Monte Gordo to Sevilla

by Joan

Coming back into Spain was great. We had spent so much time studying the language and didn't really get much chance to practice after Salamanca. So when we got on the ferry from Vila Real de Santo Antonio to Ayamonte, we were really psyched. (Bicyclists: this ferry runs frequently, takes bikes with no problem, and costs 240 escudos (about US $1.50) for one bike and one person).

Unfortunately, in our rush to catch the ferry, we skipped out of Portugal without breakfast, and forgot to spend our last Portuguese escudos. So we tried to get breakfast. The whole town is full of cafes. Many have nice seats and tables outside. The trick is, if you sit down at one, you should sit down because you want to sit down and enjoy the view, not because you want to eat. It often takes at least half an hour to get noticed at these outdoor cafes, another half an hour to get an order in, etc. etc. And that's a bad thing if you're hungry. After a few maddening failures, we finally did find a great little tapas bar. We had really missed them in Portugal.

Then we tried to exchange our escudos for pesetas. Another mistake. If you're travelling this route, wait til Sevilla to change your money. In Ayamonte I walked into a bookstore which wanted to charge me a commission of about US$4 to change $20 worth of escudos. I thought that was outrageous. Then I walked into a bank, which wanted to charge an US$8 commission for the same transaction. I left fuming.

Outside, Eric was chatting up a nice, middle-aged Dutch couple who had camped at the same campground we had the night before (just before the border) and were taking a day trip with their bicycles into Spain. The lady watched in horror as I came skipping out of the bank, waving my escudos in the air. I offered to give them to her for free. I was sincere. She declined. I threw them up in the air, and then started kicking them around when they landed. Eric calmly picked them up. The Dutch man asked me what was up, so I told him. He seemed amused, but I think his wife was scared. They hurried off.

Luckily, things got better after that, though it was a whole day before we really got to enjoy Andalucia. That first day we rode east along the coast, and made a detour to Isla Cristina. If you're going that way, don't bother with Isla Cristina. It was one long row of construction equipment, hovering over unoccupied luxury apartment buildings on the coast. Meanwhile, at one side of town, there was a squalid, awful building where many of the locals lived. For a long time, people told us that the coast of Spain was really disgustingly developed. I thought they were exaggerating, but when I saw I.C., I knew they weren't.

After that we decided to stay away from the coast and head to Huelva. The whole way was pretty flat, and there were plenty of tapas bars to stop at. The scenery wasn't great.

We rolled into Huelva about two hours before dark. It's a great looking town. It has a huge pedestrian mall, with neat sculptures. We got a picture of one sculpture of a man leaning through a window. Huelva is also well stocked. After weeks of trying stores all over Salamanca, Lisbon, Lagos, and Faro, the first place we walked into had Michelin Map 446, a detailed map of Andalucia.

We would have loved to stay in Huelva, and we later heard there are some affordable hotels. But it just wasn't our day. The only hotel we could find wanted around US$50 a night. So we cycled out of town, figuring we'd camp off a back road. It turns out there is excellent free camping about 10 or 12km east of Huelva (in a forest where no one lives) but we didn't know that, so we stopped right after town, in an open space way off the road that turned out to be a dry-goods dump. Every bush we could find to hide behind was surrounded by glass bottles (mostly unbroken), plastic bottles, or broken brick. It wasn't smelly, but it was disgusting anyway. We eventually found a place that wasn't too near the garbage and camped there.

The next day we headed east on back roads (A486, A 484, and A 474) all the way to Sevilla. We passed lots of strawberry fields and small towns. The best one was Almonte. It was pretty small, with a great fountain near a church. We only saw one or two tourists walking around (compared to the groups of 80 we were used to from Portugal). It would have been great to stay there that night, but we didn't see any hotels, and we still had a lot of daylight left. So we decided to make it all the way into Sevilla. It turned out to be a bit of a mistake.

next: Sevilla--Land of Flamenco.

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