Afurada is a small fishing village at Gaia, opposite of Porto in Portugal. I posted about it a while ago when I went for a seafood lunch. Apart from the lunch, I also did a little walk around the village.
Village houses
I arrived here on a weekday morning, and it was still fairly quiet. Afurada isn't a tourist location and I don't know how much busier it will get over the weekends and holidays. I'm sure the locals won't mind, I know I'd hate for my village to be flooded with strangers if I lived here... says the person visited. Ironic I know. Moving on quickly....
Let's take a walk around since we're already here. These houses reminded me of my ancestral village in Hong Kong. Terraces houses lined on both sides of the road, with many of the exterior decorated with the pretty tiles, very popular in Portugal.
One thing that I found quite odd was this house. They had a photo outside. I don't know if this is some local famous couple (I guess not) or if it's themselves or their ancestor, which makes it really weird... I thought it looked a bit like a photo on a headstone.
Community
One thing that struck me was how much of a community vibe there is here. In my previous post I mentioned I went to the local market to buy some fresh seafood. Outside the market was an exhibition of some drawings by children, and I love the whole setup of the display. There were two semi circles built up of sinks. The sinks all looked the same but you can tell they have been used, and to different degrees. I've never seen these type of sinks before, and wonder how they managed to get so many of the same style.
There was another art display on the other side of the market in front of the river. A lot of sticks were erected randomly on the ground, steadied by rocks and held up together by strings. They balanced perfectly well that way even though they weren't drilled into the ground. One needs to be very imaginative here to work out what this is representing. Do you have any ideas?
Ok, I won't keep you in suspense anymore. This is not a work of art, they are washing lines!!!!
This is definitely an eye opener for me, and again proves why travel is so educational. The building in the photo above is the communal washing room, I've never seen this before. This is where the ladies from the village used to, and still come to do their washing. And once that is done, they can hang their washing to dry outside by the river. Unfortunately, there was no washing outside during my visit, otherwise, I reckon it would be a very interesting view.
There are various tanks inside with flowing water from one to another. From what I saw, there's a sequence in where you wash and rinse your washing so you don't end up dirting every tank, and everyone ends up with nice clean laundry.
Based on this plaque outside and my non existent Portugese, it seems this building may have been built in 2003(?) though the actual washing tanks has been around for much longer. They look quite old and there were some old photos outside the building about the history of this place.
A lady was doing her washing inside when we arrived, and then another came with a massive basin full of laundry and a rolled up carpet resting on her head.
She has her work cut out for the day with so much washing to do, by hand!!! Luckily, the design of the tanks is very ergonomic with the wide ledges for scrubbing. Imagine if you had to kneel on the floor to scrub the carpet, you'd get a bad back in no time.
Museum
My last stop of the day at Afurada is the Interpretive Heritage Cenre of Afurada. This displays the collective memory of the community through artefacts donated by the villagers, and provides visitors with an insight of Portugese fishermen's life from the past.
Fishing boats are an important part of fishermen's livelihood. They had life size one on display and many models in the gallery upstairs. The details on those models are so intricate and I spent a long time admiring them.
I also saw some very interesting objects used by the fisherman, such as this fish trap below. It's to catch eel. There's a net at the front with an opening, and once the eel swims in, it can't get back out again.
And this is another type of fish trap, it looks much older than the other one. If you saw my HPUD Guessing Contest this month, you may recognise this.
Hope you enjoyed the walk around Afurada in Portugal, and learnt something new like I did during my visit.
Answer to April HPUD Guessing Contest
As you figured out already, the answer to the April HPUD Guessing Contest is an object used by the fishermen to catch fish. There was some very interesting and fun answers this month fueled by the additional contest hosted by 
There are 9 people who guessed correctly, congratulations to you all. 8 of you have powered up and you will get the bonus prize. My new rules from a couple of months ago states that if you have powered down in the previous month you won't be eligible for any prize even if you win. My apologies 
On a side note, since I added the new no power down rule, I noticed a couple of accounts that have taken part every month in the past have stopped now. I guess my decision was correct.
Thanks everyone for taking part in my HPUD Guessing Contest this month, you rock!!!