15 June 2007

Map & pin: Granada; Carchuna; Adra; Almeria; Tabernas; Mojacar.

Again it’s been way too long between blog updates, but we are currently trapped for a few days in Mojacar effecting repairs (of which more below), so it’s a good opportunity to at least run through the highlights of a very busy and excellent week or so. Granada was every bit as good as expected – we spent a full day sightseeing and only managed to take in about half a dozen different places. The sightseeing pinnacle was definitely the Alhambra/Generalife – a Moorish castle, gardens and other assorted stuff perched on the top of the hill overlooking the city. Everything about the place combines elegance, beauty and style with extraordinary peace and tranquillity. The gardens all centre around running water and despite the intense heat of the sun, everywhere feels cool and relaxed. From the top of the towers you can see the Sierra Nevadas, the city, the groves of olive trees stretching away into the distance – truly awesome place.

Other particularly good bits included an exhibition by a painter called JP Morales (when I have an internet connection I will try to give you some more info, but look out for his extremely surreal and often tiny oils), the cathedral with a most impressive organ (tee hee) and the street parade we caught – some kind of festival going on in the city.

We also got on the piss with some fellow travellers at the campsite – Dan and Darcy who are doing a similar trip to ours but on motorbikes. A good laugh and hopefully we might catch up with them in Valencia or Barcelona – obviously they are travelling much faster than us but staying longer in many places and taking more time out for side trips.

The ride down from Granada was way easier than expected, which is always nice. Fantastic scenery, though. As we approached the coast, the road followed the bottom of a ravine winding for several kilometres through massive cliffs and mountains. It was breathtaking stuff – the rock seemed so old and strong, the cyclist so transient and tiny. Such was the scale of the thing that there seemed no point in taking pictures – they could not possibly convey the feeling of the place. Then, just as you felt you might be crushed, the cliffs receded, sky reappeared and out we popped onto the coast again. V cool.

Carchuna – don’t bother. Nothing there except a very expensive campsite and an average (by, admittedly, the very high standards around here) beach. Here and Adra are part of what is referred to as the ‘exotic coast’. The guidebook informed me that here many exotic and tropical fruits are grown. Fabulous, I thought, all those beautiful fruit trees, what an appealing prospect. Wrong, wrong, wrong. In fact, the entire area is pretty much endless greenhouses – ugly, dusty, dry and baking in the sun. On the upside, we did get the bonus of cooking with food found by the side of the road, which is always nice. At the campsite in Almeria we met an American guy who is studying the impact of the greenhouse agriculture on the region, so I’ll be keeping an eye out for his damning criticism of it sometime soon.

Since we hit Adra, I’ve been swimming every day, which is of course another bonus. This has been accompanied by a sharp increase in bugs – flies and mozzies operating on a rotational shift basis in each campsite. We’ve bought two types of mozzie repellent, but Neil still manages to look like a leper and we’ve had to start sleeping with the screens closed on the tent, which is very warm. The campsites in Adra and Almeria were right on the beach – less than 100m from tent door to lovely, lovely salt water. Tabernas was in the middle of nowhere and the only water we saw either fell from the sky or was sprayed up on us, disguised as filthy mud, by passing trucks. But then it is Europe’s only desert. Frankly, I’m becoming increasingly dubious about some of these claims – I’ve seen Europe’s biggest cathedral in at least four different places and the country around Tabernas, while very interesting, didn’t look much like a desert to my exacting Australian eyes.

Anyway, Tabernas was very nearly the scene of some tears. According to our guidebook, and to flyers Neil had been collecting, it was the site where many spaghetti westerns were filmed, including a number of the Sergio Leone classics, and studio/sets/shrines to Clint-type places could be visited and enjoyed. Based purely on the name, we selected one Texas Hollywood – it was rubbish. It was so bad, it actually went out the other side and became funny. We cycled through the desert on rocky, dusty roads to pay €15-odd each to look at an old film set, have a ride in a horse-drawn cart and watch a ‘wild west show’ conducted entirely in Spanish which consisted of three men playing cards and fighting in a bar. After going through the rollercoaster of emotions from extreme excitement to utter horror, anger and hostility, we arrived at a kind of mild hysteria which allowed us to appreciate how utterly we’d just been conned and genuinely laugh at a world that produces tourists as gullible as us. And Indiana Jones was filmed there too (no, I don’t know which one – I only glanced at the film stills in the bar)!

