The Alqueva Dark Sky Reserve

Alqueva is the large reservoir on the Guadiana in the eastern Alentejo, and the country around it is close to empty: no motorway glow, no city within an hour, and dry air for most of the year. Municipalities on both shores agreed to change their street lighting, and the area was certified as a starlight tourism destination in 2011. The practical centre is a small observatory at Cumeada, outside Reguengos de Monsaraz, which runs evening sessions with telescopes and a guide rather than working as a research site. Villages around the lake, Monsaraz above all, sell night walks, after-dark kayaking and rooms with the beds pointed at the sky.

What you actually see

• The Cumeada observatory - telescope sessions with a guide on clear nights.
• The Milky Way over the lake - the reservoir surface with no shore lighting at all.
• Monsaraz after dark - the walled hill village with its lighting dimmed.
• Night kayaking - guided paddles on the reservoir under the stars.

When to go

New moon, always: a full moon washes out everything the trip is for. Summer nights are warm and dry but start very late, so sessions run past midnight; spring and autumn are more comfortable and dark by ten. Winter gives the longest nights and the coldest, and the Alentejo does get cloud. Book sessions ahead, they are small.

Honest expectations

Everything depends on cloud, and a booked session can be cancelled or turn into a talk indoors. There is no useful public transport, so it is a car trip on unlit roads. Accommodation around the lake is scattered and fills in summer. Expectations set by long-exposure photographs are not what the eye actually sees through a telescope.

Nearby

Monsaraz, Reguengos de Monsaraz and the Alqueva shoreline; Evora is under an hour away.