My grandest adventure during my stay in Faro was a 4-hour tour of the Portuguese coastline with Algarve Seafaries. I had hoped to take the 8-hour tour, but alas, they don’t offer that one in December. Next time, for sure.

I arranged transportation to Vilamoura through the tour company, and my driver was a very nice man who works for Ford. He was a far less crazy driver than the taxi driver who took me to my hotel that first day, and we had a lovely conversation about the various differences between cultures and how eye-opening it is to experience life as others do.

Once in Vilamoura, I boarded the Yacht Moena and sat with a young English couple, a group of rowdy Parisians, and a woman from Denmark. For the first hour, we all kept silent (except for the rowdy Parisians), and shivered in the cold wind. When it’s a solid 60° for most of your trip, it’s all too easy to remember that it’s December. But then you get on a boat and you go out into the ocean and the wind blows and you start to remember real quick like, and you seriously regret your decision to not bring a coat.

But when you have views like this to keep you entertained, you start to grow numb to the chill in the air. (Or maybe you’re just actually numb… Whatever…)

To get an up-close look at the sea caves, we took two shifts in a smaller glass-bottomed boat. The guide was a young guy who put us all at ease, and everyone starting talking and having a great time together.

The sea caves were beautiful. We backed the boat into a shallow one to look up through a big hole to the sky, and then risked life and limb to squeeze through a tiny tunnel just barely big enough for the boat!

After the trips to the sea caves, it was time to head back to the marina. We were almost back when the boat took a sudden turn and took us further out to sea. I turned to my friend from Denmark with a quizzical look, and she said, “They must need to get their four hours in.”

But then we saw this:

See that?

No?

How about I zoom in for you?

DOLPHINS!!!

They saw us coming and came right over to the boat. They were everywhere, and plentiful! There was even a baby! They played with us for a good ten minutes, and the party only stopped when the captain said we had to turn around and go back.

Want to know the coolest thing about all that? Before we spotted the dolphins, I had just said a little prayer in which I thanked God for the awesome day. At the end, I said, “If it would be possible to see some dolphins, too, that would be absolutely amazing.”

Ask and ye shall receive. He is amazing.

Planning a trip to Portugal? Be sure to check out Algarve Seafaris. This tour did not disappoint!

If you found this post helpful, please share it! Thanks!