Distance: 75.1 km
Ride time: 5:06:48
Average: 14.7 km/h
Max speed: 43.6 km/h
Total: 54168 km
Yesterday the cycling in Spain was off to a rather challenging beginning with the crazy winds of Tarifa. Today things were nice and quiet as we left our camp site heading towards Malaga along the Mediterranean Sea – our beautiful companion for the next month of cycling through Spain and France.
The only challenge as such was the traffic on the busy A7 highway. Once again today we tried to look for alternatives but without much luck. On the other hand, nothing wrong with the view from A7.
The price level as gone up quite a bit since Morocco and the rest of Africa. Luckily Spain is full of cheap supermarkets like Aldi and Lidl and those places are our new favourites for lunch. Our destination of today, Marbella, is a favourite hangout for rich Europeans. Thus we were enjoying our chorizo sandwich picnic at the Lidl parking spot with plenty of Mercedes and Audis passing by.
Most of this trip has been about discovering new territory, new countries, new languages, and new cultures. This last part of the ride through Europe will be different as I already know my own continent rather well. Not only have I been in this part of Spain before, I also have very good friends here. I had been looking forward to meet up with Juan, a Spanish engineer I met while we were both exchange students in Switzerland.
Since then I have visited Juan’s family in their charming Andalusian village several times, and he has also been to Denmark. It was therefore a great moment when I met up with Juan again for an ice cream in Marbella. I have been lucky to meet many incredible people and form new friendships during the cycling trip, but catching up with olds friends is something very nice as well.
We will be meeting up with Juan again tomorrow for a bit of cycling.
Due to the “fanciness” of Marbella the camp sites turned out to be very expensive. We ended up paying 34€ for a spot to pitch our tent but without electricity. In Africa such an amount would get you a very fancy hotel room. Oh well, we better get used to it – further north in Europe things will be even more expensive.
