T Minus - Ready, Set - Hey, We Already Started!

Tim and I met up in Lisbon and immediately began our cultural exploration agenda!
To attain the most cultural insight possible, we're trying as much as possible to stay with local people instead of staying in hostels. Our first hosts were a gay couple in Lisbon - Marco and Sergio - a couple of rockin good guys! They accepted our request to stay with them over the New Years holiday and invited us to partake in their party with their friends! Sergio cooked up a feast and we all debated different perspectives on politics, religion, global climate change, and lifestyle - the works! We heard more of the stereotypical European viewpoint that the stereotypical American is ignorant to most international affairs.
With our new found friendship, we made a lot of jokes about stereotypes about gay and straight communities. As the night went on, the music played and the wine flowed. We started dancing and singing to a bunch of stereotypical "gay" music: Madonna, Prince, The Village People and the like. Marco and Sergio did an amazing dance routine to "It´s Raining Men" for Tim that had everyone busting up! When a less "gay" song came on, Tim and I started singing along. Sergio turned it off and said, "Oh my god, that is so straight!" We about died laughing!

I learned something very significant from Sergio. I had previously embraced "tolerance" as an argument settler. For example, I would state that a person doesn't have to necessarily accept a religion, but should have tolerance for it, in order to maintain peace. But respecting a person for who they are and what they believe, instead of simply tolerating them, is a much more sustainable foundation for peace. I don't have to accept what a person believes as a part of my own personal values, but respecting their decisions and choices for their own life presents a much more powerful platform for mutual understanding and integrated peace.
It was also nice to have such open acceptance into a gay community. In my previous experience with gay friends, I've found myself discriminated against for being straight - like they're elitists, looking down on me from a pedestal. However, Marco and Sergio (and their friends) accepted us, a couple of straight guys, to share the best holiday of the year! Smashing my previously formed stereotype felt good - as it normally does to realize something new about the world that can bring a smile to your face. We danced and sang and laughed together! I can't think of more fun people with whom to spend my favorite holiday! Our extreme high at having had this experience came crashing down during the first night of our project.

We said goodbye to Marco and Sergio and then Marco took us to the train station to get our train. Unfortunately, he took us to the wrong station, so we missed our train. This would prove to be an indicator of how the rest of our first day would go...

We jumped on a bus south, to Albufeira with only one other passenger. 3.5 hours later, we arrived. It was dark by the time we left the bus station. We headed toward the beach for some beach camping. Tim said he expected to hike about an hour, and I was more hoping for 15 minutes after not having slept much the previous night. We hiked and hiked and hiked and never found a beach, but headed in a direction we thought would lead us out of town. Looking for somewhere to set up camp! We hiked down the highway for 2 hours before we decided we needed some food and found ourselves a supermarket. Made cheese sandwiches, drank cheap wine, and had ourselves a very nice conversation!

Tired and ready for bed, we found a covered patch of bushes off the main road that concealed us if we laid down. So we busted our out sleeping bags and went to sleep. And we slept great, for 2.5 hours... then the rain started... Packed up our stuff and headed for cover. After about another hour of hiking, we ended up huddled in a bus stop trying, with some degree of success, to escape the rain and wind. Slept for about an hour until the rain stopped and we decided to find better shelter. Hiked again, for an hour or two - completely worn out and sore - until we started running out of homes and businesses around us. All of a sudden it started raining again - hard! We took the first thing we could find - the patio of an unsold house. It was cold, windy, wet and down right miserable! At 4.30am some guy yelled at us to figure out what we were doing. When he saw we were just avoiding the torrential rainfall, he motioned for us that it was ok to stay. This was the hardest part of the night. I was sick, hungry, cold, and my head started hurting badly just as I ran out of food and water! 6.30 rolled around and the rain had stopped so Tim and I decided to keep on traveling. We hiked another hour to some tiny village and suddenly saw a sign that said "bus stop" in plain English! Hot damn! Waited an hour for the bus and found our way to Faro.

We were both ready to crash, but had to wait for the tourist office to open so that we could find a hostel. Around 10am we were there... but learned that the check in time wasn´t until 5pm!!! So we sluggishly killed 7 hours before we were finally able to rest!

This is how you start an adventure!