Car rental
I originally wanted to rent a car from a Centauro car rental company, which has very good reviews and it was the only car rental company with full insurance where I found that they did not require any deposit or credit card (but the rental fee was more expensive than elsewhere). But for the return (departure 7:30) we needed to drop off the car at about 5:15 and there was no possibility to return the car at this hour at this car rental company. Of course, their offices are closed at this time, and there was no way to throw the keys just in a box like in other car rental companies. I checked it even by email and they said that there is no possibility of returning car at this hour… Interesting approach, seems they don´t mind to lose all clients with a morning departure…
Drive4Fun
So I was looking for another car rental company, ideally without a credit card and without a deposit, as I’m used to in Madeira, but I really didn’t find any other here (if you know one, I’ll be happy for a tip in the comments). So in the end I chose Drive4Fun, for which I also found very good reviews.
They had good prices and a deposit (block on the credit card) 320 EUR (300 EUR for possible loss of car keys and 20 EUR for possible use of the highway. If you don´t use the motorway, the deposit will be returned). It was not necessary to use the highway only once on the way to Portimão, so we avoided the highway and drove to Portimão for about 1 hour 15 minutes on smaller roads. So it was not a very fast ride, many villages and I was surprised how many roundabouts and speed bumps.
After we left the airport hall, it was necessary to walk to the P4 parking (https://mapy.cz/s/jecekosuvu), where there was a stall with an office for several car rental companies. No one was in front of us, so we took over the car relatively quickly. As always, we had full insurance.
A car rental worker gave us the documents and said that we should check the condition of the car to see if there were a few small scratches that he had marked on the document. We found another 2 small scratches so he also marked them there and at the same time I took a photo of them. But I guess it was just a formality because we had full insurance.
We only took a car of the lowest class here (a Peugeot), no mountains were waiting for us, so we thought that would be enough and my father said that he was satisfied with this car.
On the way back, we handed over the car at 5:30 in the morning, and all we had to do was take a parking ticket at the entrance and put it, together with the car keys, up on the shade. So the car was actually left open in the parking lot.
Price – 195 EUR for 7 days (i.e. 28 EUR / day), with full insurance (+ booster seat cost 3 EUR per day)
Drive4Fun – https://drive4fun.pt/