Category: Uncategorized

Well we got up late and decided to take the train to Granada instead of riding. We looked up the schedule and found a bike friendly train (all of the MD trains allow bikes – média distância), rode to the station, and bought a ticket. Only after all this, the ticket agent told me in Spanish that it’s a bus, not a train, so we can’t take our bikes. I couldn’t understand why the official Renfe train schedule app shows a train, as well as Google, and my other scheduling app, but that’s what he said. He had an explanation but I couldn’t understand. Maybe it’s out of service today.

Anyway, April Fool’s to us, we are riding 125km to Granada!

In retrospect, I think it was today’s ride we should have been worried about, not yesterday’s. The nonstop steep rolling hills and 30+°C temperatures had us walking up hills at times and taking lots of breaks. I had to walk my bike up the 15+% grades before Steve did, he wanted to make sure I said that if I posted this picture!

But we saw some amazing scenery including Caminito del Rey and lots of beautiful countryside and farmland.

Our campground butts up against The Torcal De Antequera, giving a beautiful backdrop to our campsite. The rest of the campground is not that great, cold showers, grumpy people staring at us, and no toilet seats on the potties. But dinner at the restaurant on site was welcomed and tasty.

Tried a Netherlands take on a Mexican beer. It was pretty strange.

Also tasted a raw olive from the trees near our tent. Kind of taste like sour grapes, won’t make that mistake again. Hope I don’t get sick.

Tomorrow we may ride to Antequera and spend some time there and take the train to Granada so we have more time in both cities to do some sightseeing, skipping another 120km riding through farmland. As we decided at the beginning of our tour, it’s not about cycling every mile (I mean, kilometre); it’s about experiencing the world by bicycle.

Although we’ve been having some amazing experiences, I feel like I haven’t been living in the moment as much as on our last tour. I think part of that is due to having to figure out accommodations on the fly every few days, whereas last time we had them all figured out ahead of time. Constantly going from planning to doing modes has been a bit exhausting mentally. Not sure of the solution, but I’ve been slacking lately and have no idea where we’ll be sleeping after our two nights in Granada…

(sorry if some of my posts are not showing up right away; our internet in the country has been spotty, so I’ve been writing blog posts to be queued up)

On the ferry from Morroco to Spain the other day, there was a young guy standing in line behind us. He was a Caucasian kid, but his skin was darker than most Latinos, probably from time spent in the sun. He was wearing robes that were maybe made of linen, and his bag was some kind of hand knit back pack. His clothes and hands were dirty. He spoke perfect English with an American accent, and sticking out of his backpack were two half-torn baguettes, looking a little stale. Occasional wafts of pungent but not repulsive body odor lingered in the air wherever he walked. He wasn’t poor; he’d had enough money to pay for the 67€ each way ferry ride.

As he stood there rolling a joint of some kind, he said to the lady in line in front of him, “hey would you like some bread?” His eyes were curious and friendly, and he made and held direct eye contact with me and others, even after you looked away. The lady ignored him, and I looked away.

On the crowded boat, we had chosen a seat, and he approached us asking if he could sit next to us. Someone was already there, we truthfully told him no, and he moved somewhere else.

I realized that his presence was making a lot of people, myself included, uncomfortable, and I was quick to label him a weirdo. But after some reflection, I asked myself, who am I to be so judgmental about this happy-go-lucky and polite guy, freely offering his own food to others, and enjoying his ferry ride to another continent? I’ll bet he has a really interesting story to tell about how he got here.

Isn’t this what many others must think of us, as we ride around in sweaty, stinky Spandex cycling clothes and walk into local cafes to order coffees in bad Spanish? And yet, most of the people in these places are welcoming to us, even if they may look a bit curious or surprised.

I feel like I missed an opportunity, and next time I met someone like this, I will welcome him and ask his story.

Today was the ride to Ronda, relatively short but with a mountain to climb through amazingly scenic hillside villages.

Wasn’t super steep, so we got in a rhythm and got to the top. It hurt the worst after we had to much to eat at lunch. I tried the “callos”, an Andalucian tripe stew that was good and hearty.

Checked into our campground, showered, setup tent, and then walked the 2km to Ronda, where we met up with an old friend of mine who used to be a Palm developer back in the day. He and his business partner moved to Spain, and they joined us to show us around Ronda and have some beers and catch up.

Off to bed, lots of sight seeing to do tomorrow, as we ride through Ronda again and then El Chorro to Antequera.

I hope every day will be like today…

It started off a bit rough with a 350m climb up to a field of wind turbines with side winds so fierce we had to walk a few km of it, after being literally blown off the road a couple of times. But after that we spent most of the day riding through farmland in mostly sunny comfortable weather.

Lunch was a tuna fish sandwich with manchego cheese that we made from a supermarket and ate on the side of the road to the bemusement of a few people walking by.

We were really enjoying a section of dedicated bike lane through the country when suddenly the air was filled with white spray from a bird above us. I (Tim) ended up with the bulk of it on me. I guess it was bound to happen eventually, only the second time in my life. Blech!

The rest of the ride was enjoyable, even knowing that tomorrow’s ride to Ronda is 3 times as much climbing. We passed through Los Angeles (not that one), and climbed up to our hillside home for the evening at a lovely RV park sandwiched between pastures of sheep and cows. The campground has an on site restaurant. We were the only guests except for a few locals at the bar. Our waitress spoke only a few words of English, and we had a really fun time laughing and all trying to speak each other’s language. The food was delicious home-style cooked Spanish food; we just ordered whatever she recommended – a salad, a tasty chicken and potato dish, and a tart for dessert. Halfway through dinner, the owner spent 20 minutes figuring out how to evict two birds from inside, which we applauded.

