OK, back to where we left off a few days ago of our blogging.....let me think...yes, hitchhiking...the morning after our minor French misadventure with a highway curve and the resulting ride with a tow truck driver and $170 taxi ride to Limoges with our now sadly car-less driver left us happily feasting in the breakfast room of the hotel that his insurance paid for for us. It was a good thing that our driver Fabien was also well accostomed to hitchhiking himself as he now had to rely on that form of transportation to complete his journey to see his grandmother in the hospital. We continued hitchhiking ourselves through the countryside of Limousin and its tiny villages where the children peered out of the shuttered second story windows to peek at the foreigners standing with their thumbs out on the side of the road for an hour at a time until a postal truck driver, a taxi driver and a few other varieties of French drivers tested Mike's french skills and brought us over the volcanic mountains (which had not appeared on our AMA map: this tedious winding route appeared as simple to navigate as any other) to Lyon finally. Three french girls: Fredrique and Melanie, who we had met in Dublin two years ago, and Pauline who we had worked with at the pub in Cork, toured us through the secret corridors and grand murals and culinary delights of their city. Melanie took us kayaking Sunday afternoon, only telling us as we were on the lake paddling against the approaching storm that she had been a previous national kayak champion.
Only a few days and one city left in France on our loose itinerary (we had just looked at what lays between Lyon and Barcelona, but as usual we underestimated just how far out of our way it actually was) brought us to the pink city of Toulouse. Our first host, the meterologist Alice predicted the rain that held us contained in the city for a day longer than we had expected. Luckily our second host Delphine welcomed us back into her house for a second night to dry off as our hitchhiking attempts were foiled by the downpour. But we couldn't complain as her tour of the city's parks and sheesha bars and her homemade crepe meals made up for the thorough soaking. And we heard that Barcelona had had a good flooding anyways so we were happy to have kept a little distance from the coast that night.
After a brief stop in the Spanish (Catalan) border town of Figueres to see the Salvador Dali museum and eat paella, we made our way along the east coast to Primera de Mar where our Brazilian/Russian hosts Sergio and Natasha were awaiting us with gorgeous meals and some interesting opinions of being foreigners in Calalunya. We could nearly walk the rest of the way to Barcelona along the beach where our next HC host Victor was not, but he had left us keys to his delicate flat in the gothic heart of the old town! Yeah, without even meeting us! We can only hope that he received as much hospitality on his current travels around the Baltic Sea as we did in his city cause we were soaking it up! We met up with three other HCers, Cris, Kerem and Marc for rampages around Barcelona's bars and skateboarding plazas and Gaudi architecture. We were sworn to secrecy on the location of Manu Chao's new tiny bar which was as eclectic and chaotic as his music, but in truth we could never find it again even if we wanted to in the maze of dark hosed down graffitied streets and frantic stag parties parading past live statues in imaginative costumes, steep wrought-iron balcony buildings and busker's alleys, plazas with green parakeets dashing between palm trees and flamenco-fusion performances (think Another Brick in the Wall flamenco version...that sounds cheesy but it wasn't) and the Spanish nights out that really do last till dawn. Sigh.
Our next hitch brought us to Zaragoza where Elisa and Manuel the postman/biker pampered us another couple of days that really stretched Carli-Ann's spanish comprehension while we toured the Roman foundings of their quiet city. The promise was that when we came to Spain they would take us out for 'cold' beer as they were not impressed with the British room temperature ale they received at the Glasgow pub when Mike hosted them on their motorcycle tour of Scotland a few months ago. They accomplished their task with the perfect Spanish flair on a night out racing between tapas bars where there isn't time to sit down between beer and little sandwiches of chorizo or dripping sardines or calamari bits. Really, most of the bars didn't even have chairs.
Before we took the most logical route next to Madrid, we had a few days to kill before an Amparanoia gig we wanted to catch back on the Catalan coast so we hitched a couple days winding our way through the desert and mountains back south east, lost most of the time as many of the tiny mountain roads that sported more tractors than cars did not appear on our map. But the hurricane brewing on the west of the country kept us on the move a little uneasily, taking our only night in a hostal on the castle-topped mountain village of Morella. The next day was a whirl of hitching through sunny almond groves punctuated by torrential downpours where we were grateful for the thick branches of olive trees for a tiny bit of cover, a jousting match with the Spanish police who proclaimed that hitchhiking was PROHIBIDO in every single inch of Spain, tramping through the mountains to the nearest village where the old men in the solitary sidewalk cafe watched every move we made as we tried to find a bus that would take us out of this particular cop's region, and haltingly making our way hitching north along the coast, but I think we walked at least a third of it. Man, am I glad that all those ferocious dogs protecting their territory around the houses along the beaches and olive groves are well tied up...
We camped somewhere along the coast in Catalunya again only a meter from the sea, and woke up to the rain of the burnt out hurricane letting loose on our tent, and way too many ants taking refuge in the tent and all over our unsuccessfully drying clothes.
The Spanish, much to our dismay, are like the French in that they are rather hesitant to welcome hitchhikers into their cars in bad weather. But eventually a Moroccan brought us almost all the way to Reus, pouring piles of recently picked figs and pomegranates into our hands. A final brief train ride threw us into the arms of our Catalan and French Canadian hosts, Gemma and Pierre who washed and dried all of our soggy clothes, sleeping bags and tent, fed us, and toured us around the old streets charged with the energy of the Reus equinox festival. Fire breathing dragons were chased through the streets by devilishly dressed children wielding deafening, spark-shooting fireworks on sticks, but the Catalan tradition of the human towers were rained out. The final part of the madness, we went to the free gig of Amparanoia, fronted by a fabulously energetic Andalucian woman, who stirred up enough racket to keep it going for two and a half hours! A bit of sleep later and we were on the train to Madrid (this train journey being one of our big indulgences - well deserved we thought!).
Our Hospitalityclub planning for Madrid was a bit delayed, so we were very pleased to receive a text message on our phone while we were on the train which invited us to the home of our final European host, Eryke. Madrid was the perfect place to spend our final week of our two year exploration of Europe, and Eryke and her thousand Madrileño friends were a true gift to us. Wine and plazas and parks and coffees and so many people to meet...If anyone ever comes across the Nowan music video called 'Imagina', the woman painted red is our Eryke.
Madrid and then our flight to the mild rains of England. Gren and Beryl welcomed us back for a fourth time to recooperate, get cleaned up and rested (well, in theory, but their new phone plan with free calls to Canada kept us up late every night catching up with family at home) and tomorrow back to London, the throngs of which we hope will not be pulsating too much as we have a north to south cycle to do with all our gear on our backs. Sunday at 4pm we leave for the other side of the world, Tuesday at 6am we arrive (don't ask me what that is in flying time) and who knows what happens next! We'll let you know when it does though! Did we mention that while everyone we know is preparing for winter, New Zealanders will be doing their spring cleaning? We thought it was quite clever of us to be escaping from winter for a whole year...
No comments:
Post a Comment