Monday, July 12, 2004

Hello All,

The last time I wrote was in Granada I think, some time around the 20th of June. Seems like quite a while ago! I've done so many things and met so many people since then. Granada was pretty good, and I met up with some cool people there as well, in particular a friend that I'd met in Seville a week earlier! Granada has a huge palace called the Alhambra, which is a mostly arabic complex of buildings on the top of a hill overlooking the city. Behind it is the snow-capped Sierra Nevada where it is possible to ski until mid or late june! The two (palace and mountains that is) put together makes a very nice view seen from several other places in the city, especially as the sun sets on the palace with the mountains behind. Very cool. That was probably what I liked most about Granada.

After Granada I took a bus to get out of the city to a small town south of the Sierra Nevada called Orgiva. From there I visited lots of small villages and some fantastic scenery in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, called the Alpujarras. The villages were all winding streets with white-washed houses stuck onto the side of the mountain, with lots of clear mountain spring water fountains everywhere. Because of all this water, this area is like a small oasis of green in the hot and dry south of Spain. In the first town I rode to called Trevelez (specialty: cured ham, claim to fame: highest habitable village in Spain, and I biked there...I think I´m insane). I was actually kind of cold for the first time in a while during the night, in my little tent.

A bit further east and south were some terrific moonlike landscapes in the valleys, with the earth carved up by erosion and rivers (I guess) into many small peaks and crests. Further south and east again, north of the town called Almeria, I ran into some amazing landscapes very much like the Grand Canyon (even more than that time in my first email from Spain). Quite hilly too, but I've become used to it! After Almeria I rode to Cabo de Gata (against my will, since the so-called 'Youth' Hostel in Almeria was totally booked by an enormous group of retired tourists!) on the longest day of riding of the trip, around 130 km. I met there some very cool Australians (Ian and Hayley) that are taking a year off to travel as well, and spent an evening and a morning with them. Then I rode towards the very end of Cabo de Gata, which is a national park with cliffs falling straight into the incredibly clear blue sea (I took some pictures that you will eventually see on a web site). This was followed by a huge climb (probably around a 20% grade, or more) to cross the Sierra de Cabo de Gata. Shortly after I decided to go and see a beach that was a short way off the road...and what do you know, everyone was naked! A bit of a surprise.

The coast up towards Cartagena and Alicante was great, shiny mountains rolling into the sea, and ruins all along the road, until Mazarron where the tourists started showing up 'en masse'. Here I stayed in a great camp site right on the beach, until I met a young French couple at the English bar watching the France-Greece football game, who convinced me to come and camp on the beach next to them. The first night was fine except for the fact that I decided not to put up my tent, and the wind was blowing tons of sand and dirt into my face all night. The second night was interesting, because another English guy staying on the beach got massively drunk and caused a lot of trouble. I met another guy there too, an ex-mining engineer who decided 20 years ago that he would spend the rest of his life travelling the world, playing his guitar for money. His name was Merlin because that's who he looked like! Probably one of the coolest people I've met on the trip, and I learned a lot from him as well. I spent one more night at the camp site, and then the French kids offered me a lift up to Alicante in their Wolkswagon Kombi van! A 150 km free ride, sweet!

Alicante was a pretty boring city, other than having a really nice beach and a nice 'Paseo' along it. I met some more English and Swiss students there, which was a good way to spend the evening. The coast afterwards was just a bunch of tourist resorts, the biggest and most ugly of which was Benidorm. Huge hotels and lots of ugly concrete buildings along the beach. I went inland a bit afterwards and the landscape was great, more green mountains with nice cliffs along the top (think a bigger Niagara Escarpment), the most beautiful and impressive of which was a huge cliff jutting straight out of the earth, with a cap of clouds forming over the top towards me....fantastic. At around 4 pm in a bar for water a neighbour who happened to be a cyclist showed me in a newspaper that a man had died cycling at the same time the day before because of the heat....great! That night I met at the camp site another Marc who had also cycled around most of Spain, a year before. And I thought it was an uncommon thing to do...hmph.

I found out soon after that it really is common, because as I was riding along I saw a cycle tourist stopped on the side of the road. It was a Spanish guy following the exact same route as me, only just from Alicante to Girona, near the French border. Naturally we decided to ride together, and spent the next 5 days camping and riding the same road. We saw Valencia, in Benicassim we stayed at his brother-in-law's place, the next day we both broke our wheels, after that we rode through the Delta de L'Ebre, a river delta with tons of birds and rice paddies. One more camp site, and we arrived in Barcelona. I was hoping to meet up with a guy that I met in Granada who worked in a bar here, but unfortunately he had gone back to the US a week before...dammit, it would've meant free lodging for 5 days. It turned out alright though, because in the first hotel we looked at (completo) we met two Quebec girls who were also looking for a place. We (Spanish cyclist and I) joined forces with them, and we found a place for three (and one sleeping on the floor, me that is), for an ok price. My Spanish friend and I went to a free concert at a local music hall, which turned out to be a rather famous Spanish band that were extremely talented. He left the next day, and the Canadian girls and I found another hotel for even cheaper (and obviously more dingy). They had a friend who's brother lives here, and we met them after the second day for drinks (cheap wine and Sangria sitting at the bottom of a monument in one of the main Plazas of the city) and for them to show us some of the good night spots in Barcelona...the Absinthe bar and the illegal after-hours bar were awesome! Then, the spanish couple invited us all to stay in their apartment for a few days!

So I've spent the last couple of days walking all around Barcelona, and partying in the evening. The city is so big that there are too many things to see. The Sagrada Familia is a huge church designed by Gaudi, still under construction. Absolutely amazing, think some sort of weird building in Lord of the Rings with strange towers and sculptures everywhere. The Park Guells is fantastic too, also Gaudi...for this you just have to see pictures. Along many of the streets and especially the main one there are great buskers everywhere, making it interesting to just walk up and down at least once a day in the same place. It's been cool also hanging out with some really nice people (although one of the girls is a bit....difficult).

Anyway, that's about enough for now. I leave tomorrow morning, head up the Costa Brava to France, and hopefully make it up to Alpe D'Huez for the Tour de France time trial there. It'll be tough though, it's pretty far. It's a bit strange for me still that I'm pretty much done my trip to Spain though, but a relief as well. I'll be going back to a country where I can understand everyone very easily, and where I can easily take a train to anywhere for not too expensive. And soon, I will be on my way back to Canada, on a year's time scale that is.

Until then, I really enjoyed seeing pictures of some of you on a certain geeky web site, and I can't wait to be back! Oh, and there might be one or two more updates, I suppose!

Ciao, Hasta Luego, etc.

Marc

Thought of the day:

When you meet some really cool people who happen to be at the same place at the same time as you, it makes you wonder who you would've met if you'd been in some other place then. I guess I've been pretty lucky with this kind of thing so far!