Purchasing a vehicle

All my time till now, I have been waiting to meet my new employer, Pedro. Conveniently he had chosen to make a tour of his schools at the exact same time he'd insisted I needed to be in the country, so was not in town and so wasn't able to assist in getting setup.

Not to worry, I'm an independent, accomplished traveller. I found a cell phone in a pawn shop, got hooked up with a cheap rate pre-pay calling plan, and later crossed Lisbon’s river south to the district where there was a van for sale that Pedro had arranged previously with his "friend" who's name he didn't know. Hmmm...

Well I met the guy Jorge, who was pretty straight up and prepared with all the necessary paperwork. But he didn't speak a lick of English. Now that was a challenge, as my Portuguese consists of about 'Hello', 'please' and 'thank you', with a couple of verbs and nouns thrown in.

Pedro wasn't even available on the phone to help translate. But there was only one obstacle we couldn't overcome, and his wife solved that by calling her daughter (lesson 1: the younger generation are much more likely to have had some exposure to English).

So after 10 minutes and basically no test drive, I'd paid $1150 (euros) in cash and walked away with a real dunger Nissan Vanette with all kinds of dings and rust. But it turns out to be a real champ: starts every time, and has a radio (kind of). The back is perfect for camping out in, and is even double-walled which insulates very nicely.

So I hit the road south to the Algarve.