Month: April 2017

We left our cave apartment at 9am to chilly but quickly warming temperatures, riding through wineries and fields of olive trees. It was a gently rolling ride, mostly downhill, along a valley with stunning views of terraced farmland and quaint little towns.

We finally made our way back to the coast, and in Gandia, I stopped at a Decathlon shop to pick up a collapsible cup. I got tired of drinking wine out of the bottle lol. Sometimes it’s hard to fill our water bottles in shallow sinks, so a cup is very useful.

I researched a paella place on wikipaella and found one on the water front. The reviews said service was slow but the rice dishes were good, so we chilled for a few hours and ordered the paella Valenciana, which is traditionally made with chicken and rabbit, from my understanding. I have to say it was hands down the best paella I’ve ever had. The crispy bits of rice on the bottom of the pan were amazing, and the flavor and texture of the rice was perfect. Yum!

We are camping tonight at a very small campground right on the beach. There’s another cycle tourist from the UK next to us who started his European tour back in November and still has a few months or longer until he returns home. We are now having a relaxing evening walking along the beach, chatting with our neighbor, and thinking about dinner, maybe just a salad. The paella was filling!

I have to say, that we have now adjusted to the Spanish food schedule. Lunch between 2-4 seems natural now, and dinner before 8 or 9 just seems weird. We are also enjoying the toastadas con tomate for breakfast along with some pastries, in lieu of our fried eggs we were used to in the US. We are looking forward to seeing what other customs we adopt to along this trip.

Today was a relatively short 60km, but a lot of it was uphill. We mostly passed through nondescript but interesting towns and cities, including one small town that appeared to be a ghost town, La Colonia de Santa Eulalia. We ended in the hip and bustling town of Villena, with a striking castle, gastro pubs, at least three bike shops, and lots of bike lanes and cyclists.

When we rode with the group of Spanish touring cyclists a few days ago, one of the people we met was César. He spoke just a little English, better than my limited Spanish for sure, but we were lucky to have his friend with us to help translate. He asked us to show him our planned route to Valencia because he lives in the area and could make some suggestions.

When he saw that our route went through the town of Villena, he immediately offered for us to stay at his place, there, since he will be gone cycle touring all week. We were taken aback at this offer from someone we’d known for only a few hours, but this kind of generosity is something we’ve become enamored with in the cycle touring community, and is why we became a part of the WarmShowers network, to give back as hosts in San Diego, and is why we will always offer help and space to other travellers whenever we can. Why should it be any other way, though?

Today we reached Villena and had a wonderful lunch, the menu del día at a gastropub, and then took a short siesta in the park (Spain is starting to take ahold of us, I think…), and then visited a local bike shop to get me a new jersey (mine has holes!), Steve some new gloves, and some other miscellaneous supplies. We then met up with Cesar’s mother-in-law, who showed us up 1500 steps (not really, but it seemed like it, carrying our bikes!) to his place, a cave apartment with upstairs bedroom overlooking the castle! It’s super adorable, and we can’t thank him and his wife enough for their hospitality.

I know some of you like to see our food porn. So here are some of our favorite local dishes that we’ve sampled the past few days. This area of Spain is known for its rice dishes, though we have yet to try a true paella. I understand there’s a website where you can find true paellas, and we mean to find one of these places and have one. Perhaps tomorrow when we pass through Gandia.

Veal roulade in Villena. Amazing!

Lobster paella, the waitress said the lobster was flown in live from northern Spain. It was good, but I’m holding out on my opinion until we try a place from wikipaella.

Nougat ice cream (a local specialty due to the almond production here) and caramel cake. Heavenly!

This rich meatball dish is a local specialty of Villena, and may be reason enough to visit. Muy rico!

We started the day along the coast, going through many different beach side communities. Some reminded us of beach towns in San Diego like Pacific Beach, quaint restaurants and shops with small cute houses, and laid back residents and vacationers that smiled and said Hola as we passed. Others reminded us of over-developed retirement communities in Florida, multi-story high rises and snooty folks that turned up their noses when we said “Buenos días” with uber touristy restaurants and guys hawking “Rey-ban” look-alike sunglasses. We eventually tired of fighting for space on the shared cycling/walking paths and headed inland towards Elche.

I’ve been practicing my Spanish as much as I can. I’m pretty confident ordering food and drinks at restaurants now, and today I successfully had two conversations with Spanish-speakers about our trip, explaining where we started, where we are going, our solar panels, etc. One was a life guard near one of the many beaches we passed, and the other was another patron in a restaurant, who said he’s also been involved with several bike tours through Europe and was excited for us.

We made a quick stop in Elche to have some ice cream and admire the famous palm trees. The main park is beautifully landscaped with palms and other trees.

One of the river beds was recently painted by a group of graffiti artists with some interesting work.

Steve and I have been collecting stickers on our bikes as we travel. Here’s what I’ve got so far.

