Fishermen’s Trail Stage – Odeceixe » Zambujeira do Mar

Look at the shapes of the older, darker rocks that make up the cliffs. When they formed, the strata lay in a perfectly horizontal position. Now they display absolutely astonishing folds, the kind that appear in geology textbooks and treatises on stratigraphy. Some strata are now in a vertical position, like walls. It is fascinating to imagine the forces capable of folding rock as if it were puff pastry! Far more gentle and recent was the formation of the consolidated sand tubes found here and there along the trail.

On this stretch you will find abundant signs of the presence of mammals, especially carnivores, that live in these dunes. You will hardly ever see the animals, since they are nocturnal and stay in their burrows all day. But you will be able to spot traces of their presence – droppings, tracks, burrows or the remains of nocturnal kills. On this stretch there are: Egyptian mongooses (locally called escalabardo), weasels, stone martens (also called papalvo), badgers, genets and otters. The rabbit is another mammal that builds complex burrow systems in the more stable dunes of this stretch. It breeds here as abundantly as legend would have it, and a good thing too, because this mammal is the preferred prey of 30 species of carnivores!