Escape from Australia: Eucalyptus around the world

Although it was years ago, I can still vividly recall a particular afternoon driving down a rural highway in the Algarve of southern Portugal with my mom. It was a beautiful day. A beautiful summer. Neither of us had ever been to Portugal before and we had all the windows rolled down in the car as we drove through the countryside. It smelled incredible outside. We kept remarking on the smell to each other because, mixed with the rural highway, the perfect light, and the rural beauty of Portugal, it was utterly magical. What in the world smelled so good?? This place is amazing!

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Eucalyptus lined highway in rural Portugal.

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The Expats of Portugal’s Algarve

I awake to wind. “Its the bad wind,” they tell me over breakfast: “The Spanish wind. The Levant.”

The wind rumbles out of the east and enters our small valley farm with a constant dirt-churning rush. The eucalyptus trees roll like the waves of the ocean, the chickens and turkeys hide within their roosts, and the plants of the farm bend under an energy and fury that seems both impossible to resist and destined never to end.

Farm

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