Yes, there was a day of sunshine …..

..amongst all the rain and I got to take a cool splash in the lake of Ardales reservoir:

The rain caught up with us again and we rode into Granada accompanied by dark clouds.

But: the one day we got the tickets for Alhambra as suggested by our friendly camping host to call in the middle of the night to acquire them was brilliant and worked out peachy! You know, tickets for this place are sold out month in advance. Sunshine, sunshine, sunshine…

Pictures speak better than words:

https://youtu.be/m7sw7AC4SF0

The extra day we spent was well worth it even though we visited the site on a Sunday in a cloud of tourists. I don’t like the weekends here in Spain. It’s always party time. (Very much like Argentina- except there it’s much worse…they go ALL NIGHT…even the old folks celebrate all night -always have a good reason) The campgrounds are already crowded, even though the official summer season hasn’t even started. Starting Monday all changes again to ghostly emptiness. The daily rhythm in Spain is also something to get used to. Breakfast is not big….coffee and maybe some bread. Stores are open for a while until about one or two pm. One can find some lunch (Tapas…small little dishes…like a taste of a main dish) and then it’s siesta time and everything is closed until about 5pm…maybe 6pm….kitchens don’t open until 9pm!! No kidding! Some places have served us food early - like at 7 or 8pm, because we were miserably hungry and they felt sorry for us. But then one can eat almost all night or at least until midnight. I remember this as a typical Mediterranean way of existence. It’s usually too hot to eat in the middle of the day.

Hotels (and campgrounds) let you stay until 12 noon…or even 2pm for checkout.

Even the cheapest campgrounds and Hotels/Hostals have hot showers…never fails!

Anywhere one orders an orange juice….it’s ALWAY fresh squeezed 

James and I had to work out a few things amongst each other (24/7…things will come up…duh….) and I haven’t felt much like writing…but here I am! 

….the mountains are incredible!

Even with snow:

https://goo.gl/maps/5SBNvuKmqPi91yyc7

The water/river/lake looking blue on the map is NOT water, but all dried out river beds.

A few days ago we took a wrong turn (not really, but those damn apps are hard to understand…some of them….like: are we gonna ride dirt……..single track? In one case we were so stuck we couldn’t go on and had to turn around….go all the way back and get a hotel room…life was too hard to figure out that day anyhow)When things get tough it is hard to enjoy mother nature’s art work. Eyes are fixed on the ground in front of me in desperate attempt not to fall/crash on a 60kg bicycle. But then we stop and look around….

In Benalua we thought we had a “WarmShower” host but communications went astray and we were without a shelter. Sitting in a cafe to piggy bag on some wifi and looking very lost, a couple offered us a small space (without water and electricity) to set up camp for the night. As it so often happens, we agreed, but wound up in a Typ of workshop with a fire place with enough food in our bags and as independent as we are…..it was nearly romantic:

Our evening:Our morning:

Our hosts went out of their way to make us as comfortable as they could…bringing us plenty of fire wood. Their friendliness warmed us to the core!

Food intake on our tours has shaped itself into quite a routine and as a consequence our digestion is as regular. Nature calls at a certain hour in the morning. This morning there was no place for us to relieve ourselves (the broken toilette wasn’t working anyways besides there was no water). Our desperate search for plastic bags was fruitless and as we ran around, our host showed up with his young adult son full of curiosity and questions watching our every move, following us around and chatting away. Somehow neither one of us felt comfortable to share our anxious condition in Spanish so we hurried with grinding teeth…sprinted out of the gate and found the cafe from the day before OPEN (google said it was closed….) Lucky us again…and so our day began.