🎄🎄🎄 Christmas at Shamwari 🎄🎄🎄

Having briefly called in at Shamwari for a couple of days in early December, during the torrential rains and flooding, we were keen to return to experience the place in (hopefully) better weather 🤞So we headed back over the border into Portugal for a few days. Fortunately the weather was much improved, mainly lovely sunshine, but with a few showers, dark clouds and strong winds - but certainly not flooding as before 🤣

Shamwari

Shamwari, meaning “Friend” in African, is a rustic retreat for campers in the less discovered north eastern hills of the Algarve - the dream of Helena, born and raised in Southern Africa. Having a vision, Helena gave up her career in London, moved from England to Portugal @6-7 years ago, and developed shamwari from scratch. The philosophy at shamwari is very much about friendship, inclusion and the appreciation of the natural world - think it was our instant feeling of welcome and connection at our earlier brief visit in December that drew us back here for Christmas 😃

Shamwari and beyond

Headed out for a pre lunch festive ride, to explore the surroundings, and of course to build up an appetite -not difficult for us 🤣

Pre dinner festive ride

Interesting murals in local village

Local cafe 🤣

There were 17 of us for Christmas lunch - and 9 dogs 🐕 I think we counted 9 different nationalities - all people travelling for various reasons, and collectively forming an instant community 😃 Helena’s 90 year old neighbour Palmeira, from the adjacent village - one of only 6 remaining residents in the village (all over the age of 80) also joined us for lunch - a real character 🤣

Christmas dinner - cheers 🥂

The diehards 🤣

Also present were a Swedish, Estonian, French family who visited Shamwari 2 years ago, only for a couple of nights, fell in love with the dream, instantly bought some adjacent land here, moved from Sweden, and are now busy developing their own Community Tourism  project 👍 They are not the only people we met inspired by Helena, another couple from Spain, and a Dutch man whom we met earlier in December are also in the process of buying land and moving here - one to set up an organic vegetable garden business. This region is very under developed- miles and miles of low rolling hills, with very few villages dotted around - so the new communities forming are very much welcomed locally, helping to  revive and bring new life into a much undeveloped region 😃

Interesting, part way through the lunch a man poked his head round the tent - a Zimbabwean (now living in the US), travelling around the Algarve saw the sign Shamwari, and instantly recognised this as Friend - so came on in and joined us for lunch - apparently a very common practice formerly in Zimbabwe 😃 Now we were 18 🤣

Helena, our host

You can quite literally walk for miles and miles around here - no fenced off areas or enclosures - nobody is precious about you walking or riding on their land. But if you head off on a walk from Shamwari, you will always be joined by 2 of the resident dogs, Max and Megan - every opportunity…… 🤣

The Shamwari dogs joined us 🤣

Great opportunity for a dip!

The night skies are so clear at Shamwari, dotted with bright stars, and the sunsets totally stunning -  a real African feeling 😃

Evening sunset

Evening at Shamwari

We’ve had a lovely Christmas at Shamwari- really enjoyed chilling out, and spending time with other like minded travellers - feeling a real positive sense of friendship and community with our European neighbours, and at the same time feeling a real sense of sadness and loss with our EU exit, and no longer formally being a part of the gang 😃 Brexit was of course mentioned, everyone struggling to get their heads around our now imposed restricted opportunities of movement across the EU, quite unaware of our 90 day limitation until now (most other people were travelling for 6+ months) - they shared our Brexit pain 🤣

Merry Christmas from us 🎄

Merry Christmas from Rubes