Saturday night we dined on our freeze dried “emergency meals” that we’d carried with us throughout the trip before our final night in the tent. Any somberness about ending the trip was quickly washed away with thougths of reaching our final destination and seeing our Portuguese friends and family in the coming days.

Sunday, the day of the week that all grand tours end, we made great time over the flat land, riding on the 50km wide strip of land between the Tejo and Ribeira rivers. Stops were minimal and we had 70km behind us by 1:00 p.m. There was farming along the floodplain — rice, tomatoes, corn, transitioning into sandier soil and cork trees that you see nearly everywhere in Portugal.

As we neared Setúbal, and therefore the Atlantic Ocean, it became windier and the roads considerably rougher. Many Portuguese villages still had their old cobbles exposed and our chosen route gave us cobblestones for kilometers at a time. The vibration is so intense it makes you wonder if the fillings in your teeth are going to shake loose.

Susana had a vague idea of where we were, with former classmates from villages like Lau, Lagameças, and Poceirão, passing a picnic area her family dined when she was a child, and other forgotten places as we got closer, with the mountains of Arrábida beyond the city now in view. And then the graffitied sign for Setúbal, another kilometer down the boulevard, and we were to the door of her parents’ building. Our odometers read 4650 km (2890 miles). Susana called up to her parents, but there was no answer. Before we decided what to do next, their car pulled into the parking lot next to us.

With our arrival, our trip instantly changed form from two people in the countryside with bikes into reunions with friends and family, city scenes, and chaos. We haven’t had much time to reflect on the trip and what the end means, hence this late posting. But our legs are still twiching and want to get back on the bikes, which we’ll have time to do in the next three weeks.

More thoughts, statistics, and photos will be coming soon.