Finding land
So then the adventure began, where do we want to live? Need to be warm, sunny, fertile, have fresh water and be affordable. After being away from home for many years, we decided we should at least stay in Europe. So south Europe was the place to be, land still cheap, great culture and sunny. We bought our old Mercedes van and went to explore.
We drove around the coast of Spain and Portugal and found a lot of nice places. Basque country, beautiful, good weather but way too expensive, Gallicia, Beautifull, cheap but it rains more than the Netherlands, and so on. After a while we felt we would never find the right spot, until our van broke down in Odeceixe. Luckily we knew a friend who lives here so we asked if we could stay at their place until we could drive again. Staying here for a couple of weeks we fell in love with the place, but surely it wouldn't be possible to find a spot here, right?
We finished our circle around the coast, but we weren’t too interested anymore. Our mind was set on the southwest coast of Portugal; Costa Vincentina. Back in the Netherlands we worked for a while to be able to go back and go on a land hunt. When we arrived back in Portugal with our loyal Mercedes van we talked to a lot of real estate agents, but when they heard our budget they lost their interest and we mostly got the advice to reconsider our dreams, and this was not even in our dream region. We went from north to south and found a volunteering place in Monchique where we stayed for a couple of weeks. We considered going back to Alentejo because there the land prices were more realistic but since we practically passed Odeceixe we just wanted to have a quick look. There was one property we really liked, but way over budget. We thought we should have a practice viewing first at a completely ridiculous property (the photo on the ad was literally a closeup of a tree). The practice property is the property we are living on now.