Spain

Arrived within 35 minutes by Spanair from Barcelona. Picked up our Avis hire car, a little VW Polo diesel, very nice, I like the button at the back for the boot. Kev quickly realised it was a manual, oops, opposite side of the road, opposite side of the car, and changing gears..nope, we had to upgrade to an automatic which ended up costing us a motsa. The signage on Majorca is fantastic, plenty of signs at every turn so we picked a town to stay in for our first night through seeing a pretty photograph in my guidebook and drove straight to Colonia de Sant Jordi and scored a hotel on the ocean inclusive of breakfast.

This place is little Germany, we have been told there are actually more Germans in Majorca than Spanish. We can see why, there was no English translation on any tour/excursion sign or menu, the Spanish staff only spoke German, every single conversation we heard was German, without a word of a lie. Very bizarre.

Majorca has approximately 80 coves/inlets, that are calm, turquioise, clear water, with pure white sand. Some are a fair way in from the coast and often there are yachts moored. It is such a heavenly place. We took our map and explored several of these coves on our first day, I think Kev was pleasantly suprised at the freedom the Germans seem to have with their bare bodies today!! We got some supplies at the Supermercado and were entertained from our balcony by the Spanish singing duo by the pool who sang continuous old English songs, such as 'Tie a Yellow Ribbon around the old oak tree'..get the idea?? But it all sounded very bad, to try and explain, if you heard a song in another language and tried to copy it, that's how it sounded. Anyway, we laughed at their expense for some time.

Day 2: Checked out of the 'Guten Morgen' hotel and drove north. Majorca changed into a busy, Surfers Paradise in the north, we really didn't like it, and was very different from the south. So we found accommodation and the next morning set off south again.

Day 3: Visited some more coves on the way down and had a bit of rain, but at the last cove was getting sick of driving and just wanted to find a place to stay. I was keen on going back to Colonia but Kev said, let's have a look over this hill...great decision!! Paradise unfolded, and before us lay a magnificent place for lunch, which happened to have accommodation!! We were upgraded to the suite and for heaps cheaper than we've paid for crappy accommodation we got the best room in the house, with 180 degree views of 2 coves and the ocean with breakfast and dinner included! We've always been of the opinion that the accomm. doesn't matter, its only a place to wash and sleep..until today, it did matter.

Day 4: Spent our last day laying in the sun. This was actually our first full day of doing nothing in 5 weeks, so we really enjoyed it. Tomorrow we set off on a never ending journey home to Australia.

Typical cove, Southern Majorca

The best Paella!

Houses

View from our hotel - last 2 nights

Last photo of our trip - Majorca

Took local bus to Roses, another seaside village, not as nice as Cadeques but wanted to see it, as also recommended by a friend to have a look at. Big marina, with lots of huge boats moored here, and have actually been spoken to a bit of French here today, shows how close we are to the border. Another 6 euro lunch with our baquettes and bottle of wine. Not much else to say about Roses, other than Siesta, even Burger King is closed!

Have been looking forward to seeing Cadaques since planning the trip and was well worth the wait. Its another white washed village with terracotta rooves and blue or green window shutters, located in calm bay with a hill behind covered in olive trees. Also a bit of a Brit hang out, and image summer here would be pretty full on, but it was lovely today. We decided to hire a motorcycle scooter, and set off exploring all the little bays and coves around Cadaques up to Port Lligat. This is definately the best way to see this area, as there´s not many cars and the narrow windy hilly streets are so much full on a scooter!! A couple of times I had to close my eyes as Kev had it wound up to about 50 and was a little scary but the freedom of having the scooter was so much better than on foot. Anyway, bought some baguettes, cheese and chorizo and found a bay to enjoy lunch. Then decided to go to Port Lligat to see Salvador Dali´s house. This was magnificent, especially because it was guided and only let 8 people in at a time. It was built on a hill and was full of some wacky stuff, he was clearly obsessed with his wife Gala, and I reckon they may have had some pretty wierd parties from the photos we´ve seen, but it was really great, and we loved this day.

Booked tickets on the internet to go to Majorca Monday for 5 days until we fly out. Thinking about hiring a motorhome and staying in that, but will figure it out later.

