Travelling with a new camera is always a joy. And it was exactly what I managed to do last September when I travelled to Portugal with my wife for a short break.

A few days before our departure I decided to take the plunge.

I called my local camera store and ordered a Fujifilm GFX100RF, which arrived just on time for the trip.

Travelling and exploring a new place with a new camera on hand, experiencing the camera, testing its strengths and weaknesses… And taking some nice shots.

It’s one of those things that I truly enjoy. It’s a double blow to my wallet, yes. Travel expenses plus a new camera… But it’s worth the stretch, such is the hype I get from it.

And the GFX100RF is fabulous

Yes indeed. I was so happy with this camera that I decided to write a long review. It was years since I wrote a detailed camera review, but this camera is so special that I had to do it.

Hence now I can finally write a few words about my trip and share the photos I took with the Fujifilm GFX100RF.

It’s been years since Covid restrictions were finally lifted. Something nobody wants to revisit, yet hard to forget. Well, the past belongs to the past. We had kept ourselves hungry for travelling ever since.

From that on we made several trips to Portugal.

Twice a year at times.

We take the same flights from the same airline, to the point we are now familiar with everything: departure and arrival times, transit in Dubai, the airport shops worth visiting.

It feels like routine. Which in turn makes us feel Portugal is just a stone’s throw away.

Keeping with the routine

On arrival we headed towards the same car rental service. They have all my data already. Still, had to wait for almost an hour to finally get the car as there was a long queue.

I get no satisfaction saying this:

Portugal as a country is still inefficient.

When we rent a car in China, all “paperwork” is done through an app before arrival.

On arrival I head directly towards my car – I get a message in advance with the car plate number and where it’s parked – and open the door with the app. The car key is inside, together with all documents. And off we go.

Anyway. After getting the car we headed towards Docas in Lisbon for a quick lunch. This is where I took my first photo with the GFX100RF: the one you see on top, at the start of this post. And then a few more. Click below to enlarge and access EXIF data.

A typical sunny day in Portugal. Good weather, good food. What’s not to like?

This was my first taste of the colours from this 100MB, medium format Fuji marvel. My immediate feel was ok, not over exposing and typical Provia colours.

Glamping

After spending a night in my sister-in-law’s hometown for a local festival, we headed towards Serra da Gardunha for our first official stop: Natura Glamping.

In case you are unaware, glamping is the combination of glamour and camping. Well, we didn’t get the glamour from a luxury 5-star hotel, but the comfort of a large dome shaped tent with a proper bed, TV, air-con, a bathroom with a shower and hot water. In short, the amenities you would find in any comfortable hotel room, but inside a large tent.

Outside the tent there was this nice wooden deck just for us, overlooking the mountains. We had breakfast there in our first day, but it was cold and windy… Still, we love nature and it was a very pleasant experience.

Resort style amenities were available as well: an attractive infinity pool and a cozy restaurant.

Natura Glamping sits on top of a mountain 900 meters above sea level. It’s a quiet and peaceful place.

The road uphill got me anxious because it was narrow with tight turns.

I told my wife “we better have dinner here coz driving up this route after taking wine is not a good idea…”.

And so we did. We spent 3 nights there, we would hike and travel around in daytime, then return for dinner.

Everyday before 6pm we had to send a message to the restaurant to inform what we wanted for dinner (we had a menu with us). They had a good selection of traditional regional food. And good wine.

I loved this routine, I told my wife it felt like going home and somebody had prepared dinner for us.

The weather was a bit crazy though. Since we were at the top of a mountain, at night it was cold and windy. The temperature difference between the glamping site and down below was about 20º Celsius. Fortunately, before departing I was careful enough to check the temperature. I told my wife to bring some winter clothes, which proved to be a wise decision.

At night the wind was so strong that it would rock the tent. At times it felt we were at sea… And the wind was loud, it was a bit scary. We would wake up in the middle of the night feeling thinking there’s a hurricane or something hit our tent.

But then just before sunrise the wind would suddenly stop. And I mean stop, as is not progressively slowing down. Like someone turned off a switch. Weird.

Hiking

We love hiking. With our “base camp” at Natura Glamping, we spent our daytime hiking. We are fed-up with shopping malls and cities. We love them all, yes, but living in high density Macau is stressful. Thus when we travel we embrace nature, quietness, empty spaces with no one around.

The photos below come from our first hiking session near Serra da Estrela.

Remember, the GFX100RF was still a new camera to me at this stage.

While I was happy shooting the early rays of sunlight outside our tent, appreciating the smooth gradations and rich array of colours from the camera, when we were out hiking I started feeling the outputs were not as special as the ones from my Hasselblad. More on this in the detailed review in case you are interested.

Still, I was shooting happily. And the GFX100RF is amazing for this. Light, portable, yet super powerful. I was taking all photos in RAW, occasionally switching to JPEG and shooting with VELVIA to get some punchy colours. Just playing.

Monsanto

After a 3 hour, 9.5km hike, we decided to head to Monsanto. A traditional village built on top of granite stone boulders – or should I say encroached? – it has to be seen to be believed. It’s so unique that TV show House of the Dragon was filmed there.

Just check the below and you’ll get the idea.

Visiting Monsanto felt like always walking up the hill. At the very top there was this fortress and it was the end of it. Going down now to return to our car, that’s when we felt our legs were beaten.

It was time to call it a day, so we returned to our glamping site where good food and good wine were waiting for us.

Passadiços do Mondego

Day 2 and this one was quite special. Due to its appearance, my wife decided to call it “The Portuguese Great Wall”.

Passadiços do Mondego is a 12 km long wooden deck pathway across the mountains, with several rope suspension bridges along the way.

And some serious hiking in solid soil as well. All combined, the total length of the route is around 13.5 km including 600 meters elevation gain.

We made it in 3,5 hours. We were walking slowly, enjoying the scenery. Stopped many times for photos. Never in a hurry, we were there to relax after all. According to my Strava app, I burned 1023 calories. Not bad.

We were surrounded by pleasant scenery. Again and again, I have to remind you where we come from: a place called Macau, which has the highest population density in the world. Something we are not proud of because it means we lack physical space.

Especially outdoor space. In our daily lives we spent 90% of the time indoors, with air-con. There’s a lack of quality outdoor public space. We may have the best shopping malls in the world, with the most luxurious brands. But that’s hardly interesting – nor healthy.

At this stage I was shooting JPEG and set the camera to VELVIA film simulation. I was triggered by the interesting array of colours in the surrounding vegetation. VELVIA is obviously an exaggeration at times and need to be used carefully. I was not particularly impressed by the deep blue sky in the photos above, that look fake.

Apart from above, this route also took us through abandoned houses.

Finally we reached the end of the route. We were not tired at all, since this was an easy and comfortable hike mainly on the wooden deck. Plus we are both experienced hikers and physically fit, we exercise on a daily basis.

We had to face a final climb to get out of there. Technically I can understand this, since we were mainly walking on a valley, so in both ends of the route there’s a massive level drop.

Still, you can’t stop thinking sarcastically that whoever designed this had some kind of evil mind, offering visitors a final punishment before the finish line!

Mission accomplished, we called a taxi that took us back to where we left our car.

We had some time left before returning to our “base camp” at Natura Glamping. We headed to Serra da Estrela to entertain ourselves with some shopping. No, not bling-bling-and-glitz kinda shopping. We went for cheese and sausages.

Yes, you can argue that those are all available in supermarkets. But you don’t understand. We come from Macau and going all the way to Serra da Estrela’s summit – the highest point in continental Portugal – is part of the experience and put a smile in our faces.

The salesman up there was talented. He kept feeding us different types of goat cheese to try…

I mean, we were hungry from our 3.5 hour hike, we were hungry for this kind of experience coming from Macau, so he got us.

We came back with six large pieces of goat cheese, plus a couple of wild boar sausages.

On our way back down we crossed a layer of clouds. That layer was actually the transition between good weather and bad weather. Up there it was windy and cold, while below it felt calm with a pleasant weather.

It looked dramatic.

I switched to JPEG and snapped a few black & white shots in ACROS film simulation. Not bad.

And with this we went back to Natura Glamping in Serra da Gardunha where, again, we had good food and wine waiting for us. This was to be our last night there.

We woke up the next day ready to start part 2 of our trip, heading North to Vila Nova de Cerveira.

I’ll leave this for my next post.

Stay tuned.

* All photos above taken with Fujifilm GFX100RF unless otherwise stated. Post-processed to taste.