The part which is most developed and crowded of the Algarve is at the south of the IP1 motorway between Faro and Albufeira. With a hire car of cheap car hire in Algarve it is very simple to escape from the bustle of modern life and discover, to explore the many different faces of the Algarve. South of the Algarve´s capital Faro is the extensive Reserva Natural da Ria Formosa.  A series of salt pans and salt-water lagoons separated from the open sea by sandy islands, for several kilometres. Many types of marine life are supported in the warm lagoon water. This marine life attracts wading birds, from flamingos to the storks. They flap lazily over the roof-tops, build their nests on telegraph ploes, church towers, and ancient olive trees. The Reserva Natural da Ria Formosa is easy to reach with your rental car of cheap car hire in Algarve.

When you drive further west, with your rental car of cheap car hire in Algarve, the river estuaries and marsh systems around Lagos, Portimão and Burgau are full of beautiful birds. You can spot, for example the ubiquitous flocks of cattle egrets, with their long probing beaks, hunched shoulders, and pure white feathers. Or enjoy the hunting skill of the sparrow-hawks and kestrels.

The Algarve is a very important staging post for migrating birds, which pass down in October on their journey to Africa. They return the same way in March and April, from Africa for nesting sites in the northern Europe. Spring and summer come early here in order to feed on the insects that are already thick in the air.

Cape St.Vincent, Europe’s most south westerly tip, is the place to see birds streaming past the cliffs. From large seabirds, such as skuas, gannets, shearwaters and petrels, to swifts, swallow colourful bee-eaters and warblers.

The interior of the Algarve is perfect and easy to explore with your rental car of cheap car hire in Algarve. You are able to visit small villages, which are unable to visit by tourist bus. In this villages time seems to go back for a 100 years. Some parts are covered in a network of paths and mule tracks. These parts are easier to visit by foot. The best time to visit the interior is March to May, so in the springtime. In this period the countryside is covered with beautiful and colourful flowers and butterflies. It will take you from bare slopes dense with sticky-leaved cistus to orange groves, citrus blossom to bearing big white flowers. Rear flowers, including numerous bulbs, many kinds of orchid as well as the petticoat-hoop narcissus.

Almost every wayside you pass with your rental car of cheap car hire in Algarve is bright with the beautiful yellow of the Bermuda buttercup. It colonises almost every inch of uncultivated space. The sound of cicadas in the undergrowth reaches a deafening pitch.