Sunday, May 30, 2004 (Happy Birthday Dad!)

Ola Everyone,

Well, it took me a bit more time than I expected to get to Salamanca...Last time I wrote I said I would be there in three days, and that was about two weeks ago, or more. I just arrived yesterday. About ten minutes after I wrote the last email, I met two French guys and an Australian girl that were doing the Camino de Santiago on foot (the Camino de Santiago is a pilgrimage from various points in Europe, usually in France or close to the French border, to Santiago in the northwest corner of Spain). I hung out with them for the afternoon, and they showed me the hostel that is provided for all pilgrims. There were tons of people! This pilgrimage thing seems to be very popular.

I decided that evening that it would be a good idea for me to get in touch with my christianity and to congregate with fellow Christians....actually, I was bored of never talking to anyone, and it was a really cheap way to travel around Spain by bike, three or four Euros per night! So instead of three days to get to Salamanca, it was two weeks. But it was definitely worth it.

After Burgos there were about three days of what is called the Meseta, a large flat area in the middle of Spain, a bit like the prairies in Canada but on a MUCH smaller scale. Here the weather was great, sun the entire time with the wind that I mentioned in the last email still blowing. That took about three days to cross, and I saw a couple interesting cities, Leon and Astorga. Leon had an enormous and very impressive Gothic Cathedral, and cute winding sidestreets that I got lost in a few times, while Astorga was actually pretty boring. After my night in Astorga (where I ate dinner with a couple of French Pilgrims), I met three Italians on mountain bikes that were doing the same thing at about the same speed. They left a bit early while I went for coffee, and then I caught up to them as they were resting after a HUGE climb (non-stop for about an hour, chasing after some cheating cyclists that were doing the pilgrimage with a support van). The scenery was phenomenal though. The mountains across the valley were purple from all the heather growing on them, with a small village on the hillside, and the sun shining warmly. That is what makes the climbs worth it! What followed was the most insane road downhill I've ever done on a bike, blind turns at 60 km/h! WHEEEEE! And at the bottom one of the most peaceful and cute villages I've ever seen, called Molinaseca. That day we continued to Villafranca del Bierzo (after I added an extra 10 km on my ride by misreading my map...D'OH), where there was an awesome Hostal with great food, and other pilgrims around my age (most are retired between the ages of 59 and 66).

We continued the next day to Galicia, and stayed in the same hostals as a group of annoying Spaniards on vacation (also with a support van) who would come back to the hostal at 3 AM (when it's supposed to close at 10) making tons of noise.

Santiago is in a province of Spain called Galicia. Extremely hilly, with a nice ol' mountain chain blocking it from the rest of Spain. It's also extremely green...and guess why? Because it rains 4 days per week in that place! Probably about half of my riding days in Galicia were rainy...and I mean thunder and lightning with curtains of rain falling. Anyhow, i had wet shoes for a while here. But Santiago was amazing, if a bit expensive, and I met some pretty cool people there.

After three nights in Santiago, I decided it was time to leave, so I got back on my bike and headed out, after sending 2.3 kgs of luggage home. The next three days were uneventful, rainy, and I felt sick, since the cheese I bought in Santiago had turned bad without me realizing it. Getting out of Galicia was tiring (much more than 1 km of vertical drop climbed in one day), but again, the landscape was even more beautiful than before. After having had my wheel repaired at a store in Orense, it subsequently fell apart because the guy had tightened the spokes too much. Luckily an English rider I met on the top of a mountain had happened to tell me about a good bike store in a nearby town, where I got a new wheel and complete tune up for a very reasonable price. The next day I had a flat tire on the crest of a mountain, on one side a bigger mountain with a beautiful lake in the valley, and on the other side green valleys fading into the distance with dirt roads criss-crossing the whole thing, and no less than two Spanish drivers (out of two drivers that actually went by) stopped beside me to see how I was doing. Nice people these Spanish.

Anyhow, a few hundred kilometers later I've arrived in Salamanca and I'm taking a couple days rest, to fix a giant tire puncture (that defies patching) and do a lot of laundry. A beautiful city with lots of nice monuments, happy seeming people, and lots of students. Before I sign off, a few things I thought of while riding:

- Always take the road less traveled by...unless you have too much luggage and it is not well paved.

- Roads less travelled by are often not well paved in Spain. Their idea of making a road is to put tennis-ball sized rocks where the road will be and cover the whole thing with smaller rocks mixed with tar. To repair the road, they put a big lump of tar in the hole, cover it with sawdust, and hope that passing cars will flatten it to something acceptable smooth. It doesn't work very well.

That's it for now, sorry for the long email, and I hope the excruciating detail is not too boring!

Ciao, Marc

PSs:

Nir and Phil - how's your trip going and where are you?

Peter - still riding across canada?

Adrianna - now I'm copying you! Hope your surgery is going well

Francesco and Gianmaria - welcome to my massive mailing list and please translate for Andrea...hope your bikes survived the trip!

Sharon - What's going on in August?