Ballooning in Portugal by James Henderson
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There’s a satisfyingly different perspective on life from a hot-air balloon. Up there there is an unnatural quiet and calm -- once you’re happy with the equally unnatural sense of being suspended high above the earth in a basket, that is. The horizon suddenly opens up and the countryside—fields, farms and towns--takes on an admirable neatness. Traffic is reduced to a tiny, beetling procession.
And then when you land, people come out and say hello. In Portugal, during the fifth annual Trans-Crossing, a hot-air balloon event that winds its way south through the country each year, pilots found themselves offered fresh bread and wine.
It was an interesting way to see a country for the first time. The course of the Trans-Crossing started in Bragança in the northeast, headed to Oporto and then tracked through the centre of the country, to Coimbra, Estremoz and Evora. There were flights in the morning and evening, but in between there was time to visit some of Portugal’s delightful country towns.
Except Oporto, Portugal’s second city, which is far too big to explore in a day. It is European City of Culture for 2001. After a morning’s footslogging, dutifully trying to see things, I settled on two places, a café and a bookshop.
The walls at the Majestic Café, built earlier this century, are an expanse of gilt edged mirrors, topped with cheeky looking cherubs. You sit at marble-topped tables on massive patterned leather benches and electrify yourself with their fearsomely strong coffee. Not far off, the Lello and Irmão Bookshop dates from a similar time. It has an almost ecclesiastical setting, gothic arches in the shelves and a stained glass ceiling. But there in the middle of this hushed reverence is a staircase that can only be described as voluptuous – embracing, curved and at its centre rich, red steps that practically suck you upstairs. Once you have made it to the next floor there are chairs for reading and tastings of local port wine.
Next stop was Coimbra, the hilltop home of one of the country’s oldest universities. In its skirts the tiny alleys of the old town were magically inviting. Music echoed in there, its source untraceable in the warren. As I searched, tiny squares opened out, with wrought iron balconies and blue pictorial tiles. Towering above the alleys, the campus itself is set partly in a former palace. Suitably—well, they are students--there is an extremely fine library. The King John Library is a baroque delight, with acres of gold leaf, faux marble, rosewood and ebony tables and of course stacks and stacks of books.
Heading south, the countryside began to change. Forested hills, covered with pines and, curiously, eucalyptus, began to flatten out into neat lines of vines, olive groves and patches of corn. Cork oaks stood singly in open pasture.
There is a majesty to these ponderous and massive balloons. The sports field at Santarem suddenly looked magnificent as the crews got to work inflating them: some lay prone, billowing as they filled, others stood, tethered flourescent bulbs. First flight is certainly a novelty. I had imagined a sensation of lift worthy of a fairground, but it is all surprisingly gentle once you have left the ground (until you come down to land in a high wind, that is). Instead the strongest sensation is sound, the blast of gas burners that shoot flame into the envelopes (and warm the back of your neck), and the total silence.
The earth lay beneath us like a map, features clearly defined. Rivers, roads and jumbled settlements. A bird of prey circled in the treetops below. The cork oaks stood with their long morning shadows etched dark next to them. As we descended looking for a spot to land I could see that their trunks were black – the cork had been stripped to around ten feet. It takes about five years to regrow. In the silence and still air sound carries surprisingly clearly. A spoken hello is clearly audible at five hundred feet. As we passed low over a village the dogs barked in rolling stereo.
Fortified hilltop towns look far less formidable from above. Estremoz would be a town worth taking, though. Here even the gutters are lined with marble, literally. There are quarries nearby and what they haven’t sold (to Saddam Hussein for his Palace, apparently), is used for kerbstones. It is also used to beautiful effect in the town’s palace, now a pousada.
From Evora, another delightful walled town with a university, we made our way down to Herdade do Esporão, a vineyard. Grapes have been cultivated here for many years, but the estate and its restaurant has recently become popular with visitors from Lisbon. It has also begun to turn out some excellent wine. Which, by the end of the evening, was altering a few balloonists’ perspectives on life.