Step out of Your Comfort Zone and feel Alive
Learning to drive a car for most people comes during teenage years and offers your first taste of freedom from parental constraints. I however didn’t get my licence till I was thirty two! Living in a coastal village it was easy to get myself around town on my bicycle; work, shops, beach, everywhere. Friends still remind me of the massive amount of grocery bags that could often be seen dangling from the handle bars.
Praia de Marinha 
Even when my children were born I still had no motivation to get my licence. “Why do I need it, I can walk with the pram, it’s good excersise,” I told myself. Not until we moved to a rural property did it quickly became apparent that me getting my licence was indeed a necessity. Now many years later and thousand of kilometres of driving under my belt it is unthinkable for me to imagine living in a world without my licence.
Then I came to Spain two months ago and couldn’t possibly imagined driving around the countryside. As I’m sure most are aware, like the Americas, European countries (except the United Kingdom) all drive on the right hand side of the road and therefore so does Spain. For those of us that learnt to drive in the 30% of countries that do so on the left, the thought of even attempting to make the switch is inconceivable. I even get confused when I am asked to give directions, I inevitably choose right when I mean left and visa versa. The thought of me hurtling down a Spanish motorway at 120 km an hour was never on the cards, but then the weather got hot!
When I say hot I mean baking oven, burnt to a crisp, hard to breath and not only did my friends husband have to work but my friend had answered a question wrong when renewing her Australian licence online. The Australian government, ever scarred of fraudsters and illegal immigrants, doesn’t give you any chances and refused to allow my friend to complete her renewal online. This left us unable to go for a swim without Victor. In an act of extreme desperation Selena asks me about five weeks ago if I wanted to drive. I thought she was joking at first but she was deadly serious. I was quite impressed with her courage I must say but the fact the beach is actual only ten minutes, four right hand turns and one left hand away might have had something to do with it. My confidence however, was not so easily strengthened.
Which brings me back to the reasons I didn’t drive till I was thirty two, basically I was scarred. I know I said all that other stuff about not being necessary etc, but the honest ” face yourself in the mirror” truth be told was; I was scarred. When I first turned out of our street on the road that took us Mazagon I felt like I did in those days when I was learning to drive. Nothing is natural, you have to be reminding yourself constantly of what you should be doing. I even developed my own mantra, ” keep Selena in the gutter” which translates ” the passenger is alway on the right”. It felt like the car was driving you not the other way around.
After a relatively short time I ventured further a field, Zara, Sfera and many other Spanish clothing brands decided it was time for sales and we weren’t missing out on that. Then a couple of weeks ago we drove to Sevilla (about an hour away) to visit yet another group of Roman ruins. This time I had to travel on the motorway, which I would like to point out has a speed limit of one hundred and twenty kilometres an hour, ten kilometres faster than Australia. Since that day driving on the right has suddenly become second nature and I am pretty chuffed with myself.
I even drove a friends car in Portugal, which has a very old, narrow and poorly maintained road system, when the friend I was with wasn’t feeling well. The fact she quickly recovered after I took the wheel could’ve had something to do with the fact I have a heavy lead foot and she suddenly realised that I had only been driving on the right for a matter of weeks.
When I chose to take this Solo holiday I did so for a variety of reason, one in particular was the opportunity to put myself into uncomfortable situations and find answers. Truly driving on the right hand side of the road was one of those situations for me and surprise surprise, I found I could not only do it but do it comfortably. The thing about human nature is that it is easy just living our life in our usual routine and we have a measure of happiness. However, if we choose to push ourself, step outside the everyday, suddenly you feel alive. Each little achievement makes the blood flow and gives you confidence.
That was my pep talk for the week, now for Portugal. To say Portugal is special is an understatement. I have been across the border a few times during my stay in Palos and noticed that inspite of the similarities with Spain it is also quite different. This trip took me a little further along the south coast to the exquisite Praia de Marinha. This section of the coast and hinterland is called the Algave. It features not only amazing beaches but the remains of lairs of Portuguese smugglers and pirates from a world long disappeared. These bandits notoriously laid in wait for Spanish galleons returning from American, laden with gold and other cargo
Southern Portugal has many resorts for Northern Europeans but if you venture beyond this artificial world you find the rustic lifestyles of the people is still very authentic and simplistic. My only regret is I didn’t find any surf to photograph for my son and friends but that is further round on the west coast. I really only scratched the surface of that beautiful country and what I saw I loved, this is definitely a return destination!
Tips
- Never leave your home country without an international licence – you just don’t know when you will need it.
- Step outside your comfort zone, you just might surprise yourself!
- Try Portuguese flame grilled Tuna- it’s like no Tuna steak you have ever tried before!
Zesty Mumma's Words 