Friday, May 14, 2004

Ola people,

It's been a week since I've been in Spain, and I'm at my first real rest stop. I started in a town north of the France-SPain border, called Capbreton, where a friend of mine let me sleep for the night, after a dreaful night train from Paris (nice to have a real bed to rest in for the start of the trip). I left for San Sebastian the next day, passing through Bayonne, Biarritz, and a bunch of other nice towns. San Sebastian itself is clean, lively, has a really nice beach, and cool side streets. I met a few Canadians in the hostel there as well, but then left the next day for my next destination, Bergara.

Bergara is a small town, rather uninteresting. What I didn't know was that to get there, after already having climbed from 0 to 500 metres, I still had to climb a 681 metre mountain. At around 650 metres I realised I was too tired, and made my first camping site behind a rock on the side of the road. I was freezing, it rained all night, and the trees above me kept on dropping huge drops on my tent, keeping me awake. Also the cars going by every 5 minutes didn't help.

Next day, I made it to Bergara, soaked and cold, to buy some food and a phone number. Ugly town, unfortunately. A friendly guy, also a cyclist, showed me the best route to get to Vitoria/Gasteiz. He was right, it was a good route, a big climb at the beginning, and then a nice descent around a pretty lake with small villages all around.

Vitoria was rather ugly, until I actually found the historical centre, which took some work, and then I had to leave, to find a camp site that required I bike on a major highway to get to. I didn't do that, instead I asked a passing cyclist for directions to a town I thought also had a camping. He brought me all the way there (I was completely in the wrong part of town!). Only then did I find out there was no camping. So I slept on a grassy knoll in the middle of the village. Not a bad camp site after all, and it was cool to see a herd of sheep walk by the next morning.

Next day I rode to Haro, it was a medium difficulty climb over a mountain range to get there, and after that amazing scenery with jagged mountains behind me, on a winding road down into plains filled with sprouting vines. It turned out Haro is the capital of the Rioja wine growing region. It's a quiet town with a nice historical centre, and 'Vinoteca's (wine shops) EVERYWHERE! I visited it that night, then went back to the campìng to sleep. There were English people EVERYWHERE in the camp site, which I found kind of odd, but they gave me coffee the next morning, so I can't complain.

I left late the next day, to get to my next camp site. The land I went over was a bit like the grand canyon, only greener and not so canyony...the valleys were parched and desertlike, but once you climb out of them you see kilometres of green fields all around you. I took a wrong turn at some point when I was on a little trail on top of one of these plains, and ended up in a little village that had all sorts of ruins all around...very cool. Eventually I made it to the campsite.

The camping was between two highways and a railroad, a bit noisy, and the restaurant served me a nasty fast-fry steak with greasy french fries. Hot showers and coffees in the morning are nice though, so still I can't complain.

And that brings me to yesterday, and an easy 30 km bike ride on flat terrain with a strong wind pushing me from behind! The landscape was still like the day before, but a bit less so.

Burgos is a medium sized city, with a HUGE gothic cathedral, and several monasteries to see. There's also the remains of a big castle on top of a hill that was destroyed by Napoleon, and from there you get a great view of the city. I took tons of pictures here, so eventually some of you may see them if you want.

Anyway, that's it for now. Not sure where i'm going tomorrow, but in three days or so I should be in Salamanca.

Cheers,

Marc

PS: I thought it would be warm and sunny in Spain. It's been cold the entire time, and except for a few hours of sun twice, it's been cloudy and/or raining since I got here. ARGH.