“Meet the Tugas – Discovering Portugal through time and place, a love letter to a country and its people”
New book Conheça os Tugas – “Meet the Tugas”, in the English edition –, by Christopher L. Jones, is a journey across a sun-kissed, battle-scarred, boat launch, wine-soaked nation through the eyes of a traveller seeking to understand its heart and soul.
Says the author: “Arriving alongside hundreds of thousands of other – what we referred to ourselves as – ‘expats’, I realised that had I considered Portugal a decade or so earlier, I would’ve regarded this country (…) to be somewhere in Latin America. Rather than a nation whose history extended back a thousand years, and a people even further.
“But after three years of travelling from each corner, coastline, island volcano, vineyard, village and city of this country, I came to understand the essence of its grandeur, its pride, the reason why it was able to chip away at the statue of the world, and the world at it.
“Discovering the reason why my rent had skyrocketed, and what was pulling people from all parts of the world to make their lives here.”
This is a book to discover the glory, tragedy, pitfalls and triumphs that are etched, sometimes secretly, into the land, its buildings and people. Both editions are now available in bookstores.
About the author
Christopher L. Jones is a European soul trapped by birth in the body of a New Zealander, a professional flâneur (and entrepreneur and property investor), who has managed to turn his passion of travelling and wild speculation into two travelogues.
Conheça os Tugas / Meet the Tugas is the result of three years and thousands of kilometres of travel by foot, car, plane and ferry, of countless hours of talking (sometimes to himself), of imagining, recreating, being told, and discovering, the spirit and history of his new home.
He now resides in Lisbon with his English wife, and their Portuguese son.