Beautiful Cadaques

Our hire scooter, Cadaques

After checking into our accom. set off to see the Salvador Dali museum. We have been recommended by two people to take the trip to Figueres, near the French border to see this museum, and it was well worth the trip.

Salvador Dali is much more than just a surrealist painter. To see his early work, his ink drawings, water colours, portraits, all before he got really adventurous, you can see how much artistist talent he has to begin with. Then he just gets wacky, a little overuse of the male & female genitalia in some of his sketches, and the man with female genitalia and vise versa, is also strange. But that is only a portion of his work. There is a room where he set up a couch the shape of lips, huge nose and enlarged paintings of Paris for the eyes, a floor to ceiling hollow hair style, then you walk up a tall ladder and look through a large magnifying glass to see what is a Mae West. Very clever! I got a photo and will put it on here when I can. There´s plenty of this kind of thing in the museum. We really enjoyed it and if it wasn´t for the large tour groups following the guide holding a ping pong bat with their tour group name on it, then it would have been even better. Its hard in museums and galleries with tour groups because normally a couple or small group will looking a painting and move on but when there´s a group of 30 and the whole story is told about the painting, then there´s no chance of seeing it. We´ve started to dislike tour groups in Europe, and have vowed never to be on one.

Anyway, Figures itself is quite lovely but have completely cashed in on Dali, the museum is actually quite cool from the outside too. Its a dark pink colour with gold emblems on it and the roof is lined with massive white eggs. Another photo I will get on here too.

Outside Salvador Dali gallery - Figueres

Favourite tapas bar

Massive painting by Salvador Dali

Drawing - Rock woman, Salvador Dali

Famous Dali painting

Looking out at the sea from Montjuic mountain overlooking the cable car ride

Using the zoom to focus in on La Sagrada Familia (Gaudi building) from the Montjuic mountain

Day One:- Took our cheap Spainair flight via Scandanavia Air carrier and spent the first day on Las Ramblas watching all the street performers, gripping my handbag for sheer life, and taking in all the sights..continued down to the beach, to Barceloneta, lighter coloured sand for a change, lots of art structures and pieces on the boardwalk. Had to catch the Metro back as the old feet were screaming. Tomorrow we have a list on an A4 sheet of paper of things to do. We have 2 days to get them all done before we catch a train up to Figures to see the Salavador Dali gallery and continue onto Cadaques a small fishing village for a little rest before flying home.

Day Two:- Our pensiona was beautiful to look at but had no sleep due to the free internet computer just outside our room that was in constant use all night, backed up by the 24 hour reception of constant, filing, hole punching, phone calls, behind that, and the communal area that was in use. The lack of sleep put us in the mood to ask for a portion of refund for our accommodation which was equivalent to about $150/night Aussie dollars, they agreed on giving us back 10 euros, so we checked out, and found a much quieter place around the corner run by a lovely lady with no English but a really cute dog. We´ve put up with unclean, tiny rooms before but being sleepless on an expensive holiday is not on. Last night had absolutely beautiful Italian meal, served by a lad from Naples, even finished with a couple of Limoncello drinks from Positano, nice to have different food for a change. Something I haven´t mentioned before is there is not much multi culturalism in Spain, it wasn´t until we were in Malaga that we saw the first Asian person and a handful of Muslims with the head dress. There are no Thai, Chinese, Indian restaurants around, and it wasn´t until Barcelona that we saw a Kebab shop. Its strange, and weird considering we saw it all in Australia.

Anyway, set off to see some Gaudi buildings at the La Sagrada Familia, Cathedral, La Pedrera, and the Casa Batllo. We were totally Gaudied out, and I personally dislike it, but its different I guess. Finished the afternoon off at the Picasso Musuem. This was so much better than the one in Malaga, a huge amount of work from every stage of his life, and we started to appreciate his art alot more after this.

We are started to feel a little exhausted from the travelling and the buildings are all so beautiful but start to look the same after a while, we are looking forward to getting back out of the city soon.

