TRAVEL + LEISURE
“The first time I arrived in Trancoso, with my wife and three friends, we took the wrong road. Actually, it was sort of the right road, but it seemed entirely wrong at the time. Piloting our rental car through the dimming twilight, we turned off the highway at a sign marked TRANCOSO, whereupon the asphalt gave way to a rough dirt track. Whereupon a chunk of our muffler fell off. Whereupon it started to rain. Violently. Tracing the contours of a steep ravine, the road became a mud-slicked luge run, interrupted by potholes that could swallow a Volkswagen. Thick streams of red clay cascaded down the hill. For a moment we thought we’d mistaken a riverbed for the road, except that every so often we’d pass someone pushing a bicycle along the shoulder. “Trancoso?” we shouted over the roar of our engine. “Sim, sim,” they all replied, grinning and pointing dead ahead. “I guess this is why Naomi Campbell takes the helicopter,” our friend Laura said between bumps.”