In parts of Spain it’s been difficult to get a smile out of strangers, but in this area, we’ve encountered a lot of super friendly and welcoming people!

Everywhere seems to have a non-alcoholic beer for Steve!

Night…

Morocco spoke to me a bit more than I expected. This is a place I want to come back to and understand more of, but in a way where I can avoid all the annoying “false guides”.

We made the purposeful decision to do our own self-guided tour, and it was the absolute right decision. Rather than be encased in an air conditioned hermetically sealed bus with dozens of other tourists seeing the same things that every tourist sees, we got ourselves happily lost in the Medina; stumbled upon dead end alleys with beautiful flowers, random kitties, and friendly locals; had a whole restaurant to ourselves enjoying live music and a cous cous dish; sipped mint tea from a cafe overlooking the Strait of Gibraltar; people (and traffic) watched on Avenue Pasteur while enjoying the delicious fruit smoothies known as a panache; bought delicious pastries at random in some bakeries by just pointing at things that looked good; wandered around the Kasbah; shopped fresh strawberries and other fruit in the meandering hectic busy streets; practiced my French with various shop keepers; stumbled into a bar for a beer, where the hospitality was honest and welcoming – the bartender bent over backwards trying to understand our request and invited us to enjoy several complimentary appetizers, making us feel like an honored guest; walked along the beach with its new construction going on and with men renting camel and horseback rides on the beach.

Of course, we did get hassled by quite a few of the “false guides”, coming up to us offering friendly advice at first and then demanding money for the advice or their families. Usually a firm “no thank you” in Arabic would do the trick, but one fellow followed us walking for half a mile until Steve finally gave in and gave him the rest of our pocket change (we had no use for the local currency anyway). I feel for the situation of these folks who feel that they have to act dishonestly in order to make a living, but it does leave a small scar on this otherwise beautiful city. We knew this was the trade off for doing a self-guided tour, and it was never so annoying that we regretted that decision.

We are happy to be back in Spain tonight; though everything feels so mundane here by comparison. We’ve made the decision to take 4 days instead of 3 to get to Granada (we were going to train part of it), and camp the next 3 nights, going at a comfortable pace, as we get into more hilly terrain. We’ve both felt too rushed the past week or so, so it will be nice to take some more time to smell the roses.

(Despite how they look, these small fried fish were absolutely delicious! A mild white fish, tender and juicy. Anyone know what they are, precious?)

It was a fucking needle! In the road. Go figure…

Tonight we are in Tarifa, a simple port town who’s main point of existence seems to be the several ferries to Morocco, one of which we will be taking tomorrow. To the west of Tarifa is the Atlantic. To the east is the Mediterranean. From now until we leave Turkey, we will be riding along the Mediterranean.

So that we could ride at a more relaxed pace today, we took the 8:40am train out of Cádiz to the next station down, a 10-minute train ride that saved us an hour of riding on dirt roads, and got us going early.

Because of the recent rain, we chose not to follow the more scenic route our WarmShowers host recommended and instead found a mostly-highway route, though we did choose to make a detour through some cute seaside towns and 1km of hiking trails along the coast in order to see some ancient Roman ruins on the beach.

We stopped for lunch at a touristy but comfortable restaurant on the coast and ordered the paella. We know it’s not an authentic paella, but it was very tasty and much better than the average one from the states. Steve made me eat all the shrimp that had eyes; to be honest they were too much work to shell.

When we started out on the hiking trails, we came around a corner and found a lighthouse overlooking Africa. I have to admit that I took out my phone to figure out what were those mountains across the sea, and I confirmed to my astonishment that it was, in fact, Africa. It was surprising to me that you could see it 40km away! The first time in our lives we’ve laid eyes on that continent.

Since we blew our budget on paella for lunch, we are making dinner at home from grocery store sale items. Lucky for us, we are in Spain, and the jamón curado, ibérico sausage, and manchego cheese were all on sale. A homemade bocadillo that’s 10x better than what you’d get in the US. Yum!!

And tomorrow, to Africa! We are a little nervous about our time in Tangier, Morocco; we chose to do our own self-guided tour, so we’ve learned a few words in Arabic and I’m brushing up on my French. Any suggestions on what to see? Leave a comment or message us! (It’s Tuesday, so some things are closed…)

What a difference a day makes for the weather. Still windy, but much warmer and no rain until after we finished riding.

Before leaving Jerez, we sampled some tocino del cielo, a flan-like dessert invented in Jerez 500 years ago. Yum!

Our WarmShowers host gave us a phenomenal route to Cádiz, with plenty of bike lanes, hard-packed gravel roads with no traffic, and scenic waterfronts. We even shared the route with a local mountainbike race at one point. The route took us by salt flats built by the Romans and on paths by the train tracks.

I wish we had more time to enjoy Cádiz, but we have a pre-paid ticket to Morocco Tuesday so we have to get to Tarifa tomorrow. Really enjoying this cute friendly city and had some great fried seafood, beer, and dessert!

I’m not going to lie. Yesterday was one of those days. I could try to spin it and talk about overcoming obstacles and how discomfort and pain are distinct from the suffering you allow yourself to experience. But the truth is, riding in 48°F downpours with a 20mph headwind just plain sucks.

We warmed up in a small town and made our way to Jerez, where mother nature gave us one last “fuck you” and dumped buckets on us for the last few km.

Our saving grace was our welcoming and much appreciated WarmShowers hosts, Ana and Diego, who completely understood our misery and made us feel right at home and warm, and fed us a traditional Spanish tortilla for dinner (nothing like a Mexican tortilla, by the way!).

Today we are off to Cádiz for the day, hoping the rain stays away!