Day Three: Set off to see some parks today and miscalculated our metro stop slightly and had to attack the park from the back which turned out to be a cliff face, climbed up part of it and ended up in some peoples back yard, to had to go all the way around. The park we visited was called Parc Guell, which was purchased by a Mr Guell who commissioned Gaudi to decorate it. It was lots of strange structures covered in mosaics, was quite different.

Set off to see the church with the large rose window in the world but were closed for siesta. Sometimes the 4 hour siesta can get a little annoying!! Anyway decided to head up the mountain which is called Montjuic, it housed the Olympics and Expo, and you could really spent a day wandering around it. We had planned to take the train straight up the hill to where you could get a cable car to the top to the castle, but misjudged the stop again (not having the best day) and had to walk to the stop (about 1 hour uphill), then realised that the cable car is being pulled down to put a brand new one in..(more cranes), and walked to the top to the castle where we enjoyed an icy cold beer and the view. Richard and Kevin from Madrid I´m sure will appreciate the climb we put it, its quite a way. Barcelona is huge especially viewing from a mountain, it is set in perfect squares .. my photo doesn´t show it, but have bought post cards showing all the squares.

Day Four: Spent last night at our favourite tapas bar, Navarra, said goodbye to our lovely lady and dog at the pensiona, and set off with our 25kg each suitcases to tackle the Metro without lifts. It was the most physically difficult experience I have ever had and Kev had to agree it was the most stressfull. The Metro is way underground, and there is no way you could live here in a wheelchair. We only needed to go one stop, but 3 hugh flights of stairs down across a platform, back up 2 flights across another platform, down 2 more flights, I´m not kidding there were more. Got the train 1 stop, up 2 flights of steps across a platform, up another flight, across and down and out to go back down to the Renfe station and buy a ticket to Figueures..a backpack would have been easier!

Decided to have a rest day today, but before that we needed to squeeze in the Picasso Museum and the Alcazabar.

Malaga is the birth place of Pablo Picasso, and his daughter in law and grandson have donated 150 paintings to Malaga, where the local government has built a magnificent museum to house them.

I liked some of his earlier work, early meaning when he was a teenager, he actually did some really beautiful detailed portraits back then, and was interesting to see the progression into what he was doing in his final years. I also didn´t realise he did sculptures as well. Also some of his work was influenced by different women, ie. his first wife, then his next lover Marie, and another lover Dora. The bookshop is jam packed with just Picasso books, and lots of those books are just his work from those ´lover eras´. Anyhow, his later stuff looked as if he´d just got a big head and thought well i can just put any stroke down on paper and it will be fabulous, that, or he was getting lazy.

The building itself was built on top of an old Phoenician house. When I say old, I mean early 6th century. You take the stairs underneath the museum and they have preserved it all.

After that visited the Alcazabar, an old Moorish palace and fortress on the hill behind Malaga, the gardens, architecture, and water features, were lovely, very similar to the Alcazar in Seville, but I think better.

Alcazabar

We spent the rest of the afternoon laying on the beach, our first real day of relaxing our style. But beach, is more of dark brown gritty sand, dirt colour, the Mediterrenian Sea is extremely cold and flat, but very blue. I think Kev got up to his knees. The beach isn´t too busy but hearing plenty of Pommy accents, and some lobster coloured Brits.

We went out to a bar close to us at Malagetta, to watch the Soccer on TV, Real Madrid was playing the other Madrid team, and the score was 1-1. Interesting, considering Real Madrid has some of the best soccer players in the world. We finally got some free tapas, the first time since being in Andalucia. It seemed that the free tapas went out the window after leaving Madrid. But this time, it was laid on!! Armed with my trusty phrase book with a special culinary section, we figured out what we were eating. Old mate serving us was having a great time trying to figure out what I was asking him, but we figured out that one of the dishes was a seafood in a large snail like shell..we figured it out after he brought the actual shell out!!! He told me to keep it, so that´s a lovely souvenir of that night. Later, we took a bottle of wine to the roof top and watched the big ships pass into the harbour.

