Nazaré

The story is of a foggy morning, eight hundred years back in time. Knight Dom Fuas Rouphino, was pursuing a stag. All of a sudden, his game disappeared at the edge of a cliff. Rouphino who was close behind, heard in alarm the waves lapping below. Only a miracle could save. And it was a miracle that did happen.

At the very edge of the cliff his horse came to a sudden halt. Convinced that the Virgin of Nazaré had come to his aid Rouphino raised a chapel on the site. But, I do not think that any divine intervention was necessary. The spontaneous beauty, of the sight that spread below would root anyone to the spot.


Nazaré, now is not the same fishing village that Rouphino’s horse saw centuries back. The sea has withdrawn further. The cluster of white and red buildings, the eat outs that serve delicacies of the sea and the numerous boards that announces rooms for rent have hidden the old village.

There are plenty of people up here as well. It would be fun to put together what each of them sees, all the different oceans, all the Nazarés, and conclude that they were still not enough.
-- Journey to Portugal

However it peeps out from among the edifices, sometimes, as the middle-aged fisherwoman, with her merchandise arranged on the side of her “rooms for rent” signboard, the props for drying fish raised over the sand and the brightly painted fishing boats that dot the horizon.

There was a lot that was spontaneous in our ‘all-girl’ trip to Nazaré too- from deciding to extend the one- day trip to an overnight one, to sneaking into the hypermarket bathrooms for shower and deciding to sleep in the car to see the sun, rise from the sea, the first thing in the morning (well...and sleeping all through that sunrise well into the day).

Nazaré owes its name to Nazareth of Israel. The legend goes that St. Joseph carved a statue of the virgin in Nazarét and it was brought to Europe by St. Augustine in the 4th century. The statue found its way to a cave near where Rouphiano and his horse were saved. And since then Our Lady of Nazaré is looking over the village below.



Nazaré has a calm beauty. The white sand laces the bright blue of the Atlantic. The beach is punctuated by occasional rocky cliffs that jut out into the ocean. Cliffs, with alternating bands of brown, gray and green... rock shelters carved into them by the persistent action of the sea... water that percolates from the roofs of the caves falling drop by drop.

Mação is a stretched out claustrophobia and for us, an ocean is much more than an ocean