Magic Mountains

This was meant to be a post about Galicia… At least that was the target me and Emanuele set for those days of June: a place both of us actually wanted to visit for a long time. I actually would already be in the North of Portugal and we desperate for a good road trip, seemed like a perfect plan. But because there’s never such thing, because there’s always a last minute delay, in the end our plans got messed up and had to be updated. Galicia became too far for the short amount of days we had. But we already had something in mind.

Magic Mountains is a comercial moniker for some of the mountains in Central Portugal, between the Douro and Vouga rivers, that includes the Freita and Arada Mountain ranges (where we turned our attention to for those days). It’s a region not as remote as others in the country, although calling something “remote” in a small Western European country can be silly, it’s only 50km away from the more prosperous cities on the coast, but in a way has been further away than that. It’s a region where small villages of black stone roofs that are tucked in the deepest valleys, accessible by slippery and narrow winding roads, all that to be closer to the rich pastures that fed the large herds of sheep and goats. Almost as if those villages don’t want to be reached.

I’ve wanted to go there with a camera for a long time, actually was my first pick for those days on the road. In a way these mountains are magic to me, having spent a big part of my summers on the foothills of the Arada Mountains, looking at them from the window. The same way I spent a part of the last years exploring the banks of the Tagus river close home (an area that despite being to reach by sight use to as familiar to me as the banks of Shyok river in Northern India), there was a big chunk of that region that was close and unknown to me. And, just like the banks of the Tagus, that was a great reason for me wanting to go there.

Closed house and chained dogs guarding it

Elderly couple still doing their chores of their livestock.

Moss growing nearby an old “alminha”, the small shrines for the dead found in Portugal.

Collapsed stone roof of decaying house in a village in the valleys of Arada Mountains.

One of the two chapels of São Macário at the highest point of Arada Mountains, where people go to give offerings to the saint.

Black umbrella hanging at a door at a small village in the Arada Mountains.

Calling the goat herd at the end of the day.

At the end of each day, the herds of goats move down the hills, to the small villages in the Valleys of the Arada Mountains.

Goats returning to their stockyards for the night.

Woman herding a small group of sheep and goats at a plateau of the Arada Mountains, with the dogs always on the watch.

The pastures in the higher locations of Freita Mountains.

Now that I’ve returned I can’t stop thinking that there’s so much more to explore there,Â maybe to check it in other times of the year and see it change.

And to wrap this up a small note, regarding photo processing, like in most of my photos in recent years these have been processed using my own presetsÂ as a starting point for my work. If you’re curious about what I used here I went for a full Kodak look:Â Â Kodak Ektar 100,Â Kodak Ektachrome 100 GX andÂ Kodak Ektachrome 100 VS.

Magic Mountains

Browse the photos from the Freita and Arada mountains in my gallery.

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