Hotel California - our pensiona is in the green building

Anyway onto Ronda, a fabulous white washed village on top of a gorge. We travelled for 2 hours from Malaga on the coast, on the local bus passing rows and rows of olive trees, cork trees and strangely lemon trees, white washed villages just sort of in the middle of nowhere. Its a very dry landscape and also very rocky, lots of hills and people harvesting the olives. We have enjoyed the constant changing of landscapes here in Spain. Finally arrived in Ronda to view an amazing landscape. Decided not to tour the bullring which is the oldest in Spain, as our tour in Madrid gave us plenty of info, also decided not to go to a bull fight. Firstly, its very expensive for the good seats which aren´t in the sun it can cost around 100 euros, but we have seen it on TV and we can appreciate the history and tradition of it, but its just so cruel. However, if the judge decides that the bull is doing very well, he will decide to let it win and therefore it gets put to stud and never has to go into the ring again. So sometimes there´s a happy ending. Anyway, back to Ronda..

After viewing walking over the massive bridge and taking in all the views from every angle, we saw a restaurant on the gorge. So Kev ordered the local specialty, Oxtail Stew, which wasn´t too bad, but we just enjoyed the view from the restaurant.

Ronda - photo 1

Ronda - photo 2

Ronda - photo 3

Got back and went out for a tapas tour, the bars here in Malaga, being on the beach, have displays of all different small cuts of seafood for frying up tapas style. Met 2 guys from Holland and Switzerland at a tapas bar, they were just here for some sun and a 2 week Spanish course. We were mentioning how lucky they were living in Europe, where they could ski, visit any country in no time at all and come to Spain for a tan, and asked if they´d ever visit Australia. The Swiss guy answered, ´why would I travel for 1 day to visit Australia, its only 220 years old´. We excused ourselves and left after that. We mightn´t have over 1000 year old buildings, fantastic art and culture, but we´ve got beauty and wide open spaces, and culture all of our own. They don´t know what they´re missing!

The bus trip to Malaga was a bit hairy, the driver did well to swerve on the highway to avoid a stopped vehicle..but we got here unscathed. Booked into a nice 3 star hotel and ventured out to the sound of continuous car horns, traffic, heat and tourists. Thank god for siesta I say, you can really tell the difference, the roads become quite, and people disappear, we love it.

Malaga is a port city with a beach about 2km away, so we decided to head in that direction. Although the beach is brown, it was nice to sit and look out at the ocean for a change. This section is called Malagetta, and is more residential, with some pretty huge ritzy joints on the hill behind. We went looking for a pensiona, and found a nice one called Hotel California and booked it for 2 nights. Its beautiful, and fully renovated, away from the tourists and plan to spend a couple of days chilling out here. We wanted to ask the owner if 'we could check out but never leave`, but weren´t sure if he´d get it.

Did a bit of organising today, booked flights to Barcelona on the internet, managed to get a 10 euro ticket plus taxes of course, but totally both came to 77 euros, not bad considering other tickets were over 100 euros each. Booked accommodation on the phone in Barcelona, and another cheap pensiona for Malaga for 1 night, so we´re getting a bit better these days. Not like before, rock up and figure it out.

Anyway, today we´ve bought bus tickets to go to Ronda, a white washed village in the hills. Have been looking forward to visiting Ronda since we started researching the trip.

It seems the whole of Spain is under construction. Kev & Richard mentioned there was an election coming up, maybe that´s why, but to quote Ange from Gosford, it seems sometimes that Spain is a bit ABC..Another Bloody Cathedral...Another Bloody Crane!!

Seville was nice, but had to walk around construction workers, who are no different anywhere, and avoid all the tour groups. It reminded me of Cordoba but a city around the pretty cobblestone streets and colourful terrace houses. We visited the Alcazar, a moorish mosque of gardens and beautiful islamic architecure, it was huge and just kept going and going. The cathedral was gorgeous, but the line up was too long in the heat, so we were happy just to admire it from the outside.

We bought tickets to a Flamenco show, which was really enjoyable. It was backed by 2 guitarist, and 2 men singing (and clapping). Then there were probably about 15 flamenco dancers, and changed several times into different dresses. They were all very beautiful, but disappointed they didn´t dance the Pasa Doble.

