Comporta
A summer scene is ramping up on Portugal's West Coast, as artists, a-listers and surfers revel in the beach-shack vibe.
Some
people will want to say Comporta in the same breath as Ibiza, but,
really, they're missing the point altogether. Comporta is not Ibiza. It
is not St Tropez 30 years ago. It is not Montauk or Tarifa, Oualidia or
Trancoso. On the global list of languid beach hotspots, the closest,
most relevant where-shall-we-compare-it-to is José Ignacio in Uruguay,
for that bleached-wood, barefoot, blustery kind of vibe, but, actually,
it's not that similar. Comporta strikes out on its own path. It is
unlike anywhere you have been before.
The name Comporta, roughly
translated, means a gate that holds back water, a lock. Which makes
sense when you see how many canals there are. This is rice-paddy land.
Great, stripey fields of rice, the biggest in Portugal, stretch all the
way down the coast, sheltered from the stiff Atlantic breezes by sand
dunes. They are kept green and bounteous by a crisscross of irrigation
canals. In the heat of summer, when the rest of the country (bar the
Algarve golf courses) is dusty and dry, this area still thrums with
life.
