Day 13 : hitting the wall

Day 13 : hitting the wall, originally uploaded by raoul_dewinne.

Still digesting last night's great food and already enjoying a rich and comprehensive breakfast with lots of 'churros con chocolate'. In other words another slow start again. But today we would learn our lesson the hard way for not starting earlier. Today will be the day that we confronted ourselves...



By the time we were well on our way the temperature had climbed to a baking 33 C. Not only the temperature was climbing, we were too. Nothing is flat here, numerous climbs, two very long ones, one of them the Alto Del Perdon on which I literally ran out of breath. Before reaching the top I had to stop and in a hurry find some shadow in this unbearable heat... This was a shocker. I had underestimated our total weight under those circumstances. Despite the fact that in average our daily distances in Spain are shorter than in France, we still don't make progress as I had anticipated - and some longer trips were still ahead of us... And each day the butt starts to hurt earlier and earlier...

While regaining my strengths, it was now my honey's turn to teach me some wise lessons. Despite your family name you're not in a race here that is to be won and neither would it be a shame if you had to walk to the top, anyway, once you have to do too much effort, or worse, as soon as you start to suffer, you're on the wrong track, she explained calmly. She added, even when we are going way too slow as we do now, you still should not push yourself out of breath but rather enjoy every turn of your pedal, every moment, even the wind that we usually don't like is actually refreshingly pleasant. My lungs still pumping heavily, I had to admit that there was a lot of sense in what she just said - no doubt that she wants me to reach Santiago alive, heaven can wait :-) Thank you honey, that's why we came here together :-))



Mid-way we arrived at the beautiful medieval village of Puente la Reina, time for some strong coffee. We just had parked our tandem when a large group of Germans passed by. They stopped to admire our bike - just like many many others had done so before - but this group was almost abnormally enthusiastic, they all came to ask questions - without exception. Both, we had to address them in small groups, just as if we were organizing some guided tours here. They made tens and tens of pictures and many videos - we felt like movie stars but without being asked for signatures. After so much talking we were thirsty again and had another round of coffee while continuing to explain our tandem secrets to some Irish guys and finally to the owner of the bar and all of his personnel - my Spanish seemed to improve by the minute since they sincerely nodded as if they understood me. But in the meanwhile we hadn't moved any meter further. We left Puente La Reina cycling over its famous medieval bridge on which we stopped for a chat again, this time with a Flemish hiker. Sure, pictures were taken.



By that time the asphalt was scorching hot and while climbing (again) (a total ascent of 780 m this day) it felt as if we were completely evaporating and dehydrating, although we did drink plenty of water and other refreshments. Every climb seemed to last an eternity and as if we didn't really move forward, our sweat was dripping onto our sunglasses and running down our back in a continuous stream - I'll spare you further details. On our way we met another exhausted biking couple.



Arriving rather late at our remote hotel we immediately wanted to book a table at their restaurant. But the restaurant was closed on Sundays, and today was... Sunday. Taxi!!! After a long wait we finally got one, nice guy, could speak English.

Since we had decided to get up real early tomorrow morning in order to escape the heat of the sun in the afternoon, and since it was already 10 PM, we decided to have only a quick bite and skip the appetizers. Last night we had enjoyed some delicately prepared mouthwatering pork dish. So we were craving for some more. With the help of my Spanish dictionary I could decipher some of the menu in order to find a pork dish, of which there was only one. Seeing the word 'cerdo' (pork) was enough to decide ordering right away. It took another eternity before our dish walked out of the kitchen (that's why restaurants sell appetizers, I guess). To our consternation it was not only a very tiny piece of meat, worse, it wasn't actually meat but... intestines! We immediately ordered desert, the bill and a taxi - all at once. Now what? They couldn't find any taxi willing to bring us back to our secluded hotel... Taking pity on us, the waitress stopped doing her job, and kindly insisted that she would drive us back. Day 13 (yes: 13) will be remembered as the day that we met ourselves, but also as the day that ended with a nice touch of human kindness.