with Frisos parents...

We left our Sprinter safe and sound with our friends at the Mercedes workshop in Guayaquil and got to the airport in time. Only a random luggage control for drugs made us late for boarding and let Wera find out that one of the precious christmas gifts was leaking and slowly soaking through the entire backpack. Fortunately the officers were not interested in the considerable amount of alcohol we intended to export and even helped to pack everything together again. Lucky us :-) We had a quiet flight to Madrid and landed in time- so that there was enough time to do some fancy duty free shopping before boarding our plane to Faro, where Frisos parents happily welcomed us. Only a short car ride later we moved into the little guest houses, where our neighbors, the team in charge of mowing the lawn, were expecting us ;-)

The jet lag turned out to be an issue- since we were far too lazy to put an alarm clock for quick adjustment to european time ;-) Nevertheless, the portuguese winter days were mild and sunny and a lot of gardening was waiting for us.

The property in the south of Portugal, in Ourique, is beautifully situated on a small hill, overlooking a valley full of  olive trees, cork oaks, sheep and black pigs. More than 100 olive trees are growing in huge garden and require quite an amount of care. So we picked olives, cut wild growing branches and spent the evenings together in front of the fireplace with a nice drink mixed by Frisos dad.

We also spent "Sinterklaas" together. This is a very dutch tradition. On the 6th of december, the Sinterklaas and his servant, the Swaarte Piet arrive by boat from Spain to Holland bringing a lot of gifts and candies for the kids. In holland this day is even more important than christmas. And of course, Sinterklaas left some really nice presents for us in Portugal too. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinterklaas