Barely slept last night. Was reading one of Luke's books, and the first 150 pages captivated me so fully that I was filled with nervous energy that hadn't been burnt off by excessive amounts of cycling and running. The next 50 pages were quite dreary in comparison, but still in a highly stimulated state, I rushed around the building with my laptop, trying to get internet access so that I could download an e-book and learn.. Something, anything, in that state I could've mastered any topic within two hours. Sadly internet wasn't to be had, and feeling the dismay of a gen-y kid cut off from the information superhighway, I instead wrote a five year plan for my life culminating in a one year bike tour round Europe (with the cold parts in seasons other than winter) after I graduate.
By then it was five, and I kind of wanted to sleep, and kind of wanted to stay up and surf the wave of inspiration a little longer, but I could think of nothing left to do that would satisfy my intellectual cravings, so I chose the former option. It was tough with the double whammy of Luke's snoring and the off key carousing of the people downstairs still going strong, but I got a few hours in.
Crawled out of bed at 9, went for a run and deliberately ended it at the Churreria with five euros in my pocket. I bought 200g of the standard variety and was meaning to save half for Luke, but by the time I got back to the hostel there were only a few left. Rather than provoke insult by giving him them (that's how I rationalised it:P), I ate them too. Mmm churros for breakfast. My arteries are turning to marble.
We didn't leave the place til 11ish, and were further delayed (in a good way) by a fascinating backpacker from Canada, who told us these riveting stories about his last few days in Morocco and Senegal. It sounded absolutely awesome and I'm now adding Morocco to my 2012 tour.
Having bought a compass at Decathlon the previous day, we had no problems getting out of the city, even though it was the biggest we've been in so far. Pleasant enough weather for riding – 10 degrees, slightly overcast and a little windy. We didn't manage to do much distance. Luke sustained a puncture, and because he foolishly hadn't patched the hole on the only other tube he had, we were delayed for an hour (which is a very excessive amount of time for a puncture!). I patched the tube while he took it off, but it was a big hole and I don't think I left enough time for the glue to dry (ideally you leave it overnight) before giving it to Luke to inflate. I was quite annoyed at the whole situation, particularly as I'd reminded him to do it several times.
By that stage, it was 5:30, the next town was too far away to ride to, and the puncture wasn't even repaired properly, so Luke couldn't even ride for more than five minutes before he had to pump the tyre up again. We tried riding on anyway, but it was a futile attempt and we turned back after a few kms, the sky already darkening rapidly.
Going back a slightly different way to where we came from, we found a completely different town to the one we'd seen as we went through. The part we'd grazed against had seemed like your typical smallish Spanish city with a few shops, not many open on a Sunday. Coming back along the coast, we were confronted with legions of hotels and restaurants (all of which were way out of our price range) and confusingly for us, a whole heap more cars than had been on the road before. We just couldn't work it out. There was actually a traffic jam at 8pm at night, but we had no idea what they were all queuing up for. Where could they all be in such a hurry to go to on a Sunday night? Seeing a vast number of people coming in and out of the shopping centres, I surmised that perhaps something like our Boxing day sales was occuring, but that seemed a little too odd to explain the nighttime rush.
We discovered the true reason later after finding that the only Pension in the city was booked out. From today til the 1st on January, the Spaniards celebrate Fiesta. I'm not sure exactly what it is (more details will come in following blogs I'm sure), but it meant we had to pay 69 euros for a room (a very large, comfortable and well equipped room, but still!) tonight! That's the first major budget blowout we've had, but hopefully we'll be able to recoup it over the next few days by camping. The weather is perfect for it on the coast. It was still 11 degrees when I went for my evening run at 9pm and I doubt it'll be much cooler by the morning. There are lots of camp sites on the map, so we wouldn't have to stealth camp either:)
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