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We were driving to meet friends at a beach we had never been to before. Elvira started taking us down gravel roads that kept getting narrower and steeper along a cliff. Now, some of these roads are barely enough for one car, but they are not one-way roads. You never know what is coming around the corner. Finally, I decided enough was enough, I was turning around as soon I could figure out how. I don’t care what Elvira said about it.

Elvira is our sadistic GPS navigation system. I named her Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. Partly because our car is black but more so because she is dark and sadistic. She lures us with her confidently seductive British accent into dangerous situations. I am trading her voice in for a Russian male voice so I won’t be so easily seduced to plummet to our deaths.

To complicate matters, my wife is instructing me to go left here and right there. However, she has this fault, her only fault I might add (she helps edit my blogs before publication) of sometimes saying right when she means left and left when she means right.

Fortunately, we were able to turn around and make it back up to a paved road. We stopped a young Portuguese man on a bicycle traveling in the opposite direction and asked directions. As what has become a very common occurrence for us here in Portugal, he turned around to personally lead us in the right direction. Mind you, he was riding up and down steep hills while we followed him in our car. Cars started to line up behind ours, but I wasn’t about to risk losing him by pulling over and letting them pass.

Praia Grande – Big Beach

We successfully arrived at Praia Grande, and met our friends who were waiting for us there.  By the way, Praia Grande just means Big Beach. Not a very creative name when you consider that dinosaurs once roamed there. Personally, I would have named it Beach Where the Dinosaurs Roamed, or at least Big Dinosaur Beach. Anyway, we walked along “Big Beach” (yes, I am doing air quotes here), explored an incredible cave, and then walked up 278 steep steps along dinosaur tracks to the top.

The dinosaur tracks were sideways, and we all know that the weight distribution of these giant species would not allow them to walk sideways like a gecko. Although, I believe they do both belong to the reptile family.

While walking with a geologist along the foothills in Colorado many years ago, I found the explanations of rock formations to be quite fascinating. I was wishing I had one with me now to explain how the dinosaur tracks ended up in a vertical position.

Better than a geologist would be talking rings to answer all my questions, like in the movie The Time Machine. When I was watching that movie as a nine-year-old, I wanted those talking rings so badly. Who knew that Google would be our talking rings?

These colorful wildflowers somehow found a way to pop through the rocks. The dinosaurs weren’t quite as lucky, though. They’re still dead.

Don’t know Much About a Science Book..

But I do know that I love Goo(gle). After consulting with my talking rings, I learned that the dinosaurs roaming Praia Grande made deep prints in the mud, which were covered by layers of sediments, creating a cast. Then they were pushed up by brute force. Tectonic plates, forcibly moved by continental drift and numerous earthquakes eventually pushed the rocks up vertically. Given enough time, anything is possible. In this case that timeline is 125 million years, more than enough time!

I find it pretty amazing that you can actually walk along a public beach and at the end of that beach is a stairway and along the stairway are dinosaur prints. Not make believe like a Disney creation or a replica of Noah’s Ark, but actual dinosaur prints. Anyone who is not impressed while walking next to dinosaur paw prints must be very hard to find a birthday present for.

Footprints in the Sand

Scientists say that the dinosaurs that roamed Praia Grande were Iguanodons. These massive Iguanodons weighed 10,000 pounds, give or take. They left 66 visible footprints in the rocks here. Incredibly enough, these huge creatures were herbivores. How could something grow that big without eating smaller animals? Or at least fish. Besides, how do you go to Portugal and not eat fish?

The Iguanodons lived mainly on a diet of Ginkgo, one of the oldest living trees on the planet. You can find Gingko supplements in health food stores. Something that has survived that long has got to be good for you, right? Especially if it was good enough for a five-ton dinosaur. Ginkgo is purported to be good for memory. I think the last memory the dinosaurs had was a giant asteroid hurling toward Earth.

No Guardrails at the Top

At the plateau at top of the trail, it is noteworthy to mention that there are no guardrails to protect you from falling. You could easily bypass the 278 steps back down to the beach and descend in a matter of seconds. You would never see this in America. Never, ever! The fear of being sued by the family of someone who took a selfie while teetering over the edge of a cliff would warrant many physical barriers. Those safety barriers might just block your view entirely. Again, Portugal is not a litigious society. People in America tend to believe that socialism and personal responsibility don’t go hand in hand. Well, Portugal is a socialist country that believes in personal responsibility.

At the top of the trail we met another nice expat couple who moved here a couple of years ago with their son, who was nine at the time. Now he is twelve and has many Portuguese friends and speaks fluent Portuguese without an accent. Anyone who is concerned about moving here with children need not be concerned. They adapt just fine!

