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December 7 Wednesday Bicycle touring Spain from Jimena de la Frontera to Ronda Spain The overnight dew has transformed the farmer's dirt road into a gumbo sticky mess. My front bicycle tire, being knobby, picks up so much goo that my fender folds up under the tire. My rear tire is flat. We push our fully loaded touring bicycles down the mucky road and stop at the bottom to put in a new tube. We scrape some of the muck from our cycle tires with the help of a stick. As we cycle down the road in the early morning light there is not much traffic. The road is a patchwork quilt of major patches. Where we are cycling, it is supremely bumpy and hilly. It is slow going, but by the end of our day we have cycled up over 5000 feet. Cycling the downhills has been painful. It is so rough. My brakes are constantly on to try and avoid the jarring -- unsuccessfully. My rump and wrists are sore. It rains on us. The good news is that we have some great views atop our bicycle touring seats into the valley. We can see white villages in seemingly impossible places, stuck high up in the mountains. I kid Sharon that they are actually just rocks painted white to fool people. What can they possibly do there? How did those villages start there? They can't all be goat herders can they? I take pictures of the changing landscape. It becomes more desolate. Finally, we are cycling in just a grey mountain of blocky rocks. In Gaucin, we stop to use a gas station's washroom. Sharon pushes her bike around back. I start to push mine there and the guard (the gas attendant) comes over and says something to me. I can't figure out what he is saying and I'm too tired to make much of an effort. I want to be where I can watch Sharon's bike. I say "No comprehende," and keep pushing my bike. This got him irate. He starts to yell at me. I tell him, "Look, pal, I can hear. I just don't understand Spanish no matter how loud you YELL!" He doesn't want our bikes behind the station. I have no idea why. It is not like we can do anything back there. Everything is barred to the teeth. He makes me move both bikes out front. Bizarrely, he tells me to lean our fully loaded touring bikes against the entrance to the pumps. I find this comical. Our touring bikes have gone from being out of the way, to now blocking cars that are trying to get to the pumps. I believe Mr Power Trip is now satisfied with his handiwork. When you're on a long distance bicycle tour, you meet all types. In Ronda there is a wonderful walled area with an old church. In a classic view of the church I see clothes hung up to dry beneath the church. This is a very touristy place and the last place I would have expected to see laundry hung out to dry. As we ride off to get groceries, we see five other touring cyclists ahead of us. They don't see us. As we pull off on our bicycles at the grocery store they continue. I stay with our touring bikes and gear while Sharon goes in to the store. She is in there for so long I begin to suspect that they kidnapped her. It gets dark. Still no Sharon. Tomorrow is another holiday: Immaculate Conception, so we have to stock up on food. When the holidays in Spain fall close to a weekend, people take the days off in between too. They call it punta -- a bridge. Sharon finally staggers out of the grocery store weighted down by immense sacks of groceries. We load them into our touring bike's panniers, and cycle off down a busy darkened street. At a corner, a group of five young boys on bikes spot us. They yell and ask where we're from. The exotic answer of "Canada" incites them to riot. As we struggle to climb the cobblestones, we are surrounded by the pack of little street urchins and a pack of dogs, yelping and barking. We have only succeeded in cycling a few feet when I hear someone yelling from the sidewalk. I hope it is someone yelling at the kids to leave us alone. The yelling persists, and I think I hear my name, which is absolute craziness I figure. I stop to check to see if someone is trying to tell me something has fallen off of my bike. As I pull my fully loaded touring bicycle to a stop, Nigel comes running over. "You silly buggers!" he shouts. Rae is close behind. "Where are the other two?" he asks, expecting to see Vicky and Susan. He has concocted a wild story about Rae and Nigel having come from Australia to do an interview on our trip. For the "inconvenience," they will put us up in a 5-star accommodation for the next few days. I tell him Vicky would have bought it hook, line and sinker. Even sounds pretty good to me right about now. Nigel and Rae tell us they have found a great spot to free camp. It is dark. Sounds like a good idea to me right about now. We end cycling along behind them, following them to a deserted old highway on the edge of town. We set up our tent beside some garbage and some burned out cars in between two trees in front of the motor home. It is one of the less scenic spots we have ever free camped. But at least it serves to make us more grateful to the spots we usually choose. After setting up our two-person bicycle touring
tent, Nigel and Rae invite us into their motor home. They fill
us in on where they have been the past two weeks. "Magic"
scenery in Portugal the day they left us, they say. They said
Lisbon was scary -- they saw the slums, too. Rae said it cost
her $4 for a cup of ordinary coffee in Sintra, or 400 scuds,
as Nigel has come to term Portugal's escudos. He calls Spain's
peseta, poots. And the French francs are FRANK, since that was
what they used to call their dog in Australia. After we exit the motor home, the hot water inexplicably begins working again. Nigel draws a bucket of hot water and hands it out the door to us so we can wipe up. "As long as you don't wash your genitals in it," he says. He's quite the rude boy. But he's pretty funny. Then, reconsidering, he says, "Oh, go ahead." |
