Activities

To conciliate the local communities with the river, while touristically promoting the region is the main goal of Ollem. This along with a commitment to respect the natural, social and cultural specificities of the riparian area and population of the Tagus. 

Ollem boats are settled at Valada do Ribatejo white sandy beach, a village of strategic importance due to its location on north-south bird migratory routes, Ollem Turismo Fluvial focus is on river cruises, revealing the natural secrets, the wild flora and fauna, and following the fishermen with their typical boats skilfully adapted to navigate the low lying tidelands of the river Tagus in Ribatejo Province. 

Lands of extreme beauty and native land of the oldest riding horse in the world, the Pure Blood Lusitano Horse, in its trips Ollem shows this heritage and emphasizes the local culture, the regional wines, visiting points of interest along and nearby the river. 

Ollem offers a wide variety of route options, but one really stands out due to the theme. The “Avieiros’s Route” tells us the story of fishermen’s families from Vieira de Leiria beach in the center of Portugal, menaced by famin, in the early twentieth century. Like the thousands of migratory birds that seek in the river a good place to stay, these families migrated also South to Tejo. Around Valada we can still see and visit some of their renewed houses mostly made of wood and built on stilts at the wetlands’s villages of Escaroupim and Palhota. Running away from the dangerous Atlantic ocean, the Avieiros discovered Tagus to be a rich river and some of them stayed and definitely exchanged the sea for the river. And so did we.