MYSTERIES OF LAG-OSSH

Lagos, the city of mysteries. Ghosts of slaves in the marketplace – visions of a saint next to the golden church.
When I arrived, one of the mysteries to me was why its pronounced with a ssshhh … Lago-ssshhh.
Well, after a few days here, I can tell you: Somebody in a bar described Lagos as the Algarve’s land of lushness. And they were right. If you want to be a lush, I can’t think of a better place.
A bar at every corner of every ancient cobbled street.
You can start with a gentle Maderia at a harbour bar as soon as the first gull wafts across the face of the sun. Or, you could sip champagne on a million-pound yacht in the marina and watch this beautiful city wake up.
Old fishermen fix nets on the harbour – young girls in Porsches head for the office.
By lunch time you say involuntarily: “I love Lago-ssshhh.”
And I do love it and all its mysteries.
The harbour and the bay are beautiful. Yet it has an ancient shame, the first slave market in Europe. But it hasn‘t been turned into a museum. The streets have remained narrow and if a taxi stops at a bar or restaurant in these cobbled back streets, the city comes to a standstill.
And nobody seems to mind.
You see, in this part of the world men spend hours up to their waists in the rivers catching shellfish – or showing their backs to the sun as they tend their bees.
That’s story of this part of Portugal, the erosion of time, not the decimation of it.
You don’t have to go far, just to the village of Burgau with its rocky outcrop, or Sagres with its white stone fort and its cliffs or the little fishing village of Praia da Luz – or to Salema with its Roman ruins.
And in the evening, as the sun goes down there are a hundred places to eat. Try No Patio, for instance.
Well, there’s another mystery. It’s name, No Patio.
The Scandinavian owners Bjarne and Jitte introduced me to Levellers, port and brandy and cinnamon. The night cooled the patio. Lanterns flickered in the gentle breeze.
We got there about nine and by one Bjarne was juggling ashtrays and telling bad Scandinavian jokes. We had another Leveller on the house.
The sky was so clear I swear you could see clear through infinity and the city was so quiet all you could hear was the rush of the sea.
So we made that soft ssshhh-ooo shuffle all the way back to our hotel.

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