Flamenco in Seville

We ate tapas all day today, looking forward to having some vegetables for a change.

We did Seville in a day and were eager to check out of the hovel and jumped on a bus to Malaga.

Arrived into Seville after a long 2.5 hour bus trip at about 8pm. Today we learnt a valuable lesson, to book when visiting a large city...especially if the festival of Flamenco is on! The lonely planet recommended pensionas were booked up and on the 5th place finally had a room vacant. Unfortunately this place is a no star pensiona and for 40 euros per night I think we are ripped off. There is a smell in the room that I don´t want to investigate the source of, the sheets don´t look clean so we are sleeping on our sleeping bags, and Kevin can´t fit between the walls of the toilet!! Stupidly we paid upfront, (well its hard when our Spanish is bad), and they are asking for it, and we paid for 2 nights...so we plan to redeem this experience with a better hotel, pre booked in Malaga in a couple of days. Anyway, met up with our new friends Ange, and Cheryl for paella, and today plan to organise to see a Flamenco show, and visit the Alcazar and the Cathedral

Caught a cab into town after arriving from the brilliant AVE train. We tipped our driver as the roads in Cordoba are so narrow they only fit 1 car, and the pedestrians have to breath in as a car goes passed, so he did very well.

We found a hotel from the Lonely Planet, and was quite expensive compared to what we wanted to pay, but the streets are all cobblestone, and it was 7.30pm, and the thought of dragging the suitcases up and down looking for a cheaper place was not going to happen.

Went out exploring, which is great when the sun goes down late in the day, and enjoyed this little town. Cordoba was founded in about 150 BC, and is famous for its Mezquita, which is an Islamic mosque with a catholic cathedral built right in the centre. Figure that out!! Anyway, its also known for its internal courtyards or patios. So, the cafes are actually inside houses, in these open air squares, walls all white washed and covered in wall hanging pot plants, and plates, and usually with in fountain in the centre. So every chance i got when I saw an open door, I rushed over and took photos, they are all very pretty!

That night while having some tapas we met up with 2 Aussies, Ange and Cheryl from NSW, we shared tapas and exchanged number so we could meet up in Seville, so they could show us how to eat backpacker style in the park with chorizo,cheese,and sangria!

The following day we head off early to the Mezquita. Lucky for us today was the official tourism day in Cordoba and therefore free entry! It was just the most amazing building that both of us had ever experienced seeing. Over 800 arch ways painted in maroon and white, and this massive catholic cathedral in the centre. As we were leaving the bus loads of tourists starting to come down the street, lucky to get there when we did.

After that we had read that you must have a traditional Arabian bath, so we ventured down there lucky to get a spot. This was also an amazing experience. The building of course was ancient and consisted of a series of baths, freezing cold, really hot and all centred around a large warm bath. They limited the numbers so there was only about 10 of us. So in swim suit and shower cap we dunked ourselves from freezing to warm to hot to warm to freezing. The centre warm bath was lit up by star shapes cut into the dome roof so the sun streamed through, the other rooms were lit by candle light, but the decoration inside was beautiful. Intricate carved designs in marble lined the walls, with water pouring into the baths through the walls from ceramic pots. Part of the package was an arometherapy massage which was exactly what we needed after the hike to Santiago. We left the Arabian baths floating.

Caught a cab to the bus station and set off to Seville.

Typical internal courtyard in Cordoba, all houses have them, had to sneak this photo through an open door

Mezquita, the ancient Moorish mosque, housing over 800 of these columns

Arrived into Madrid at midnight, caught the Metro into Kevin & Richards place..who were staying up to greet us with tired eyes.

The following morning after filling up 3 clothes lines of washing, Kevin took us to his local market to buy fresh meat and veges. Here the typical Coles/Woolies isn´t the way of life, its markets with specialty shops, chicken shop, ham shop, cheese shop etc.

