Peter:
Yes, everybody should just go to Google Earth and take a look at it. You can get vertigo just looking at the surrounding mountains once you've zoomed in fairly close to the golf course!
Tyler:
I was just looking through the club history book yesterday. [It's in Portugese, but I can understand a fair amount of it, surprisingly.] The course is actually not a Stanley Thompson design ... he consulted on it about ten years after it was designed by a transplanted Scot, Arthur Davidson, who came from Peterhead up near Cruden Bay. Thompson made a few routing suggestions, only a couple of which were implemented ... the par-4 17th is his main contribution. The majority of the routing is still Davidson's.
There were always five holes on the beach side of the road, while the rest of the course (including the clubhouse) was tucked into the mountains. But about 25 years ago, the road was expanded into a major divided highway, and the club lost some ground in the process, forcing some routing changes. The five holes on the beach side were redesigned by someone from Portugal, who brought in a bunch of fill and built an irrigation lake on that side. Those holes really don't fit in well, and the club might try again one of these days, but the narrow dimensions of the site would make it difficult to change the routing there.
The original first green and second tee were lost to the highway, so these were combined into a sharp dogleg par-5 around a big hill [now #3]. A small par-3 on the front was abandoned [though it is still there between #5 and #6, you just walk around it now], and two new holes were built in the old polo field [around a reduced practice range] to get back to 18. Eating into the practice range also shortened the par-4 15th, which was one of the best holes ... the drive played over the corner of the range on a diagonal, and shots that didn't make it over the creek were o.b. In total, the changes were unfortunate, but did not spoil the character of the course.