Here is an overview of the things that we did in portugal!
Rude awakening,Tuesday
Aw,do i have to get up mum? It's half past four in the morning!
Arrival,Tuesday
We arrive in portugal!In this picture we are at faro train station!

Wall Building,over the week
We helped with building a wall to keep the cows out and the plants in!
Archery, Wednesday
I took my first shots today!In this picture i am preparing to take my first shot!

Ruin exploration, Wednesday
We had a look through all the abandoned old houses!
The door of the abandoned school of doooom!!

Stone rolling,Wednesday
We were rolling lots of stones down the hill when we found the cute salamander!In this picture the salamander is a bit startled,poor thing.

The medronho berry war, Thursday
On Thursday afternoon we splattered each other with gooey medronho berry's!
Music night,Thursday
We played lots of capoeira music through the night!
Pool Night,Saturday
We went to the local pub to play pool through the night!
Odemeira,Sunday
We went to the local supermarket and one of the things we found was an olive pic'n'mix type thing! Also on the way there we found an old ruined windmill!In this picture Yan is leaning over the pit of doom!

White-knuckle wheelbarrow rides,Monday
Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Olive collection, Monday
We went out to peel the abandoned olive groves of "olive" their olives,ha ha!
Here is a picture of their spoils!!

A local's birthday, Monday
It was the birthday of one of the remaining inhabitants of Totenique valley so we went down and played some music!
Departure,Tuesday
Aw,do we have to leave portugal?In this picture i am sleeping on the plane!

Unusual Wildlife

Whilst we were in Portugal we found quite a lot of unusual wildlife!The first piece of unusual wildlife we found was the super-cute salamander,pictured below! Then we found The Monster Praying Mantis! It was about 2 1/2 inches long(i think), which is much bigger than praying mantis's should grow,It is pictured below! Then we found a grasshopper that was about an inch long (i think) and he had one heck of a jump on him!! He is in one of the pictures below



The salamander!


THE MONSTERRRRR!


Ker-Boing!!!(Note: he may be difficult to spot)

White knuckle wheelbarrow rides

On the last evening before we left we were trying to think of something to do. I sat down in the wheelbarrow(by mistake) and Yan appeared to have an idea.All of a sudden i was flying round the back of the house and into the clothesline at a million miles an hour in the pitch black.. Everybody had a go and Yan at least nearly drove them into the grapevines or nearly drove into a big tree. It was so much fun!! Unfortunately we didn't get any pictures of this madness but it was still lots of fun!! The best ride i was on very nearly went into the gorse bush,I very nearly got flattened by a big stone , then we went back up towards the house and we nearly hit the spinach bush.Then we went round the back and straight into the clothesline! It was really exciting and it was also really fun

Nighttime capoeira music!

One of the nights we were in Portugal we decided to spend the evening outside. We got the brazier(a sort of portable outdoor fireplace)and lit up a nice warm fire. All of a sudden Yan decided we should play some Capoeira music. Apparently capoeira music sets the rhythm, the style of play, and the energy of a game of capoeira. It was a bit tricky getting the rhythm down at first, but soon the music was going strong. Then we started getting experimental, using beer bottles with different levels of water in them as flutes. Then my Dad went inside and came out with this weird wine bottle thing drenched in water and used it as a sort of DJ instrument type-thing. The music was very happy-sounding,but we were all getting very tired so we stopped and went inside for some sleep.Here is to the capoeira music wikipedia website.
Read about Capoeira music on wikipedia!

A picture of the brazier(I don't have any night-time photos of it.)In this picture it is burning some eucalyptus to make smoke that deters the flies.


A picture from Yans mums garden of the eucalyptus smoke cloud drifting over the valley...


The next thing i will post about is the white knuckle wheelbarrow rides!!

Wall building!

Whilst we were in Portugal we did some wall building! The first thing we had to do was rolling stones down a big hill which was fun! Then there was the puzzle of finding out where the stones should go. We had to do all of this in the baking heat of the Portuguese sun. Whilst we were up there rolling stones we found a salamander. We accidentally disturbed it and the silly thing set fire to a tree and caused a huge forest fire. Only joking. The salamander was actually quite small and was black and yellow. It also didn't breath fire.We built him a little cave which he crawled into and fell asleep. Here is a picture of the salamander

The cute little salamander!



Unfortunately i don't have a picture of us wall building but i still had a good time!!

The Medronho Berry war!!

On Thursday we were all up at the fort that Yan had constructed enjoying the sun when Yan started flicking ripe medronho berrys at us and they left gooey marks! Soon i started throwing green ones at him and caught him a corker right between his eyes Shortly afterwards it became a full on Medronho berry war!! Here is a picture of some medronho berrys,both ripe (Red) and unripe(Green!)



After about half an hour we all stopped because we were completely covered in Medronho Berry goo! It was great but messy fun! The next thing i will post about is the wall building we did!

Archery!

The day after we arrived i tried some archery! It was great fun but i wasn't very good to begin with but that was to be expected. A couple of days later i was climbing rickety ladders up rotten old trees to shoot arrows far and wide!
Here is a picture of me doing that!




I was quite good at archery by the time we left!

Portugal!!

Last Tuesday we went over to Portugal!It was lovely and sunny the whole time! Also on the way there I flew on a plane for the first time and it was great fun! When we got there it was dark but it was also still warm when we arrived at Yans house (Maybe that's just me coming from Scotland.) Here is a picture of where we stayed!


The house we stayed in!



I will do several posts with a picture and a story of what the picture is about!

Twycross Zoo!!

Last week I went to Twycross Zoo!! One of the first things that happened was a play fight between two gibbons! One of the gibbons was cuddling a orang-utan toy! However the other gibbon decided to start bullying the other, but he was quickly taken away when it was feeding time. Then we noticed one of the real orang-utans was drinking a lot of cows milk,which i thought was odd until i was told that it was going to be a mummy orang! Then we went to see the elephants, and the new baby elephant, Ganeshe, was with them!It turned out that we were just in time for the elephant training routine which was really interesting, and it was rather funny when we saw Ganeshe trying to copy the other elephants, especially when they did the lifting up their feet thing and little Ganeshe tumbled over! Then we visited the penguins and it turns out that the eggs that we saw there last time we went had hatched and there was cute little baby Humboldt penguins! We went to check up on the gorillas and they still looked as grumpy as last time we saw them! The next animals we went to look at were the Bonobo's and we figured out which one was Diatou, the Bonobo that i adopted!
Then we went to see the giant turtles, and it turned out that they were still as slow! I had a brilliant day so here are the pictures!

The gibbon with the orangutan toy!


A picture of the mummy orangutan drinking milk!


The bonobo we think is Diatou is being groomed in the corner.Some other bonobo is in the huff.



Little Ganesh!


The Penguins!


The elephants doing their farewell salute!