Later, we set off to see the sights starting with the Palacio Real, (The Palace). A lot prettier than Buckingham, and the grounds surrounding it a more stunning, but unfortunately it was closed for official business, so couldn´t see inside. There was definately a visit of some sort as the Police and security around the city were out in force. We moved on to see the Plaza Mayor, then wandered along Madrids huge leavy boulevards passing statues, gardens, colourful terrace houses until we got to the Post Office. This building would have to be my favourite in Madrid, set on a round about that has a statue and water feature in the centre, its just awesome. The Ritz and The Palace, 5 star hotels are also near, so this part of the city is pretty impressive. We walked up to the Retiro Park, which, when you look on the map, is just enormous. There were artists in the park, painting, and people in row boats on the lake, but the trees here in the park are so old and well established, its like a forest, and filled with more statues!

We met up with Kevin & Richards for tapas, and went to several bars, trying all sorts of spanish delights, fried black sausage, crumbed marinated fish pieces, garlic prawns..till pretty late.

The following day we set off on the Metro and visited Madrids famous Bull Ring, and bought a tour for 5 euros. It was pretty interesting, especially the museum, and alot of times the picadors and matadors end up second best!! Met a lovely older couple from Canberra, and it was nice to share tourist tips with each other.

Back on the Metro to the Prado Museum. This massive gallery hosts art dating back to 1400, and is just room after room of Goya, Reubens, El Greco, a little Rembrandt, and some other spanish artists I can´t remember how to spell. We also saw an exhibition of work where they have found a way of xraying the piece of art and can see under the paint to the artists original charcoal sketch of the picture. It was really interesting as sometimes the artist had a different plan to the end result.

After that we purchased tickets on the AVE, the Spanish speed train, that goes up to 280km an hour, to travel to Cordoba.

We were most greatful of Kevin & Richards hospitality, they were so kind and helpful, and Kevin even came out to the Renfe station with us to help. Two wonderful people we were lucky to meet.

Telecommunications Buildings (Post Office)

Apartment Building near the Palace

A lake in one of the many parks

We decided to sleep in as only a short day today, 21km, and leave in the day light for a change. Today seemed to go so quickly, though we really felt the weight of our packs today. Walked through alot of rain, and caught up with Ralph half way. For the first time the path seemed very busy, and the cyclist were all covered in mud, (none of the bikes had mud guards).

It was such a good walk today,and such a relief to hit Santiago, although it took an extra hour to reach the centre. Santiago is a beautiful city, we love it. A bit touristy, but the cathedral is just the most magnificent thing we´ve ever seen. It was built between 1012-1200, it is just massive. In the plaza square in front of the cathedral most peregrinos gathered, alot were crying, I guess for a religious pilgrimage it would be quite emotional. I forgot to mention earlier that we came across lots of people walking in the other direction. People actually walk back!! We met a guy walking back and he said he was walking to Rome and then to Jeruselum, he said he thinks it might take him 2 years. That´s the 3 religious pilgrimages in one go!

Anyway, we found a lovely pensiona, 66 euros including breakfast, a bit steep, but close to the cathedral. We lined up for a compostella, a very pretty certificate with our names written in latin, and have been recorded on the database as 2 extra Aussies having arrived in Santiago on the camino. We go to midday mass for the pilgrams tomorrow where our names are read out and they do this incense ceremony on a huge pulley systems done by a team in the Santiago cathedral.

We made it!

Booked a flight to Madrid Sunday night and are staying at Kevin and Richards place, to finally use a washing machine as opposed to the corrogated boards in a tub. Currently in the grooviest cafe with flat screen monitors set into the wall for internet, drinking vino and free nibbles (olives, potato quiche, tuna sandwich, chorizo and bread)..don´t need to order dinner with this great custom..and they´ve got Pearl Jam playing, fantastico!!

In the meantime, plan to do a lot of sitting down and buying souvenirs tomorrow. Adios chicos.

Set off at 6.45am in the dark again, nearly missed an arrow marker in the bush so could have been an interesting morning. Raining again, and feeling not so perky.

William and Kev..marker made by pilgrims from rocks

Stopped in Arzua for breakfast of churros, coffee and croissants. Have never eaten so much bread in all our lives. Bought some chorizo sausage from an old man in the market on the way out of town.

