Life for a while on the Spain/Portugal border

On July 22, we drove from Madrid down to an area of Spain called Extremadura.  It's pretty hot and dry in this region.  The place we were driving to was a town called La Fontañera and it was supposed to be right on the border with Portugal.  We didn't know it at the time, but we drove right past the place we were going to stay.  There was no sign on any of the buildings there with the name Salto del Caballo (the name of the place we were going to stay),and there was no sign that we had now left Spain and were in Portugal.  So we reprogrammed the GPS putting in latitude and longitude points and that was how we finally found our place.

Salto del Caballo was a real find for us - it was a little oasis on the edge of a very small town.  A town that only had a few residences and not one business of any kind (although we did see some guy always working in his garage so maybe he did machine or car repairs for the community).  The rooms in Salto del Caballo were quite rustic but that was part of the charm of the whole place.  Since we had no food with us and there were no restaurants or even a store in La Fontañera, we drove to a bigger town in Portugal called Castelo de Vid.  We found a nice little outdoor restaurant and had an enjoyable dinner there.

The little patio outside of Salto del Caballo where we often grilled meat and vegetables for dinner.

Another grilling and dining area on the same patio

We loved taking walks in the area around our apartment.

So that there could be a picture of Guillermo on the walk too, had to put the picture that shows Eva taking a quick nap on the walk.  ;-)

One day we took a drive to Elvas, Portugal.  

This is a wall inside the walled city.  Like a second line of defense.

View from the town.  It was quite hot and dry.

The amazing aqueduct of Elvas

Guillermo and Fernando are there waaay in the background

A picture of our rental by one of the arches of the aqueduct.  It was a Citroen and the best rental car we've had so far.

A town on the way back to La Fontañera.

The countryside in Portugal

The road we took back to La Fontañera.