We actually met this couple through their dog. Their beautiful Newfoundland, named Jezebel, walked up to the four of us at the top of the trail, in search of hugs and scratches, which we were all too happy to oblige. What a big, friendly, hairy dog! I wonder if her tracks will be discovered 100 million years from now. I should have taken her picture. I know that she would have been more than willing to pose for one.

Roulote da Gigi

We stopped at Roulote da Gigi for lunch and then walked outside to the street market. Roulote da Gigi literally means Gigi’s Mobile Home, but it was actually a quaint restaurant that serves excellent pizza. There was a small display case where they were selling painted rocks. I have always liked rocks, having had a rock engraving business in the past.

I asked how this rock had been painted and was told that the artist dips a toothpick in paint to create the dots. I don’t know how anyone can be that patient or have such a steady hand. No two dots are touching each other. While I am not 100% convinced that it was done with a toothpick, because it’s just too perfect, it was still quite a beautiful painted rock. So I bought it anyway.

Wine and Olive Oil

In the outdoor marketplace, Cathy picked up bottles of homemade olive oil and wine – how Portuguese is that – before heading back to our friends’ car. The bottle of wine was only one and a half euros! And it was quality wine. The bottle of olive oil was seven euro. A bit pricier than what we used to pay for the industrial vat of olive oil we used to pick up at Costco, but the quality is as different as night and day!

After our friends dropped us off at our car and drove away, Cathy realized that she didn’t have her phone. Was it back at the restaurant or somewhere in the marketplace? Who knows? Too much wine tasting, perhaps. So, we drove back to Gigi’s Restaurant. I dropped her off there while looking for a parking spot. As soon as I parked, our friend called to say that Cathy’s phone was in their car. Whew! They drove back to the restaurant, delivering her phone. Our friends literally go the extra mile for us!

The Long and Winding Road

Time to drive back home with the olive oil, wine and painted rock in the back seat. Taking one of the many hairpin turns on the narrow road back from Sintra, we hear glass crashing in the backseat. Oh, no! Is it the wine or the olive oil? Or both? Did it get smashed by the rock? Cathy is hoping it is the wine because it was cheaper than the olive oil. I’m hoping it is the wine because have you ever tried to clean up a liter of olive oil from the backseat of a car?

I finally find a place to pull over and check the damage. To our amazement, nothing was broken. The crashing sound was a bottle falling to the floor against a glass bowl, which was also unbroken.

So this was the trip of many close calls. First, our GPS seductress calling us to our death, much like the siren temptresses that lured Portuguese sailors toward destructive rocks centuries ago. Second close call was losing the phone, which I bet Alexander Graham Bell never had to worry about. And then there was the near miss of having to clean up wine or olive oil or both from the back of our car.

Don’t these close calls represent life in general? We spend more time worrying about what might go wrong when most of the time it is a false alarm. Life is made up of a series of day-changing events, and sometimes life-changing, that can often be measured in inches and seconds.

The tennis ball balancing on top of the net at the end of Woody Allen’s movie, Match Point, represents life in the balance. Which way it falls will determine winning or losing. Most of the time we escape catastrophic events, who knows if by miracle or coincidence. But we tend to worry so much about everything that it is as if it happened anyway.

The Revenge of the Dinosaurs

Got back to Mafra, and made a quick stop at the carwash to wash all the dust from the car before heading back home. The bells of the Mafra Palace were chiming, welcoming us back home safely. The bells are a few hundred years old, which is pretty mindboggling until you walk among dinosaur prints that have been there for approximately 125 million years!

I can’t figure out a pattern to these bells. They don’t ring at the top of the hour or the bottom of the hour. It is not a warning to take cover from a marauding army. Maybe someone just decides that it is a good time to ring a bell. I’m okay with that.

What is it about bells that are so soothing? Maybe it is a reminder to stop worrying. Be here now and all that. Things will be all right. Yeah, you are going to die at some point, but probably not today. Maybe I should have stopped after the soothing part and before the dying part? But it’s all just a part of the cycle, and the dinosaurs rode out their collective life cycle as long as they could. Humankind should be so fortunate!

I’m sure the dinosaurs didn’t contemplate their death. They had small brains compared to their enormous bodies. But now, along with a well-preserved fossil here and there, their deposits make up Olympic sized pools in middle Earth. These deposits are extracted, sometimes from miles below the Earth’s surface, burned and spewed into the ozone. I think that it might just be the revenge of the dinosaurs.