Ericeira

While surfers flock to Ericeira, one of only two World Surfing Reserves in Europe, another tribe roams the Atlantic coastline in vintage Land Rovers, embracing what the Portuguese call saudade, a longing for slowness itself. The ancient Jagoz people who first inhabited these cliffs survived solely from the sea, setting them apart from inland tribes. Today, a different kind of devotion defines the landscape: meticulously restored Defenders navigating dirt roads with absolute no urgency, their drivers practicing a radical act in our hyperconnected age, leaving the phone at home.

The Jagoz distinction has outlived whatever anthropological rigor it once had. It survives mostly as an identity locals still claim for themselves, the way anyone born within earshot of the Atlantic in Ericeira gets to call themselves people of the sea regardless of what they do for a living now. The reserve designation came in 2011, making Ericeira only the second such zone in the world at the time, protecting roughly four kilometers of coastline and seven named breaks north of town. The Land Rover drivers who work these same cliffs today aren’t chasing anything as measurable as a wave. They’re chasing an absence, specifically the absence of a signal, which in 2026 might be the more difficult thing to protect.