Do you remember that song – Moonlight Shadow?

Well. I can confirm that there really is such a thing.  The full moon was so bright that it cast a shadow as strong as any from the sun – so what was a girl to do, but dance in the moonlight shadow.  BF provided the music via his little gizzmo and we danced on the terrace until two in the morning.

Our second week near Lagos was spent working on the farm, swimming in the eco-pool and visiting the local bar. We were also asked by Willem to sand and then oil the ends of the beams which held up the roof of his amazing house.  Well, get me – I am afraid of heights but I was up and down the ladder with my brush, like a rat up a drainpipe.  Well, so long as BF was hanging on to the bottom very tightly.  The bottom of the ladder that is!

If you want to know a little bit more about where we were working for two weeks, check out this link to our workaway near Lagos or this link to the Gite Portugal site if you think that you might like a holiday at this tranquil place.

All too quickly our final few days came around and we went into Lagos again on the bus for the day.  The town had a very different feel on this occasion.  The backpackers were outnumbered by families with children although the place still had a lovely feel to it. We topped up our tans on the larger of the beaches for much of the day, only breaking the sun worshiping to fetch strawberry daiquiris and have lunch at one of the little beach bars.  And of course, our tea (or dinner if you are posh) was one of those burgers again at the Nah Nah Bar.

For our final night, Sol cooked us an amazing meal of black pork which we ate as the sun went down and we then all sat chatting until late at night.  To start the meal, we had chorizo which she cooked at the table on a little terracotta dish with flaming alcohol grilling it slowly.  Listening to the frogs and watching the stars, we didn’t want to leave, but the adventure had to continue but the next day Willem kindly dropped us off at the bus station in Lagos and we got the coach back to Lisbon.

Salt pans on the road between Lagos and Lisbon

True to form, we then got totally lost trying to find our next hotel for the night.  We believed that we had booked an airport hotel – so assumed that it would be at the airport.  No such luck and Lagos has to be one of the worst airports that I have ever been in.  We caught the Aerobus to the airport and wandered around totally confused for an hour and then caught a different Aerobus back out to the city.  Eventually, we stumbled upon our hotel.  From the front, our hotel the NH Campo Grande was bland and unassuming – inside it was boutique style and beautiful, although the receptionist was something else!  She was thick as two short planks.

• She tried to insist that we pay for the room (this had been done online in advance)
• She didn’t give us enough towels
• She gave us the wrong key for the safe
• She omitted to give us our discount voucher for the restaurant
• She managed to lose said email confirmation so that the next morning the staff tried to make BF pay again
• She didn’t log our early wake up call for 5.30am
• She managed not to book my cab to the airport
• Never once did she smile or apologise

However, the hotel was lovely, the food was amazing and the cab eventually turned up in time to whisk me to the airport for my 9am flight.  Well, it was supposed to be at 9am.  I eventually took off at three minutes to twelve.  Three minutes under the time that I would qualify for compensation under the European rules.  And as I said, Lisbon airport must be one of the worst in the world.  There is little choice of food or drink, the lounge areas are drab and when they finally came to give out food and drink vouchers (at that stage they were telling us that we might have a whole day delay)  they sent out one lady to issue one hundred vouchers.

Eventually the plane took off and I was off to my next destination – this time all by myself.