We had a lot of fun riding with the cycle touring group, 300 other cyclists, and are very thankful they were able to “unofficially” squeeze us into their auditorium spaces for two nights, which reminded us somewhat of our time camping with AIDS/LifeCycle. We made some friends, saw some amazing views, good food along the way, and overall had a great time.

We were not the only “pirates”, tagging along on the ride. One cyclist had his young child in a trailer behind his bike, proudly sporting a hand drawn Jolly Roger.

We decided we’d like to be in Valencia for Holy Thursday to see some of the Holy Week celebrations, and in order to get there in time, we had to take off from the group today. So we combined their route for the next several days to make our way up closer to Valencia.

The first part of the ride was beautiful through farmland and fields of wild flowers. The Murcia area is known for their vegetables, so we saw lots and lots of different kinds of lettuce.

When we got to the coast, we were in for a bit of a shock. We’ve gotten so used to our quiet farming villages the past few days, we’ve forgotten what the touristy areas are like. Lots of traffic, vacationers speaking different languages, high rise condos on the beach, and souvenir shops, everywhere. But we also saw a lot more cyclists, and many people in cars and on the roads were cheering us on, especially when we climbed a tough hill before Cartegena. On the road were still names and other markings painted of cyclists that fans had painted, from whenever the last road cycling race was. I think “P.M” in the photo indicates the line where the mountain climbing points are scored in a cycling race.

My new solar panel has been working well. It has a built in 5,000mAh battery, which is kind of nice because I don’t have to worry about plugging something into it all the time, but it’s about twice as big and heavy as my old one. Today I was able to charge from 0-100% the built-in battery with mostly sunny skies while riding.

Happy Palm Sunday! Tomorrow we ride to Elche, a city known for its palm tree farms, where most of the palm fronds for Palm Sunday in Spain are grown.

It was a short essay day of riding, but we got a lot accomplished!

I found a Decathlon athletic store (like REI) just 1km off our route, and they had a decent-looking solar charger on clearance for €37, so I picked that up as well as some camp stove fuel, finally have found that! And Steve had some McD’s. You can take the boy out of the USA, but you can’t take the USA out of the boy lol!

Made it to Murcia and met our WarmShowers host, a bicycle mechanic who runs a shop in Murcia, who was very generous with his time as today is the start of the bicycle touring ride he is involved with. He sourced two new chains for our bikes, which were ready for replacement and installed them.

We showered at his place, had a delicious lunch at his favorite restaurant nearby (a fusion of Vietnamese and Spanish food, a bánh mi bocadillo, picked up some soap, shipped my broken solar panel back home for repair, and had time for a coffee from Pepe de los jamónes.

I spent an hour sewing a clasp onto my new solar panel to attach it to my backpack (I put it on upside down, but it still works lol), and then we headed out to the bicycle touring party, where we setup our sleeping mat and bag in an auditorium with all the other participants. Will be fun riding and meeting up with the other tourists and attending the party tonight!!

We started off the day on a gradual climb through the dramatic scenery we described yesterday, towards a natural park, and then descending quickly through farmland and fields of wild flowers.

​Their patterns, colors, and varieties are determined by some mystical formula, defined, but not explained, by an ancient combination of environment and evolution. Seeing this rich tapestry fly by with a stark backdrop of hills and mountains, I can understand why some choose to believe in a Creator to explain this beautiful landscape, which appears as if made by genius strokes on a vast canvas. However, I find it more wondrous and spiritual to consider that these incomprehensibly complex patterns, as well as our own appreciation of the beauty of these patterns, has come into existence completely on its own over billions of years, rather than at the whim of some other being.

Today has been an introspective day, and I think this trip overall is in some ways, for me to discover and expand upon my own spirituality. I thought a lot about the individual and unique nature of our own experiences of this universe. Each of our perceptions of reality is necessarily flawed and individual because it is centered only on what our senses can perceive. Missing are the experiences of other people and creatures, such as the insects we squash on the road, or the ants that we shower with bounty whenever we have a picnic. Even more, are the forces and actions of this universe that are unavailable to our senses: radio waves, quantum effects, and an infinite number of others.

On a more practical more, we had a wonderful tapas lunch in Lorca, and an easy day of cycling 100km but mostly downhill. Our camping is very basic off the side of a highway 2km outside of Totana, Spain.

Also, my solar charger stopped working today! I called the manufacturer, and they will send me a new one once I return the broken one, so I’ll need to find other charging options for the next few weeks.

After yesterday’s arduous day, today’s riding was a gift! We took our time and said good bye to our lovely AirBNB host and had coffee in Baza before heading out under beautiful mostly sunny skies. Mornings have been a bit chilly, and this morning was down to 6°C, so we were bundled up until around 1:00 when it warmed up, eventually getting to 20°-ish.

We had no gravel, all very well-paved road with little traffic and nice shoulders.

