected 4000. So as a result no one got paid. The organizers hadn't got the right license for the festival so the police started making big road blocks which didn't help the people flow. The organizer ended up running away towards the end of the festival and all the festival workers were running about trying to get the money they were owed. But at least the music was good, although the over-load of constant dark trance for 72 hours has made me steer clear of it even to this day.
.We stayed a few days at the festival site after the last dregs of the festival had vanished into disarray, to to try and get a new engine for the van - Yosh -which I had no complaints about because we were just 500 meters away from the biggest man made lake in Europe. We then drove on to a beautiful little melon park close to the site of the next festival. It was right on the side of a river and I started out every day with a swim and a water meditation. We met Kizzy, another of the greatest shakshuka fairies I've ever known. We spent a few more days hanging around the melon park before going on to the promised lands of the festival, Woodstock. A few days before the start of the chaotic beauty of Woodstock, Captain performed a hair cut on me before one of the most beautiful sunsets I have ever witnessed. Up until this point I had managed to find a river/lake or a pond to swim in every day since the start of the Boom festival, and so to keep up the tradition I found a beautiful river about 5 kms away from the festival which made a lovely sane sanctuary from the welcome but sometimes overpowering craziness of the festival. Every day amongst the reeds of the river bank, as dragonflies of all colours buzzed calmly about my head and kingfishers and other reed loving birds fluttered by on their daily missions I would rediscover pure and simple life.
We headed up to another festival near Porto, where we had been promised a beach festival and at least 1000 people. We arrived to an club that only about 50 - 100 people would turn up to. We opened shop for one day and after selling a grand total of 1 shakshuka closed and just enjoyed being on a beach around Porto. After the "festival" officially finished we found we were really stuck. Yosh refused to start at all, but then one of the nicest people I've ever met, a Portuguese mechanic, came along and took us to his little piece of paradise he called his home and work shop. It was in the middle of an amazing eucalyptus forest, and he let all 7 of us (Patricia and Ricardo had left us just a few days before) stay there for 8 days while he fixed the van. Valter didn't speak a word of English and us not much Portuguese so there was never much verbal communication going on between us, but we seemed to understand each other perfectly. He didn't charge us anything for staying there, feeding us or for the work on Yosh.
When the van got fixed we took it on a test drive to one of the most glorious beach/forests I have ever laid eyes on. You stepped straight from a forest full of wisdom that looked like it was straight from The House of Flying Daggers, on to a fairly typical perfect beach. I decided to go for a swim in the sea, I dived in and had a decent swim for 15 minutes until I tried to get out. The current was so strong that every time I tried to leave the force of the on coming waves pulled me relentlessly back in to the full strength of the sea, swirled me around a little bit and then threw me up in the air as it crashed to leave me to fall about 2 meters on to the sand which the wave was now receding from. Then another wave would instantly crash on me before I knew what was happening and start the whole thing off again. I didn't know what was happening and I can remember I had to attempt 3 times before I got to the safety of dry beach. When I recovered I realised that the sea had robbed my dreadlock/goat tooth necklace and then a little later it stole my phone after a Frisbee game went wrong.
We then drove down to just outside of Lisbon to stay with some lovely people we had met at Woodstock. Another guy called Freddy, Joana and Suzy. Who we all stayed with for about a month. Around late September I was torn of what next to do. Down to Africa to escape the European winter or up to Northern Europe to see people? In the end I decided I was going to head up to Belgium to see Lieve, the girl I met in Granada.