Anyway, all of this brings us to the here and now, which is trapped in Mojacar while Neil’s bike is repaired. The original snapped spoke was repaired in a rather slapdash manner, so that eventually the buckle returned and on the way down from Tabernas to the coast a further two spokes snapped and we had to limp into town and seek help. The ride down had been going fantastically well to that point. Great roads with little or no traffic, a light drizzle of rain so that it didn’t get too hot, lightning striking the mountains, Spain’s unfriendliest town (Sorbas – clear inspiration for The Hills Have Eyes), and a period of prolonged filth which left me and everything I own coated completely in mud. Still, it could have been a lot worse and at least it turned out we had alighted in just the right spot! We are staying in a wonderfully quiet and pretty campsite just outside Mojacar town itself, with almond trees all around us to assist in our mission to eat as much food we find on the ground as possible. The woman that runs the campsite is doing us a cheap rate, that has got cheaper the longer we stayed, and two old English brothers that are staying at the site have been immensely helpful. They found us a bike repair shop through a friend who lives locally and drove Neil into the next town to drop his wheel off. Unfortunately, it has taken three days to repair and Neil is off to collect it this afternoon. The brothers are, it goes without saying, utterly mad. A favourite saying, for example, seems to be that the world is run by women and socialists – not the one I’m living in, unfortunately – but have so far seemed largely harmless. We shall buy them some beers to thank them for their help before we head off tomorrow morning. Meantime, I’ve been enjoying a wonderful relax. The campsite has a pool that we’ve had pretty much to ourselves. On Wednesday I walked down to the seafront a couple of kilometres away and found an English bar that put the State of Origin on for me (yay you toadies). Neil joined me after his trip to the bike shop and we spent the rest of the day getting pissed, topped off by a wonderful vege dinner on a rooftop restaurant in Mojacar. There appears to be a massive expat community here but the place itself has very little to recommend it. Still, there’s a communal fridge at the campsite, so we’ve been able to keep cool food that we’ve been avoiding because of the heat and we’ve spent a few days laying about eating and drinking much like big fat Mediterranean cats.

05 June 2007

Map and pin: Conil de la Frontera; Punta Paloma; Algeciras (Gibraltar); Granada.

Last few days have been mad and packed full of really interesting stuff. First of all, we cycled about 55km to Punta Paloma – a very windy 55km. It is worth noting that there are a number of warning signs that cyclists might like to be aware indicate less than ideal cycling conditions ahead. These include massive wind farms, wind sock signs on the side of the road, hotel names like ‘Hotel Hurricane’ and millions of kite surfers. Yes, wind freaks, we’d arrived at the so called ‘wind coast’, world headquarters of wind surfing and kite surfing. It goes without saying that we had no idea we were approaching this and arrived at Punta Paloma gobsmacked to see the sky filled with giant kites and the palm trees horizontal. We set up camp and then wandered down to the beach to soak up the spectacle – and got our second delightful surprise: Africa. From the beach you could see the north coast of Africa rising up on the other side. How cool – I didn’t know it was so close. We had a couple of beers and a nice dinner. Sunday has become our main eating out night as the day in Spain is like Sundays when you were a kid – nothing (except restaurants/bars) is open.

The wind howled all night long and we set off the next morning nothing short of fearful, into what seemed like a strong wind. We were right to be afraid, and it wasn’t a strong wind – that was still to come. Turns out we were riding through the winds that blow between Spain and Africa through the Strait of Gibraltar and although we only did 30-odd km for the day it was absolutely killer. The wind, combined with mountains, was so strong that we had to push the bikes on a number of occasions not because it was too steep but because we were in serious danger of being blown off the road. It was amazing. Just when I was about to despair, having taken over an hour and a half to do less than 10km, we arrived at a bar near the summit of the highest mountain and had a quick beer. Then, bless the spirits of wind, it was all down hill to Algeciras.

We’d planned to camp there, but on arrival we were told that the nearest campsite was back where we’d stayed the night before and quickly changed our mind. Instead, we stayed in a really cheap pension and took the bus to Gibraltar for the evening. What a bizarre place. For the first time since we left England, someone actually checked out passports. Once you’re in, it is genuinely like you are back in England. All the signs are in English, the stores are English, the currency is pounds and pence, the pubs (and the pub food) are English. To be honest, it all seemed a bit run-down and sad. We met a local artist, though, who told us quite a bit about the island and what it was like to live there. We had a pub dinner and a few pints – bought a 50g pouch of tobacco (no, I haven’t quite given up smoking, it would seem) for £1.02!!!!! – bought some wine gums for Neil and wandered around for a while before taking the bus back to Algeciras. It was just €45 for a day trip by ferry to Tanger, and we were sorely tempted to nip over to Africa while we had the chance (just so we’d been) but decided against it. You can’t do everything and the costs for every extra day mount up – we’re already exceeding our budget on a regular basis and have pretty much concluded that we won’t be doing much further travel once we’ve finished this trip, but we’ll see how we go.

