The wind tugs at your jacket, pulls at your hair, tears the words out of your mouth. Whoever approaches the sea has to shout or even yell. And yet it is not understood. Because the sea is roaring back. And how! The closer you get to the small Farol da Nazaré lighthouse built on top of a fortress, the harder you have to brave the storm.
Some visitors prefer to turn back. Others continue to struggle. And join the front of the storm tourists on the viewing platform of the Forte de São Miguel Arcanjo.
They duck under the gusts like surfers under waves, then rise again against the force of the elements. Like a defiant King Lear calling out the storm in Shakespeare’s drama of the same name: “Blow you winds, puff your cheeks! Rage, blast!”
The weather forecast predicted strong winds with gusty gusts for this weekend – and waves five meters high and more. Far too small for the big wave surfers. And also, as will be shown later, too much white water. The foaming roar into which waves break makes surfing impossible.
And yet every stormy day draws people to this place like magic. They come from everywhere, with their cars or with the Ascensor da Nazaré, a funicular railway that opened in 1889, to the approximately 110 meter high cliff above the beach.
We’ve all seen them, the iconic images of the dark red Farol da Nazaré, tiny in front of an enormous crest of waves. And so just approaching this rocky spur gives you goosebumps. May the waves today be 20 meters smaller than the biggest ones seen here in winter rolling towards the shore, Nazaré is proving to be what it has been for 1500 years – a place of pilgrimage.
The city owes its name to a small statue. This is supposed to be an authentic depiction of the Mother of God: Mary breastfeeds her child – Jesus. In the fourth century it came from Nazareth to Merida in Spain.
Around 200 years later, a monk took care of her again. Accompanied by the last Visigoth king, he carried the image of the Virgin to the Portuguese coast to hide it in a cave from the oncoming Moors. A shrine was built in which he kept and guarded the relic. Soon the first pilgrims came to see the Sagrada Imagem de Nossa Senhora da Nazaré – “The Holy Image of Our Lady of Nazareth”.
A settlement grew up around the shrine on the cliff. The pilgrims had to be offered food and shelter. The infrastructure of a place of pilgrimage developed. His myth was further fueled when a prince of Portugal, chasing a deer, rode up the cliff in the mist and would have died had not the Senhora da Nazaré pointed him in the right direction with a ray of light at the last moment. In gratitude, the rescued had a chapel built.
For many centuries, the Santuário de Nossa Senhora da Nazaré has been the most important pilgrimage site for the Marian cult on the Iberian Peninsula. And soon also the namesake for the place itself, which was actually called Pederneira. In 1912 the name was changed. A short time later, the Marian cult moved to Fátima.
It is around 800 meters from the chapel to the small lighthouse. The chapel is empty this afternoon, and several hundred people have gathered around the lighthouse. Fishermen have feared the huge waves for generations. They call them “widow makers”. Their formation is favored by a mighty underwater canyon.
Walter Chicharro, mayor of Nazaré, likes to tell how it was realized in 2009 that there was a group of people traveling around the world in search of just such waves. How then the American Garret McNamara set his world record in Nazaré in 2013 by surfing a wave with the unimaginable height of almost 24 meters.
Since then, the city has never been the same, with two beaches unpoetically called Praia do Norte and Praia do Sul. Many big wave surfers now have a second home here. Some fishermen name their boats or cats after the daring men and women who ride the big waves.
The main season starts in winter. And if in the past one begged the Mother of God to protect the place from too high waves, today one asks for sea monsters. Their heroes are big wave surfers like the young António Laureano, the Portuguese hero Nic von Rupp or the German Sebastian Steudtner.
Their sport is a cunning teamwork: assistants on land watch the sea and report a good wave. The surfers let jet ski drivers pull them into the waves and then cross them in a wild ride. Ideally, it is possible to leave the barrel before the wave breaks. In the event of a fall, the surfer is driven out of the danger zone by jet ski.
A video and photo team records all of this. Not only to serve the world’s social media channels with surf porn, but also to later determine the height of the waves with the image and film material.
The world record is currently held by the Brazilian Rodrigo Koxa, who rode a wave of 24.38 meters. Maya Gabeira, also from Brazil, holds the women’s record with a 22.40 meter high wave. Both records were set in Nazaré, the new grail of the global surfing elite.
When the big waves hit, thousands of spectators huddle in the dune grass and cheer on their heroes. Today, however, no surfer is going out. The onlookers are among themselves. Alone with the magic of this place. The wind is raging, the waves are thundering against the rocks, and the spray is drifting over the seemingly endless Praia do Norte like a wall of fog. Suddenly a ray of sunshine breaks through. And bathes the rust-red lighthouse in a dramatic light.
The text is an excerpt from the book “In love with Portugal. Insider tips from friends” by Susanne Baade and Dirk Lehmann, Reisedepeschen Verlag, 192 pages, 24 euros
Arrival: Flight to Lisbon, the onward journey to Nazaré by rental car or bus takes about an hour.
Accommodation: Just outside, with a beautiful view of the town and the sea, is the Miramar Hotel
There are countless accommodations like the “FIKA Guest House” in the surfing town: stylishly renovated, authentically small rooms – but with heart. Here you can find family connection, fikaguesthouse.pt
Camping Orbitur Valado is located in a vast pine forest. Unfortunately, the main ring road is closer than the sea, but the beautiful pitches in the forest make up for it, orbitur.pt
Information: Visit Portugal, visitportugal.com
