Monsanto

Monsanto is located basically in the middle of nowhere, but it looked so fascinating, I had to add it to our Portugal itinerary. And it turned out to be a definite favorite.

Monsanto is a very small medieval town high up on a hill near the middle of the border with Spain. Monsanto was voted the most Portuguese town in Portugal in 1938 and has worked hard to maintain its historic character.

What makes it fascinating is that it is town built amongst and into the gigantic boulders that dominate this area.

The boys were overjoyed at the opportunity to boulder to the top of the hill and back into the town.

“We wanted to do some bouldering, so we went to the biggest boulders in the world.” Oliver

In Leo’s words; “Monsanto was really cool. There were lots of boulders. They were the biggest boulders in the Iberian Penninsula. Wow! How cool is that?”

“The first day we spent a very long time bouldering, which is like rock climbing but on boulders. I am a very good climber. We climbed big rocks. We climbed small rocks. We climbed lots of rocks.”

“And then we got to a bell tower on top of tons of boulders. We got to the base of the bell tower we decided to climb it. It was pretty hard regarding the stone brick walls but we did it.”

“My mom went to the castle that was right next to the bell tower and we were going to try to climb to where my mom was, but it was too steep and we didn’t want to get hurt. So we went around to the main entrance and then we looked all around the castle. The castle also had boulders inside it so we explored it.”

“I decided to boulder on the rocks that were inside the castle walls. I got a few scrapes. That hurt! It bled a lot but that didn’t stop me.”

Given that much of the trail was over boulders, we were directed down the other side of the hill with yellow and red lines painted on the rocks.

The boys had such a great time we had to make a second outing the next day. This trail took us down into the valley to a chapel.

And through a cork forest.

Each tree’s bark is harvested every 10 years. They mark the tree with a number to know when to harvest it next.

Only the outer layer of cork is harvested, allowing the tree to grow a new layer of cork.

Apart from the boulders, our favorite part of Monsanto was our rental house.

Our rental house was an old typical rock home that originally would have housed 3 families. They had since been combined into one home; the first floor for the kitchen and dining room, the second floor for the living room and a bedroom, with a second bed in a loft, and another loft for a third bed. Because the town is built amongst the boulders, one of our bathroom’s walls was made of a boulder and the floor of one of the bedrooms was mostly covered in the top of a boulder.

Rock houses stay quite cool, so we were all excited to make a fire to heat things up in the evening and early morning.

The best feature of the house was our hostess Eloíza, who lived next door. Eloíza is actually from Brazil, but has lived in Portugal for over 30 years, and in Monsanto for just 3. She spoke a little Spanish, but mostly Portuguese, and loved to talk. If we all listened really hard we got about 70% of what she said.

She treated us to light supper of traditional Monsanto vegetable soup, wine and fruit with quince preserves. Then in the morning she greeted us with fried banana bread, cold meats and cheese, juice and hot cocoa and coffee.