Algeciras seemed a very odd place – obviously a major port for travel/trade between Europe and north Africa, which was reflected in a very mixed population, fantastic variety in the food at the local markets and signs in several languages. It’s also home to a massive industrial area and it appeared from the flow of traffic that many locals work on Gibraltar.

Today, we trained it up to Granada – and thank fuck for that because just looking at the mountains through the window made me tired. Met a fellow Aussie traveller – retiree from Adelaide – who was excellent company and we exchanged travel tips. The campsite in Granada is really close to the city, which is brilliant, and we’re here for two nights before heading back down to the coast. According to the map, we’ve got to go over a couple of 1000+m mountains on the way back, so as well as sightseeing we’ve been building up our strength. Granada looks beautiful so far and tomorrow we’ve got a packed itinerary to get through, so I better go have a beer and get camp dinner sorted. My iBook is still not working on wireless, so I’m not sure when this will get posted but if we’ve got some spare time and a free wi-fi connection I’ll see what I can do.

02 June 2007

We appear to be beginning the descent into noisy campsite hell – I write this to the accompaniment of screaming children, loud Spanish pop music, barking dogs, scooters and even the occasional bray of a donkey, although I have no idea where the hell the donkey came from and I did take a walk around the campsite when we arrived. The donkey and the dogs can be quite soothing, but the overall effect is anything but. Last night we had several desperately shouty Spanish families, lead by chief shouter Willy Wanker (so named because he appeared to have his own oompah loompah – sorry, but even I wasn’t brazen enough to take a picture of them six foot away and shouting to each other) who forced me to have a 1am tantrum. I was reduced to shouting random abuse and slamming the pots of our tiny cookset together – the only thing I had that could make noise in any way competitive with several adult shouters, a troupe of monkey children playing with a giant tennis ball and loud Spanish television. At least they made the monkey children stop.
In fairness, you expect Friday and Saturday night at a campsite to be noisy and noise doesn’t generally bother me – let’s face it, I’m damned noisy myself. I think I was particularly pissed off because this was a deeply militant campsite where reception had impressed on me, through the use of words, gestures and pictures, the evil of using any kind of portable music player: antisocial behaviour far more hideous than shouting, playing ball games and watching loud television outside your caravan at 1am. It is probably also worth noting that people who stay in caravans cannot possibly know just how little noise a tent filters out – it’s like wearing ear trumpets as ear plugs.

But enough preliminary moaning, on to the main moan of the day: I have been robbed in the most annoying and disappointing way possible. You expect, travelling like this, that you will get stuff nicked – frankly I figure it’s inevitable. However. Today, while I was at the beach (yes, yes, I am aware that noting I was off swimming in the clear blue Spanish sea at the time is likely to lessen any sympathy I might be due) someone stole my repair kit from my bike. Spare tube, puncture repair kit and a set of allen keys (no idea how you spell that, so apologies if it’s wrong) – not the bag they actually live in, which is strapped under the seat, mind, just the three essential repair items. Total value: £10 maybe. The bike, it goes without saying, was chained up with my fuck off giant bike chain and lock. Okay, so I realise it’s not heart medicine or grandmother’s wedding ring or something, but that’s hardly the point. These three things could *only possibly be of use* to a cyclist. What kind of scumbag bastard cyclist steals another cyclist’s repair kit? Nothing else taken: Ernie and my bike computer still there, Neil’s quick release wheels untouched. Just the three cheap, essential items a cyclist – AND ONLY A CYCLIST – would need if they got a flat tyre.

Obviously, there is no point wishing a flat tyre on him/her as they now have at least one brand new puncture repair kit, and a snapped chain or similar seems a smidgen light as punishment goes. In truth, I hope they accidentally ride into a seemingly empty field and get gored by an angry bull that was only last week, much to the thief’s disappointment, spared by the crowd at the local bullfight because it had fought courageously – poetically leaving him/her to expire slowly from a puncture that no stolen repair kit can mend. Or something similar.

On top of this irritating theft, I discovered that I had lost my travel shampoo (bloody brilliant little shampoo cake from Lush – not tested on animals – with its own little travel tin). Neil, on being told that I couldn’t find it, made things infinitely better by responding: “Oh yes, you’ll have left that at the last campsite - I thought I saw that outside the showers but didn’t think it was yours.” Grrr indeed. There is a horse neighing now, as well.