Through Andorra
Trip Start
Mar 29, 2006
1
70
232
Trip End
Feb 28, 2007
Andorra,
Spain
Thursday, June 29, 2006
Breakfast was great. In a large restaurant overlooking the street which was teeming with traffic on the way to who-knows-where. Not small cars either. We are in the land of plenty. Big autos and vans. Did I mention the vans. Every other vehicle is a van. It might be a delivery van or a service vehicle but they are everywhere. When they are not tailgating me they are parked on the pavement or on double yellow lines. They were like flies. They were irritating. Why is there not a van aerosol spray to kill or deter?
We left the hotel about 9 o'clock, filled up with diesel opposite and set off up the C55 which had been kindly pointed out to us by the very helpful English speaking receptionist. A good road across open country which eventually wound itself up into some forested hills and through the valley of the Riu Cardener
Going down
. On a spectacular scale of ten it was up there in the sevens yet there was evidence of bush fire activity along the sides of the road. [One of my observations in general was that we didn't see any 'typical' Spanish homes anywhere. That hacienda style that we are familiar with in movies did not exist in this part of Spain. The homes all seemed based on the standard, angular, Mediterranean look we had been passing the last few weeks except that they were more colourful.]The first town of any interest was Salsona. Again, a dot on the map turned out to be quite a big town. Sitting atop a 600 metre high plateau there were lots of hotels (when we didn't need one) and an old part with battlements and thick stone walls. We should have stopped but we had a long way to travel.
We stopped on a rise about 80 km south of Andorra where we had a 360° view of craggy limestone hills down into valleys green with wheat and corn. Elsewhere were hay bales and orchards. Not a vine to be seen. On another side was nothing but forest. I did not expect, for some reason, to see pine forests stretching out into the distance in Spain. The scene before us looked very similar to our Blue Mountains without the blue tinge.
We pulled off the road to follow a sign post that said to Coll de Nargo and which had a picture of a cup of coffee
The Andorran Pyrannees
. The town was like that image we have of an American wild west town. Hot, dusty, streets with old pioneer homes, a couple of shops and a bar. Curious bystanders watched as we drove slowly up the main street and back. We tied up our trusty steed, slipped on the sunnies and strode towards the door that said bar. I looked through the dusty window of what appeared to be a run down café/bar and glimpsed a coffee machine. We entered warily hands on our trusty cameras expecting trouble. It was immaculate. A long polished bar, timber floor, clean tables and chairs and a pretty bar maid. The end of the bar area opened out into a classy restaurant on one side and a function room on the other. The whole was decorated with flowers, paintings and other bric-a-brac. You would never have guessed it from the outside. We slipped off the sunnies released the grip on the cameras and ordered coffees all of which cost us 2 Euros! We should be staying in Spain. Onwards and slowly upwards. The mountain road had been recently upgraded and where once the road had wound around the hills above the lake it now cut through tunnels of freshly laid concrete and steel. It took the charm off the drive but was spectacular in a different, modern hi-tech way.[ Apart from the tunnels the drive reminded me of the route we took through Wyoming in 2000.]
Beautiful blues skies again today perfect
WELCOME TO ANDORRA said the sign and spend, spend, spend was the real message
Top of the pass
. Imagine the biggest duty free airport concourse in the world, transpose it to the Andorran valley, build a highway through the middle and then replicate it 20 or 30 times. That was Andorra. My image of a quaint mountain village or two was shattered. It was, as I just wrote, a continuous 'mountain village' flanking the sides of a long winding road through the valleys of the Pyrenees. Shopping complexes offering cheap booze, fags, bling and gas. I have never seen so many petrol pumps so close together and there were queues of cars waiting to be served. Not because of any shortage but because it was 86c a litre compared to 110c elsewhere. The French and Spanish drivers must have been filling up for the weekend. The same scene went on and on as we progressed up the valley midst all the traffic. We ran out eventually but then it was hotels on either side as we approached the winter sports district. There was not much left one could call old or even quaint. All spare land was being built on. A good place to invest in I thought. We stopped at last in a quieter town called Canillo in search of lunch. It was so quiet nothing much was opened. We tried a bar but they turned us away...fully booked! Across the road they were also booked downstairs but they invited us to dine on the roof where we found a shady spot and ordered salads. I ordered a cheese salad and had to struggle through a plate of cheese by myself which I would be lucky to get as an after dinner platter for four in Sydney. Anne ordered a liver pate but they were out so gave her a pate de fois gras salad instead with fois from at least a flock of Canadian geese. She struggled too. And was charged the higher price. But it was that or go hungry. There were no takeaways around here.
We were deep in the mountains now, the peaks rising on either side as we drove on and up. It widened out at the top of the pass with a spectacular 9/10 view of the Pyrenees all around us. And it was cool! We took the mountain road down to the Pas de la Casa instead of the new tunnel. Anne coped very well with the 'hary scary' parts as she called them. Then we drove down the N20 to Ax-les-Thermes...a long, wide valley with mountains on each side and the river down below. At Ax we took a minor road in a north easterly direction going up again to reach the Col de Marmare, Arriege de Pyrenees, where we stopped for a few minutes to check out the view. From there on it was a very twisty, narrow road but whereas it was fun to drive it was also very tiring. However, it was the more direct way back to Carcassonne. Much of the next 150km was all a bit of a blur. Surprisingly green everywhere. Some narrow quiet roads and others busy highways as we crisscrossed the country. At one stage we figured we would not get home that night but at least with the northern summer we had no fear of darkness falling along those narrow roads.
