Day 12. 3912 km. 71 hours riding.
In Spain there are two kinds of roads: highways and trails. At least in that part of Spain we’ve been roaming through till now, which is the North, at the bottom of the Pyrenees and on the Atlantic coast. We entered Spain through San Sebastian –it’s beauuuuuutiful, San Sebastian, desktop worthy. Beautiful and crowded – crowded roads, crowded hotels, crowded beaches, even the camping grounds were crowded, there was barely enough room for two bikers. As a matter of fact there was not enough room, because we ended up camping about 20 km farther, on top of some hills.
In Spain there are two kinds of roads: highways and trails. At least in that part of Spain we’ve been roaming through till now, which is the North, at the bottom of the Pyrenees and on the Atlantic coast. We entered Spain through San Sebastian –it’s beauuuuuutiful, San Sebastian, desktop worthy. Beautiful and crowded – crowded roads, crowded hotels, crowded beaches, even the camping grounds were crowded, there was barely enough room for two bikers. As a matter of fact there was not enough room, because we ended up camping about 20 km farther, on top of some hills.
Truth be told, there are also “normal” roads, with two lanes, asphalt and a real existence, not just in the GPS’ imagination, but these roads seem to lead nowhere, or at least not where we want to go, which is Portugal. Here, the GPS navigator that we switched to after Be-on-Road froze, proves to be a bad joke: does not know how to follow routes with via points, can’t find a gas station or any other point of interest unless you know exactly its name, gets stuck in complex intersections, and leaves you to fend for yourself in the middle of a roundabout – in other words it’s useless. You would think that some of those geniuses from Nokia would have tested it in the real world before marketing it, well, nope, this app is completely out of touch with reality. So we switch back to Be-on-Road, which is working now – maybe it experienced some kind of metaphysic disquiet with the location in France where it froze. And this app does know all the routes, absolutely all of them, the real and imaginary ones! It does not differentiate between European highway and goats trail, both of them are equally good. And Be-Off-Road takes us on all kinds of paths, as a preliminary training for Africa.
On these narrow paths, the Spanish people drive in the middle of the road and don’t get out of the way, they barely seem to pretend to avoid you in the last minute to save their mirrors. Maybe it’s a matter of ego, who knows, a nation that enjoys corridas must have plenty of this, don’t you think? Yesterday, Be-Off-Road was at its best: after we drive around for half a day in Santander, looking for brake pads for the bearded one’s Kavasaki, we finally set off for Barcelos, where supposedly there’s a big fair. After driving for some tens of kilometers, switching from two lane roads to trails over hills and blocked roads, Adi stops: “Man, we’ve been here before”. We sit and think: maybe it’s because of the roads we had marked as blocked, so the GPS is taking us the long way.
We ride ten more minutes, then I recognize a steep path that we rode on a little while back. We check the map again: we are 16 km away from Santander, the place we left two hours ago. Finally, we get out of the labyrinth and get on the highway, to avoid being swallowed by some minotaur escaped from the corrida. We ride about half an hour on the highway and we’re thinking we’re out of the roundabout we’ve been trapped into, when we get back into the nothingness. For real. These are trails traveled by winds only, settlements with 2-3 houses, once in a blue moon a car, it looks like it’s a deserted place. It gets dark, and to make everything perfect, we feel the first drops of rain.
We find a hotel in Salinas de Pisuerga, and book a room. Ricardo gives us the key to the front door and we cross the street, where Diego serves us beer. It seems like the whole village is gathered at this pub, and, although it’s almost midnight, most of them gulp down coffees. When we finally get sleepy, we head back to the hotel, and surprise: the key does not fit the entrance door. Is this the right door? We circle the building and try another door: nothing. An English speaking Spanish woman comes over: “What are you trying to do?” “Sleep!” “Well, this door is to a private property, not the hotel. Let me try the key.” She tries it, nothing happens, the key just does not fit. I find the hotel phone number, call, and let her talk. She gets Ricardo, talks to him in Spanish and starts laughing. She hangs up the phone and gently pushes the front door open, without any resistance. The locked door that fit the key that we had is behind the main door, which had been unlocked all this time. We were just about to sleep in the park, under the hotel’s window, with nothing preventing us from getting inside! That’s life!
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