Apparently, Santa Luzia is so named because a fisherman found a religious relic a long time ago that was left over from a shipwreck. The village dates back to 1577 and is named for the Sicilian Saint Lucia, the same one we sing about in Sweden every December. It became a town in 1999. It is known as the Octopus Capital because that’s what most of the locals catch and cook.

It is not easy to cook octopus properly. If you undercook it, it is like rubbery leather, if you overcook it, it just slips off your plate. Fortunately, the local chefs have mastered the timing and most restaurants will serve it to you.
I’m discovering lots of octopus lore while I’m here. For instance:
An octopus has three hearts. I didn’t know that. Two of the hearts pump blood into the gills while the third one works on the internal organs. An octopus doesn’t live very long and, in the mating season, the female will lay 500,000 eggs. Then both male and female die. Clearly laying that many eggs is going to make most creatures long for a quick death. I guess the female blames the male and takes him with her.
These wonderful facts about the wacky life of the octopus are all around the town of Santa Luzia. They are on big orange boards spread along the seafront…which is not really a seafront. No, the sea is actually beyond mudflats.
I think the Santa Luzia River is actually a tidal estuary but I can’t be sure*. It has entrances along the coast where the tides come in and goes out. The river/estuary is where the fishing boats come in and are moored.

We went down this morning and had a lovely stroll along the waterfront, stopping at a handy cafe for a coffee (and cinnamon bun, oddly) then popped into a chemist where we bought me a rather clinical, old decrepit person walking stick which is a vast improvement over the broom handle I was using.
It was then into a handy restaurant for a delicious lunch. (No octopus.)
The town isn’t very big, but it still has room for two general stores and about 100 restaurants. Mirinda thinks she has found her perfect winter place. I think I agree. It is very beautiful, not slippery and, today anyway, warm enough to wear shorts and a t-shirt.
Mirinda went for a long walk in the afternoon, leaving me to write up my blog post. The fact that my right foot is acting up has a lot to do with my lack of movement today.
Mirinda returned from her walk and declared it was lovely. Well, apart from the hard surfaces. The views were lovely. Speaking of which, tonight we tried to remove the old photos and videos from her iPhone. There was a lot of stress. At one point, she thought she’d lost 500 videos. Fortunately, they turned up again.
Dinner was had at the Taberna Amero where we heard all about how the octopus are caught. Sadly, the fisherfolk no longer use terracotta pots like in the olden days. These days the octopus pots are made of plastic.
Speaking of octopus, tonight we discovered that the street we are staying in is named for a very famous octopus entrepreneur. José Antonio de Oliveira and his son of the same name, were very famous and successful men about town. They opened a very successful warehouse down by the water and embraced new technology as it arrived.
When they started, the amount of dried octopus leaving the area was around 200 to 300 kilos but, once they started using refrigeration, that amount was more like 5 or 6 tonnes.
Now, the warehouse is a restaurant with a huger octopus on the roof.

Another splendid day. We’re still in Santa Luzia tomorrow, which makes a nice change from travelling.
* Mirinda told me that she found an information board on her walk which said it was an estuary. Yay, Gaz.