This area is known for its caves. Apparently people have lived in caves here for generations, because the caves give natural air conditioning to get away from the summer heat and stay warm in the winter cold. Meanwhile, they could farm the land around them.

We happened upon an AirBNB in one of these cave homes, so that’s where we’re staying tonight. It’s been renovated by two hard-working women and made into well-appointed and spacious “eco cave” guest houses, run completely off of solar power.

The apartment has a kitchenette, so we picked up groceries at the nearby town of Orce, at a small grocer. The proprietor was a sweet and friendly woman who greeted us with a smile and helped us find our ingredients for a pasta dinner. I’m really looking forward to cooking tonight! I miss cooking at home, and we rarely have had a place we can make anything except sandwiches.

We took a wonderful siesta in the lounge chairs and have been enjoying some relaxation.

The scenery today reminded us of Arizona, as we made our way out of Granada and into the country. We started off climbing on what must be local training roads for Granada cyclists because we saw dozens on racing bikes, all of whom passed us, and a few of whom gave us thumbs ups, nods, and curious looks.

We stopped at the side of the road overlooking a beautiful valley and made a jamón y queso sandwich with an orange and chocolate cookies for dessert. We then stopped at a cafe for espesso and these tasty treats for our second dessert. These are a local specialty in this area.

Google maps cycling directions then got us totally lost in the middle of the desert, not a soul in sight for miles. We wandered through dried up river beds, sand too soft to ride on, reaching several dead ends and “privado. zona de caza” signs (private hunting land) until finally we matched up the GPS with reality and found a lightly worn path leading up and over the bluffs and connecting to farmland and eventually the highway. The highway forbids bicycles, so we were relagated to horrible gravel and sand service roads paralleling the highway for 30km to get to our AirBNB for the night. Because of the wrong turns and gravel, we didn’t get to Baza until after 8pm.

We are staying in the spare bedroom of a friendly Spanish gentleman’s beautiful home in Baza, a city founded by the Iberians in the 4th century BC, in an AirBNB. He speaks English about as good as I speak Spanish, so we made use of Google Translate a lot, and he explained how to use the shower, introduced us to his pet bird, and showed us to a local tapas restaurant, where Steve had a hamburgesa. We are exhausted so will be asleep shortly!

I spent a few hours on my phone this morning trying to figure out where we are staying the next week or so. One of my requests went out to a bicycle mechanic in Murcia to stay Friday night.

It turns out, there’s a gathering of bicycle tourists starting a 9-day bicycle tour in Murcia, and the kick-off party is Friday night! Not only that, but the fellow I contacted is involved with the event, and he was able to get us permission to stay with the 300+ cyclists Friday night, sleeping in a sports complex in Murcia!

We are really looking forward to meeting other like-minded cyclists!! Unfortunately, the tour itself is sold out, so they don’t have space for us to sleep, but we may follow them along for a couple of days, and find our own accommodations nearby their space.

Meanwhile, we’ve had a very relaxing day exploring Granada and preparing for our upcoming rides. The free tapas is really fun here. Every time you order a drink somewhere, you get a free tapas! Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad, and sometimes they even give you a menu to order your free tapas from! It’s like a fun game, going from one bar to the next, ordering a beer or Coca Cola, and seeing what they bring you.

Have spent the day so far getting up late, fighting the tourist crowds through the parts of Alhambra that we were able to get tickets to (the main palace is booked until May, and we don’t want to get up at 5:30 to get in line for same-day tickets), having ice cream at a place that Michelle Obama visited, doing our laundry, and relaxing at our adorable pension, with a balcony over a busy street where we can listen to the hub bub and people watch.

I’m kind of starting to feel overloaded with touristy stuff. Everywhere we go, there’s a castle, ancient gardens, beautiful city squares, and they are awe-inspiring to see, but because of this, they have become tourist traps. They are full of the same people, speaking English, French, and sometimes Spanish. They all have the same exact souvenir shops with everything made in China. Everyone speaks English at the restaurants and shops, and they all feign interest in your holiday. It’s all so cookie-cutter. Yes, it’s convenient, and when we are low on energy, it’s appreciated, but I’m starting to value more the little side streets and villages with local shops catering to locals. It’s more difficult because the don’t (or maybe won’t) speak English, and you get a lot of stares and exasperation, but these are the times when we start to understand the real Spain, and not the Spain that tourists expect. Pointing at random things on the menu and getting sometimes good and sometimes bad things, but always something new. Stopping at small cafes and listening to the locals gossip about what’s happening in town.

From here on, these are the experiences I’d like to find, rather than going to the tourist attractions that have the most star ratings. I’m trying to find good ways to reach out to locals to foster this kind of cultural exchange. Any suggestions?

Here are some photos from the day. I’ve been trying to avoid taking photos that you could see in any old post card, so I hope you enjoy.