The Big Waves of Nazare

November 12^th-13^th, 2025 

From the Douro Valley, we drove 3-4 hours to reach Nazare, which is on the coast, about an hour from Lisbon.  It was quite rainy and windy in a few spots, and we even saw a businessman who had skidded his fancy car into the median on the other side of the highway.  He was standing by the side of the road under his umbrella, looking soaking wet in his white collared shirt while on the phone calling for help.

Driving in some heavy rain.

A couple of awesome Pastel de Natas from a bakery that we stopped at for lunch...probably the best ones we've had on the trip so far.

Pulling into town around 4 pm, we drove down a narrow, one-way street to the beachfront where our accommodation, the Hotel Mar Bravo, was located.  Parking was next to non-existent.  In fact, I was surprised to see parking signs specifically for individual spots that showed the licence plate of who was allowed to park there, in front of their apartment.  I briefly pulled into a handicapped spot while we ran in to find out where we could park.

 

We were instructed to drive to the “Tribunal”, the courthouse, where there was free parking and lucked out as there was a super easy spot to pull in and out of with Octi.

Naomi liked this anchor anchored in the street.

She also liked these two little dogs.

Great design in the cobblestone.

It was a nice big sandy beach.

Just outside of our hotel room.

There were many narrow streets and even more narrow alleyways.

After settling in our room and enjoying an amazing sunset, we headed out for a lovely Indian dinner.  It turns out that neither of us are that interested in the local Portuguese dishes as most it is based around seafood, specifically squid and octopus.

Crab for dinner anyone?  Sadly, they all looked to be dead already.  These were in an aquarium at our hotel's restaurant...we only ate our breakfast that was included with the room there.

The view from our hotel room in the evening.

What a stunning sunset!!!

The next morning, we were the first ones in the hotel restaurant for breakfast so we could get out to the point to view the waves before high tide and the predicted rain around 10 am.   We opted to take the funicular up the 300+ meter hill as the rain had already started.

About to get on the funicular.

I'm still waking up...

Going up...

It was quite blustery and rainy up on the peninsula but luckily that subsided as we approached the point.

Notice on the ferris wheel that the top four "cages" are missing.  The wheel is not locked down, so it is free to move in the wind (less stress on the structure).  However, since there is not as much weight on the top, the wheel does not want to spin, even in high winds.

Seagulls playing in the wind.

Heading down to the infamous lighthouse.

There was a plaque mentioning something about knights who used to hunt the deer in this area.  One knight fell off a cliff but a deer kicked him back up and saved him, so now he looks like this...

Yeah, super windy.

The big, big waves are definitely not a daily occurrence, but more like a once-a-year type thing.  A lot of things have to line up to create the perfect conditions such as the time of the tide, the general swells on the ocean, the wind strength and direction etc.  Unfortunately, we were not so lucky, but the waves were still impressive.

Our first view of the waves.

A nice set of waves coming in.

I decided to walk/clamber down to the beach to check out the waves from that perspective.

Starting down the slippery path to the beach.

I'm the speck down there on the right.

A cool tunnel that the waves came up into once while I was down on the beach...it was approaching high tide.

The view of the waves from the beach.

A panoramic view from the beach.

By the time I came back up to where Naomi was, the little museum and access to the small lighthouse was going to open up soon so we hung out in the blowing wind and waited.

The lighthouse that you see in many pictures with the gigantic waves.

Naomi is ready to go in.

Inside the little museum were a number of surfboards from big wave surfers.  It was interesting to see the difference in sizes and types of boards.

Surf, you will...

They weren't very talkative birds.

Getting artistic with the photography.

A couple of young Finnish women took this photo for us.

Surfboards of legends...including the current male and female World Record holders of surfing the biggest wave.

This guy supposedly has played his violin while surfing!

This is a photo of a photo of what it can look like on a good day.

Insane!

The jetskiers also put their selves in harm's way getting the surfers onto the wave, and more so when they retrieve them after they wipe out.

This is why Nazare gets huge waves, thanks to a deep canyon under the water.  You can see the little peninsula with the lighthouse a bit to the left of the middle of the photo.

Alright, Nazare…check.  We walked back to the funicular where we briefly chatted with a Canadian mother and her 20 something year old daughter who were from Collingwood, north of Toronto.  Then it was checkout time, and we headed off towards Sintra, a town to the west of Lisbon where I planned to park Octi for the next few weeks while we spend some time in the capital and then fly to Madeira, a Portuguese island about 1000 kilometres from Lisbon and about 500 kilometres off the coast of Morocco.

Heading back down the funicular.