It’s 3:30 in the afternoon and we’ve just returned from a trip to the barren cliff of Sagres, which was, until the 15th century, the end of the world.
It was there that Henry the Navigator, the third son of King John of Portugal, sent the explorers he trained and financed out to explore what lay beyond the lands they knew.
It’s an inspiring story – a charismatic royal, never to be king, transforming Portugal and, really, the world. Sadly, all this wonder emerged despite, not because of, our guide. It’s tough to overestimate the power of a guide on a bus full of eager learners. She can seduce, enchant and mesmerize, or she can issue rote descriptions, lecture on the virtues of diversity to a crew of people who are on the trip because it’s what they already value, and, eventually, become toxic force within the community. And that’s what she was. Which wouldn’t be worth mentioning except that by the time we left the bus we were so bummed we were sniping at each other. Agitated and angry, disappointed and dismissed. OH and she forgot to show us where the statue of Henry was and wouldn’t turn around the one roundabout between us and his lovely presence pointing out to sea.
When you travel, every day is a jewel to be burnished, full of potential experiences and lessons and joys to share. So when someone violates the trust of leading this crew of nomads, it’s a grave offense, particularly painful in such a bleak, beautiful, Wuthering Heightsish landscape.
Fortunately, we rallied, went into the Portimāo for lunch, met some cool expats and saw trees wearing granny squares, 
some crazy ceramic benches with one tale of the history of Portugal illustrated on each one and a couple of really interesting political posters. Tomorrow: Lisbon!
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Cynthia Samuels
Cynthia Samuels is a long-time blogger, writer, producer and Managing Editor. She has an extensive background online, on television and in print, with particular experience developing content for women, parents and families.
For the past nine years, that experience has been largely with bloggers, twitter and other social media, most recently at Care2's Causes Channels, which serve 20 million members (13 million when she joined) and cover 16 subject areas. In her three years at Care2 monthly page views grew tenfold, from 450,000 to 4 million.
She has been part a member of BlogHer since 2006 years and has spoken at several BlogHer conferences. Among her many other speaking appearances is Politics Online, Fem 2.0 Conference and several other Internet gatherings.
She’s also run blogger outreach for clients ranging from EchoDitto to To the Contrary. Earlier, she spent nearly four years with iVillage, the leading Internet site for women; her assignments included the design and supervision of the hugely popular Education Central, a sub-site of Parent Soup that was a soup-to-nuts parent toolkit on K-12 education, designed to support parents as advocates and supporters of their school-age kids. She also served as the iVillage partner for America Links Up, a major corporate Internet safety initiative for parents, ran Click! – the computer channel - and had a long stint as iVillage's Washington editor. In addition, she has developed parent content for Jim Henson Interactive and served as Children’s Book Editor for both Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.com.
Before moving online, she had a long and distinguished career as a broadcast journalist, as senior national editor of National Public Radio, political and planning producer of NBC's Today Show (whose audience is 75% women) where she worked for nine years (and was also the primary producer on issues relating to child care, education, learning disabilities and child development), and as the first executive producer of Channel One, a daily news broadcast seen in 12,000 U.S. high schools. She has published a children’s book: It’s A Free Country, a Young Person’s Guide to Politics and Elections (Atheneum, 1988) and numerous children’s book reviews in the New York Times Book Review and Washington Post Book World.
A creator of online content since 1994, Samuels is a partner at The Cobblestone Team, LLC, is married to a doctor and recent law school graduate and has two grown sons who make video games, two amazing daughters-in-law and three adorable grandsons.
View all posts by Cynthia Samuels
It’s 3:30 in the afternoon and we’ve just returned from a trip to the barren cliff of Sagres, which was, until the 15th century, the end of the world.
When you travel, every day is a jewel to be burnished, full of potential experiences and lessons and joys to share. So when someone violates the trust of leading this crew of nomads, it’s a grave offense, particularly painful in such a bleak, beautiful, Wuthering Heightsish landscape.
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