The Long (and Wet) Road Home
Trip Start
May 02, 2007
1
14
70
Trip End
Ongoing
Santa Pau,
Spain
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
The loop took us into the city of Olot, which we reached after about 2 hours of hiking
01.Forest path
. The outskirts are pretty industrialized and grungy, but once you enter the center it is much more charming. We found the main rambla and walked through the market that was in full force there, mostly stands of fruits and vegetables (surely grown locally in the surrounding farms), and which also included rotisserie chicken, salted fish, pastries and even candy. We had lunch in a square and set back on the path toward another town, Santa Pau, about 15 km away. We had to go through a spooky, maze-like forest and climb up and down steep, stony trails. After a few hours of this, and still about 1.5 hours from Santa Pau, grey clouds rolled in above us, followed by thunder and lightning. We didn't bring our rain gear with us as it was sunny when we left camp, so we took shelter under a tree and tried to wait the rain out (and cursed ourselves for leaving our rain jackets and pants in the van). Minutes turned to hours, hours became days, days fell to weeks...alright, maybe not quite, but it seemed like a long time! As the rain penetrated the canopy of leaves that was our roof, we remembered we had an emergency foil blanket in our first aid kit, which we promptly took out and used as a makeshift poncho. We were a little nervous about turning ourselves into human lightning rods, but the lightning was far away and we were getting soaked. Giving up on the rain ceasing, we left our failing shelter and entered the forest path where, not two minutes in, we spotted a cave that would have kept us dry
02.Carlo looking really cool
! We did hunker down inside and I changed out of my soaked long sleeve shirt and into another dry shirt I luckily brought along. It was cold so we wrapped Yvonne's colorful sarong, which is normally our beach blanket, around my body and we both covered up in the metallic silver blanket. I'm sure we were a spectacle - as we walked along, we joked about coming out of the forest into town looking like moon-men and telling people "We come in peace"!We finally made it to Santa Pau, but, as it was still raining heavily, decided not to take the picturesque town in. We bee-lined it through and headed onto the main road out to return to camp, the promise of Freda's warm, dry cabin the only thing keeping us going. The street back was a three-plus kilometer uphill and winding hike, with no sidewalk to keep the distance from passing motorists. Back at camp, exhausted and dripping wet, we made some hot coffee and tea, took scalding showers, and fell into bed.
This morning, as we were sitting eating breakfast, I noticed that the tires looked flat on our bikes (they were still on our bike rack). Upon closer inspection, we were appalled to find out that someone stole all our valves from our tires! I mean, come on...stealing valves?! What lows people will sink to. On top of that, they took our bike pump, which is usually stored inside the van, but which we mistakenly left on the bike just the once. Unbelievable, people will steal anything!! Such a stupid little thing too, but what a hassle it is costing us, and adds to the paranoia of thievery in Spain (right before we left, Yvonne heard from a friend vacationing in Barcelona - she had her backpack lifted in the brief moment her attention lapsed). Word of advice, if you bike around here just use the tubes with the normal valves.
03.Poppies
After swearing about it for a bit, we soldiered on and made it to Girona, a beautiful city north of Barcelona. It reminded us a lot of Florence; there is an air of Italy here and even the street layout and colours of the houses are similar. We mistakenly paid four euro each to go into the church here, due to a misunderstanding between Yvonne and I. I thought it was free, and Yvonne was wondering why I wanted to go, since we've decided that churches are out for us. Anyway, it wasn't a bad experience, it is a beautiful structure and there were some interesting things to see inside, including the oldest known tapestry in Europe, depicting various religious scenes.
We are now camped back on the coast, just outside a town called Platja d'Ora. We will find a bike store tomorrow to buy some valves and a pump so we can cycle around the area. We've had some interesting things happen to us so far on the road, nothing seems to go smoothly, everything we've done has come complete with obstacles. But, what's life without some adversity, right?
