Being located very close to the much larger and much better-known town of Armacao de Pera, Pera is usually associated with it, the former being located directly on the coast and still featuring a fishing industry.

The village gets its name because it sits on sandy soil which is ideal for the growing of pears, a fruit that was rather popular between the 16^th and the 18^th centuries. Interestingly enough, the variety grown here wasn’t that great for eating, but instead they turned it into marmalade or sun dried them. Other fruits that proliferated in the region were carobs and grapes, so much so that the Pera village has the carob and the grape on its coat of arms.

The neighboring village of Alcantarilha still holds an annual fair dedicated to dried fruits during the first week of September. The fair is a typical Algarve celebration, you come for one thing but get a bunch of many others, such as live music and stalls selling home-cooked food, as well as the opportunity to try the local vintage.

Back to Pera now, you can expect to find quite a few cobbled stone streets and two churches, which means that the village isn’t as small as you might initially think. One was built back in the 18^th century, being set on the highest point of the village and offering some great views of the coast and the surroundings.

The village has a pretty solid daily indoor fish market, lots of smaller shops and many bars and local restaurants where you can eat on the cheap.

You can make Pera part of a day-trip or a tour of the Algarve if you use some Algarve car rental services.

According to the Tourism Board, the indicators are very positive in relation to the upcoming tourist season, especially when looking at the hotels’ preliminary spread sheets.

Desiderio Silva – the head of the regional Tourism Board – mentioned that there are units that are expecting their occupation rates until September or October to be much higher than what they initially predicted.

Speaking at the presentation of the Algarve Tourism Memorandum – a document lsiting various proposals as to how tourism can be improved within the region of the Algarve, Mr. Silva mentioned that this year both the French and the German markets have picked up after dropping in the number of tourists coming to Algarve in the past few years.

According to his estimations, the Algarve will most likely see more visitors from neighboring Spain as well, because due to the economic hardships they’ll opt for closer holiday destinations, and there are none closer than Portugal of course.

It is expected that more residents from Galicia and the Spanish Estremadura would more likely visit the Algave than those from actually neighboring Andalucia because they won’t have to pay any tolls on the motorways as opposed to the tolls required to get on the A22/Via do Infante.

The Algarve Tourist Memorandum features proposals based around the five pillars of air accessibility, touristic promotion, tax competitiveness, tourist products and the modernization of the destination as a whole.

We’ll just have to wait and see if these predictions actually come to fruition.