Islas Cíes I ⚓

It is only a couple of miles from Moaña to Islas Cíes, an island group and nature reserve, just of the coast of Ria de Vigo. Yet, it takes us a couple of hours before we get there. There is a little bit of wind so we decide to sail for as long, but also very slow, as we can. When we arrive we are welcomed "to paradise" by the Kolibri and a handful of other Dutch boats (Audrey, Marije and Lotus). We quickly lower the dinghy into the water and attach our outboard motor, which works again!, and make our way over to the Kolibri.

We haven't sat down properly yet or we are asked to tell them about our orca interaction. It is nice to be able to share our knowledge, but it also gets a bit repetitious to always be the ones that "had an orca interaction". We stay for a couple of drinks and good laughs before we go home to the Nimrod. When we do our last round around the boat before going to bed, we discover that the moon looks like a blood moon, but it shouldn't. We quickly realize that the effects of the more than 100 wildfires razing through Portugal, most of them close to Porto and Aveiro, and northern Spain have reached us as well.

The next morning the severity of the wildfires is even more imminent. As Nimrod's deck is covered in ash; the sun is shining but doesn't let any warmth through; and it feels like we are in the middle of a hazy sandy cloud. As we write this footprint, 4 days later, some of the forest fires are still going on. Luckily some of them have been put out. Unfortunately, 7 people have already been killed. The European Copernicus satellite service said that over 15,000 hectares were scorched and a combined 13 kilometers of fire fronts were detected as of Tuesday night. It added that an area home to 210,000 people was exposed to the fire risk.

For us the wildfires meant we would delay going further south down the coast towards Portugal, Porto and further on. And that we would spend a couple of days on these beautiful islands. We first walked around almost the entire islas Faro and Monteagudo. Due to the smokey air the colors of the Islas weren't as beautiful, as they could have been. But the smoke also added some mysterious atmosphere. Since it is a nature reserve, they try to maintain the local flora and fauna and get rid of the invasive exotic ones. We saw a lot of eucalyptus and mistletoe, so they still have quite some work to do😅

We enjoyed being in nature and a forest again. We probably walked about 10km again to see almost all sightseeing points and to go up to the highest lighthouse. The views were amazing, despite the smoke. When we returned to the boat we decided to move across the bay to Isla San Martin because we should have better protection against the wind and swell over there. We had quite an eventful time at Isla San Martin. You can read all about it in Islas Cíes part II.Read more