Evora

There is not much to report about Evora, or there is but it’s not pleasant, which is not the town’s fault. On our last night in Santiago, I found it difficult to sleep. Not long after being on the road, maybe 90 minutes, I became too tired to drive. Rod could not take over because, like most Americans, he lacks the requisite number of limbs in mutual cooperation to control the various levers, wheels, pedals, gears, switches, and audio/visual clues required to control the aircraft. I slept. Perhaps for 15 minutes.

Two hours later, we repeated the cycle, but after five minutes, I felt terribly ill. In fits and starts we arrived in the outskirts of the old town, defined by a wall, which is not a threat to the Chinese wall record. The traffic pattern is creative. The old city has one entrance and all other roads are one way out, providing the tourist a nearly infinite number of ways to fail to find a destination, which I discovered by trying them all. The hotel was discovered by happenstance when Rod saw its sign and I managed to turn sharply into its full parking lot. The GPS lady tried one last attempt to foil us with her impatient sneer, “recalculating,” an obvious lie.

After unpacking, we moved the car to distant lot conveniently adjacent to a hospital, which we entered in the hope of finding a toilet, but stayed for the ambulance transfer to a nearby trauma center. I did not die, though there were times I wished I could have—gastritis. That is about all I recall of Evora. We left in the morning.