10 reasons to hire a local guide for Portugal’s big parks

Long before we moved to Alcobaça in Portugal, we’d studied the map of a huge, nearby park, trying to find the hiking and biking trails, caves, swimming holes, and dinosaur footprints that had earned it fame.

But we couldn’t figure out how best to venture into the Parque Natural das Serras de Aire e Candeeiros, even after we arrived in person. Paper and online maps confused us, websites lacked practical details for visiting, and I couldn’t find any pamphlets, even in Portuguese. So, we turned to Antonio.

We generally prefer to travel independently, but hiring a local guide is a smart move in many situations, including figuring out how to get around in large Portuguese parks that are similar in complexity to Algonquin Provincial Park in Ontario or Banff National Park in Alberta.

Many of the sights to see, including the start and finish of hiking trails, are in the villages scattered across these parks, which were formed long after people had lived in those villages for centuries. But other trailheads are out in the countryside and are not always easy to find. We had lots of questions that a local guide could answer. Can the hiking trails be done by bike? Which caves and swimming holes are worth visiting? And how do we easily get to these remote places?

Since we don’t have a car, we got some expat friends together and asked Antonio Laureano to be our local guide. He had picked us up at the airport when we first arrived with our big bike boxes and other luggage to live in Portugal. Antonio also runs a tour company – Go West Tours – so we requested the day-long park tour with bag lunch. 

As we drove the short distance from Alcobaça to the park, Antonio explained that the two ranges in the park – the Aire and the Candeeiros – are formed of limestone, a key feature for the caves and other places we would visit.

We made two quick stops – to see the Porto do Mos castle and the nearby remains of a Roman road – before Antonio parked the van at the roadside, near the trailhead for the 1.9-kilometre hike to Gruta da Cova da Velha [Old Woman’s Cave]. We would have missed the small sign without Antonio: first good reason to hire a local guide.

The trail passed by olive groves, stands of oak and fig trees, and wild fennel. Antonio found some wild blackberries and cut small branches of bay leaves for us to use in cooking. He said bay leaves – laurel –  are in the same family as the oleanders that had been blooming since we arrived in early July.

We passed a dry waterfall – the summer-long drought had taken its toll. Antonio assured us it’s beautiful earlier and later in the year when rain is more plentiful. A good reason to return one day. From there, the trail got steeper and rougher, with brambles criss-crossing the path, until we arrived at the cave. I wasn’t sure about climbing in there, but he extended a hand to help boost me up. He knew exactly how far in we could go before encountering spiders!

The Old Woman’s Cave was a good warmup for our next stop – the Grutas de Mira de Aire [Mira de Aire Caves] – a major attraction in the park. Antonio went off to buy tickets while the six of us joined the line that, we thought at the time, was long. When we emerged later, it was four times longer, underlining one of the many advantages of having a tour guide. Antonio knew the best time to arrive, where to park, where to buy the tickets – all things that take figuring out when you’re on your own.

I found myself relaxing. Usually I’m the navigator, trying to get us places without getting lost and before they close for the two-hour lunchtime break that’s common in Portugal. With Antonio at the wheel – especially on the winding roads with hairpin turns – I could set my worrying aside.  

The Mira de Aire caves were spectacular! Descending by staircases and sloping paths cut into the rock, we saw endless stalactites, stalagmites, columns, curtains, streams, waterfalls, bridges, windows, and enormous caverns within the cave complex. Coloured lights strategically highlighted certain features. But there were also spots where iron oxide created a rusty or orange colour. Dripping water carrying tiny calcium particles formed everything we saw – a fascinating thought.

A formation of hundreds of thin stalactites with a diameter of 5 millimetres is called Spaghetti. The Jellyfish formation looked just like jellyfish, with rounded tops and ribbon-like curtains of stone below. Other aptly named formations included the Fountain of Pearls Waterfall, the Octopus Chamber, and the Organ, with the largest stalactite in the cave, looking just like the long pipes of an organ.

Ernesto Morais and three others discovered the extensive Grutas de Mira de Aire [Mira de Aire Caves] in 1947 when, looking for a water well, they descended through a small crack in the limestone. A metal cut-out of Ernesto at the surface illustrates just how brave/crazy he was to climb down that sinkhole. 

Explorers found the fossilized bones of a lynx and a deer, who must have fallen into the caves. We also saw a wine aging room, since the caves have the ideal temperature to conserve red wine, and various old dial telephones, still used for safety since there’s no cell coverage that deep – 100 metres by the end – in the earth. The caves were opened to tourism in 1974. We saw just 600 metres of the 11 kilometres that have been mapped so far.

When we emerged from the caves, Antonio had our “bag lunch” laid out on a picnic table. We had all expected a sandwich, apple, and tetra pack of juice but, upon the tablecloth, he had spread a buffet picnic that included bottles of vinho verde (Portugal’s young, slightly-sparkling wine), meats, cheeses, breads, olives, sandwiches, and tomatoes from his garden. We dug in with gusto.

Thus fortified, we headed to the Natural Monument of the Footprints of Dinosaurs, where we saw the longest and oldest known sauropod tracks. Discovered just in 1994 in a limestone quarry, these tracks are from the mid-Jurassic period when the 30-metre-long, tall brontosaurus-like beasts trod across a mudflat that later turned to stone and tilted on quite an angle.

Boardwalks led us across the tilted stone so we could examine the footprints closely. They had been cleaned with something – bleach? – so that they stood out against the grey limestone. Some were round, others more foot shaped. Some had toes, looking like huge Bigfoot prints.

Throughout our day with Antonio, he pointed out small details that we would have otherwise missed, or missed their significance. For example, the many old stone windmills – often missing their roofs and sails – that dot the hills can’t be torn down but can be restored. Often near modern three-pronged wind turbines, some windmills are being converted into restaurants, shops and hotels. The creamy white stones of calçadas – the black and white squarish stones that pave just about every sidewalk in Portugal with black-and-white patterns – come from several quarries that we passed by during our day in the park. (The black basalt comes from the Serra da Estrela mountain range.) 

The day was blistering hot, so Antonio took us next to a river beach, where we waded in the cool, exceptionally clear water to cool our extremities.

We finished the long day near the town of Rio Maior at the Salarium – salt flats that are 30 kilometres from the Atlantic Ocean and at 80 metres of altitude. Antonio showed us a well from which the salt water is pumped. But how did salt water get there? Turns out there’s a deep rock salt mine below, crossed by an underground freshwater stream that creates salt water seven times saltier than the ocean. The salt water is pumped into the different concrete compartments, nature evaporates the water in four to six days depending on weather, then the salt is collected and stored in the old wooden salt houses that line one side of the complex.

The first documented reference to the Rio Maior salt mine is from 1177, but it’s thought that people were exploiting the rock salt here in prehistoric times. Romans were often paid in salt – from that comes our word ‘salary,’ explained Antonio.

As Antonio returned us to Alcobaça, we all concluded that he was definitely “worth his salt,” as the saying goes.

We visited Serra de Aire e Candeeiros Natural Park in August 2022. Find out where we are right now by visiting our ‘Where’s Kathryn?’ page.