Walking in Portugal - Remote Coastal Trails

Susi was a superb guide, hands down the best I’ve had with Explore (and I’ve been on several Explore trips.). She’s the kind of person who’s just made for this kind of work (although she has done other work as well.). The kind of person I’d want to be friends with outside of an Explore trip, that is for sure. She made the whole trip enjoyable. I’d just bet she could have done that if our hiking weather was bad (but it wasn’t.) I don’t think we had any issue the entire trip (except maybe the one day the hotel didn’t have coffee at breakfast because the machine broke, so we just had some at a cafe during a short break period.). However, she gave me the impression that she had the confidence to deal with issues if they happened our way. I told her at the end of the trip, in a note that I included with my tip, that she completely made me forget that I was turning 68 in November. She made 38 miles over five days seem like a walk in the park. She was always encouraging, also solicitous (but not excessively so.) Susi is Austrian but lives in Barcelona (and travelled a lot in Europe) so that was a plus for me in getting intel over dinner for future travel plans. She knew plenty about Portugal as well and helped fill in my information gaps nicely. I think you will be fortunate to keep her working for Explore. She will make travelers want to come back for more. I understand she has done biking and cultural trips, as well at the hiking ones, which didn’t surprise me a bit. She’s enthusiastic about all of it.

Superb trip, just slightly disappointing that no transfer was arranged when I arrived in Faro and the ground team seemed unable to deal with the issue. Unfortunately I had to ring the emergency duty manager (apologies for this) who was excellent and dealt with the situation promptly and gave me options/solution to the situation.

When I initially booked the trip I was under the impression from the description that the hotel had a pool, I was disappointed when I found out from others that this was not the case, I had planned to chill out by the pool on the free day. However having said that the hotel was very good and the breakfast was lovely. Regarding the walks, some of them were not as long as the description and I wouldn’t describe them as remote

The Explore experience remote coastal walking holiday was a great experience. The walks were very easy and enjoyable nothing hard, we had to take hiking boots off on one walk due to path was a bit flooded. Martin our guide was an excellent guide and a brilliant lunch provider. His skills at providing 3/4 course meals on the go was excellent. The meals at various restaurants at night were well thought out. Not much for vegetarians. I would recommend the holiday great experience and you get to meet people from around the world. The only downside was hotel didn’t have a pool. It was a very clean hotel all rooms were painted in different colours, very big rooms. Unfortunately no kettles in your room. Clean rooms nice staff. The taxis we’re waiting to take us to the start of the walks and returning us back to the hotel.

Martin went above and beyond as our guide.