After Helena and Tiago, the Those Who Stay series takes to the water. The third story brings us to Cais do Pocinho, in Vila Nova de Foz Côa, where Alexandra and Fernando founded Wild River Tours, boat trips that reveal the Douro Superior and the Côa Valley from a place almost no one sees them. From inside the river.

After Helena and Cantinho Café, the Those Who Stay series takes us now to the Serra da Malcata, one of the quietest corners of the Greater Côa Valley. It is here that Tiago guides forest bathing, a practice born in Japan, shinrin-yoku, which comes down to something as simple as it is rare. Being in the forest with all your senses open, without haste and without a destination.

For thirty years, Cantinho has opened its doors on one of the most beautiful hillsides in Castelo Rodrigo. It was born in 1995, just as the village was joining the network of the first ten Historic Villages and living through a whirl of building work, new faces and hope for the future. It grew out of a wish by Helena Sousa’s parents, with an idea that was simple and rare for its time: to create a space ready to welcome those arriving from elsewhere, without ever ceasing to be a home for those who lived here.

In 2001, Helena and her husband, João, took the project on by themselves. They made it into far more than the village café. A house of different flavours, of craft beer when almost no one in the Interior was talking about it, of causes, of people. In 2025, after some difficult months, Helena reopened Cantinho on her own and reinvented it from top to bottom. This is the conversation we had with her.