Today, the guide book says ´relatively flat day´. We think that this crazy dude must have had a serious hangover today, as we haven´t climbed so many hills on the camino as we did today. Today was the most mentally and physically tough day that we´ve had, we had alot of problems staying positive, and we both agreed yesterday was much more enjoyable even though we´d done 44km. The 35km we walked today was very hard, and when we did finally arrive in Arca we hadn´t read the guide book correctly and missed that you had to turn into town, instead we were walking onto to Santiago!! Then Kev fell and hurt his sore knee, and then the storm hit us!! Everything felt like it was going wrong, we couldn´t find a pensiona, and refuses to stay another night in the alburgue, Kev was talking about getting a taxi to Santiago as we were only 21km away..so I was praying..please please find us a hotel... and there it was. Finally, a pensiona, it was the 2nd last room left in town, the lady was nice, and we bumped into 2 Germans that we met in Tricastella who took the last room!

We agreed to have dinner together downstairs, and after a shower and feeling 100% better, we enjoyed dinner together. Daniel was from a town I can´t recall the name of, and Ralph from Hamburg. I remember Daniel well, as I´d nicknamed him the Machine, he looked a bit like Arnold Schwarznegger (spelling not right), ie. The Terminator. No blisters, no pain, built like a robot, spoke like a robot, walks 8km an hour, walked from France, not human. We reckon he was a test tube baby, produced by Hitlers army. Anyway, Ralph was lovely too, and after too many cervazas and wine, I was singing them my German song ´Draculas, Rock around the Clock´that I learnt in grade 5 german class. I woke up feeling very embarrassed about that.

Last night we bumped into the couple from Rio who informed us that a cyclone was about to hit the coast near Santiago at 8am in the morning and to expect alot of heavy wind and rain.

We got what we paid for in the alburgue, ie. free...it was very very ordinary. We got to bed at 9pm and after all the talking, playing games on mobiles phones and the last of the peregrinos coming in from dinner we probably got to sleep at midnight. I conjured up my courage and spanish and told old mate beside me ´Domir hora, ruido telefono´(sleep time, noisy phone) !!

So at about 5am in the morning we woke to people starting to pack up and decided now was a good time to get out of this smelly crappy alburgue. We agreed that its pensionas from here on!

We left the alburgue at about 5.45pm with headlight and torch, walked straight into dense forest and uphill for about 2 hours. The wind was insane, and actually a bit scary through the pine forests as some sticks and small branches were coming down. We stopped outside a lone cafe/bar at Gonzar that was closed and waited there for shelter. Finally it opened at 8am and washed our faces as they were covered in dirt. Had nice coffee made by an old unfriendly man and ordered takeaway chorizo and cheese bocadillas. The rain started around 8.30am, and stayed raining and windy for hours. We ate while we walked, and finally stopped at Palas de Rai at 11.45am after 27km. It was early and the town was pretty ordinary and didn´t want to hang out here for the rest of the day, so we stopped at a barcafe for coffee, ate our other bocadilla, massaged our feet, replaced bandaids etc, and powered onto Melide. It was beautiful countryside, walking through back lanes of farms. Apple and pear trees just grow wildly on the road side and so do the chestnut trees, in some spots we just crunch over fallen apples that fill the roads. Finally the rain eased up a fair bit, and the path was flat and nice to walk on.

Stopped again in a tiny village, to have a little drink in a cafebar run by a very young couple who spoke a bit of English, a pleasant suprise. There, we run into Hombre and dog, who we met in Tricastella. Hombre is about 16 years old and is from Paris. He walked from Paris and found the dog in a Spanish town called Burgos. It was so funny watching him curse at the dog in French, when the dog was Spanish. He purchased an Ostrich Egg at the bar, for some reason there were some for sale. So, Hombre, and dog, set off also to Melide, carrying an Ostrich Egg.

Hombre and dog

Arrived into Melide at about 4.30pm after walking a mamoth 44km through the edge of a hurricane. Suprisingly, apart from feet that felt like stepping on razor blades, we seemed ok.

Found a pensiona, for 40 euros, brand spanking new appliances, very nice. Enjoyed a glass of wine at their trendy bar with a plate of tapas. Slept like babies.