a brief warning about rice, and other reasons not to visit comporta

A word of warning to those unfamiliar with this particular culinary hazard: never consume rice that has been left at room temperature for a prolonged period of time. Cooked rice can harbour a bacterium whose spores survive the cooking process and, if the rice is left warm for long enough, multiply and produce toxins capable of reducing a perfectly healthy adult to a shivering, vomiting wreck. I learnt this the hard way, and the consequences were devastating.

Shortly after consuming the offending rice, I violently expelled the contents of my dinner with very little warning. For the rest of the night, and into the early hours of the morning, I vomited roughly every hour until there was nothing left to vomit but my own soul. The sounds of my retching punctured the otherwise perfect silence and serenity of the Comporta rice fields, where I was staying with family. I was not the only one to suffer this fate. Others had it worse than I. And by worse, I mean that bodily fluids were being excreted from both ends.

It has taken me three days to recover. I have shed several kilos from my frame and my once considerable appetite remains alien to me. If you ever find yourself in a similar position, I can offer a few words of wisdom: accept your fate, remain horizontal, drink small amounts of water and eat only what your stomach can tolerate. Do not attempt to eat as though you are well, because I can assure you, your body is not ready to consume what your mind desperately desires.

This incident rather marred the last few days that my family and I spent in Comporta, a small coastal town an hour and a half south of Lisbon. It is a place we have visited every year for the past three years, and one that I have grown rather fond of.

Comporta possesses the charm of an older world. Much of the landscape is sandy but not arid. The dunes are carpeted in marram grass and low-growing Mediterranean scrub, which stretch towards the crisp, cool waters of the Atlantic. The whole place has the appearance of a Mediterranean landscape designed by minimalist. To swim in the Atlantic is like taking a cold plunge, only larger and with considerably less ceremony. The water is cold enough to make you regret getting in, but you feel better for having done it. You come out awake and energised, then lie in the sun until your body remembers what warmth is.

Comporta is famed for its rice fields. Acres upon acres of lush green rice stalks, standing in regimented rows, make the landscape resemble an enormous and beautifully maintained lawn. The rice paddies are one of the great pleasures of the place. They are also responsible for one of its less charming characteristics. Mosquitoes.

Every evening at dusk, they arrive in vast numbers, swarming around the properties that neighbour the rice fields and attacking anyone foolish enough to have gathered outside for dinner. Guests slap themselves repeatedly. Children scratch themselves until they bleed. Conversations are abandoned. And meals that were intended to last several hours are cut short. And no amount of mosquito repellent seems to deter them. The fuckers appear to have developed an immunity.

But do not let the prospect of an invading mosquito army deter you. Or, on second thoughts, selfishly, let it. The number of visitors to Comporta has been steadily increasing over the past five years. Once a place visited primarily by Portuguese holidaymakers, it now attracts Americans, Brits, Spaniards and the French. But mainly, it seems, Americans.

Comporta has received considerable praise from travel writers in recent years, which is usually the first sign that a place is doomed. This, combined with Portugal's once generous tax incentives for foreign residents, has contributed to its growing popularity. The place, which was once pockmarked primarily with fishermen's huts and charming old family homes, is now pockmarked with cranes and scaffolding.

Pizza restaurants with ‘cool’ branding and French bakeries have appeared alongside the traditional cafés and bars, where locals sit outside nursing slow-burning cigarettes and beers while watching Range Rovers purr past. Comporta attracts the wealthy sort. The sort who arrive in linen, speak softly about sustainability and then drive a £120,000 SUV to lunch.

But please dear reader do not think that these are the complaints of a grumpy man complaining about gentrification. I have always understood that this is the way of things. The capitalist machine does, after all, bring certain benefits to places like Comporta, particularly for urbanites like myself. It provides convenience, familiarity and the creature comforts that all claim not to need. After three days of local fish and coriander rice, one begins to crave a good pizza. Or a burger.

This is the contradiction of Comporta. We go there in search of something untouched, only to complain when the world begins to touch it. We want the fishermen's huts, provided there is a good coffee shop nearby. We want the empty beaches, provided there is somewhere excellent to eat lunch. We want authenticity, provided it comes with air conditioning.

So, to conclude: do not visit Comporta. Selfishly, I would prefer that it remain slightly inconvenient, slightly mosquito-ridden and slightly unknown. And whatever you do, do not eat rice that has been left sitting at room temperature.