Life in a secluded village in central Portugal: what to do in Santo Estêvão

Life in a village as small and as secluded as Santo Estêvão, in central Portugal, comes down to two things: quiet, and being close to the land. There are only a handful of inhabitants, and most of them still farm.

It is farming on a scale that makes no economic sense at all, and that is exactly why it is so gentle on the land. The soil is fed with manure from the animals. Leftovers from lunch go to the chickens and the pigs. The weeds come out by hand, and nothing artificial goes in. Walking through Santo Estêvão feels like walking through an open-air museum, except the exhibits are still in use, and the techniques you see are the ones that have been used here for generations.

Soft leftovers from meals usually go straight to the chickens, which much prefer them to corn.

What to do in Santo Estêvão

Beyond doing very little in a very peaceful place, there is more here than the size of the village suggests:

• Hike into the mountains. Drave, Aldeia da Pena, Penedo da Saudade and the Paiva river valley all have views worth the climb.
• Meet the locals. Start with the café in the next village, two kilometres away, whose owner will happily talk you through the area.
• Drive to the Passadiços do Paiva. It is about an hour through the mountains, and the road is as good as the destination.
• Make something. If you paint, write or play, this is probably the calmest place you will ever try it in.

Local food and where to eat

There are a few restaurants within a ten to twenty minute drive, and several of them cook with local produce. What you should really look for, though, is the home-made charcuterie. The flavour comes from what the pigs eat, mostly vegetables, from how slowly they grow, and from how long the meat is cured.

Ask for chouriça, the slender smoked sausage. Or salpicão, thicker and more delicate than it looks. Or presunto, the pig's hind leg, cured in salt for almost a year and then smoked, which you may know as prosciutto in Italy or jamón serrano in Spain.

Points of interest around Santo Estêvão

I have marked my own recommendations on the map beside this post. Click any of them and it will open the exact spot in Google Maps.

For a sense of the wider region, look at the image below. It is mountainous almost everywhere, flattening out only as you get closer to the Atlantic. To my mind these are the most scenic mountains in mainland Portugal.

If you would like to stay, Casa Estêvão takes guests and can be booked through Ecorustics.