Once we left Dos Hermanas we headed south, towards Arcos de la Frontera. We had heard the area around Arcos was an undulating landscape, full of little white houses. It's true. For the first two thirds of the day, the land was super flat. But then it got a little wavy, and then hilly. We stopped a lot to take pictures.We stopped a lot to eat lots of ensaladilla, the potato salad that ended up fueling our ride all across southern Spain. Just before the town of Las Cabezas, where our tiny back road crossed Autovia A-4 (a superhighway), we saw a gas station that was accessible only from the superhighway.
But we were thirsty, and there was a way to get to the station on tiny pedestrian lanes from where we were. We walked into the gas station's restaurant, and discovered the huge difference between riding on back roads versus main roads. The bar next to the gas station wanted over 250 pesetas (US$1.40) for a beer, more than double what we usually pay. So we hopped on our bikes, rode a kilometer downhill into Las Cabezas, and got some fine beers for just 100 pesetas each. It pays to stay away from the Autovias.
We rode from there on back roads to Espera, a hilly town, where we found a great bar that served fried calamaris and beer. Right after town, I got a flat tire--my first since Tibet (when I blew out the sidewall of my back tire on the way to Everest Base Camp). It was also the first flat tire either of us has had in Europe. So were out of practice fixing them, but we managed to do it on the first try.
Arcos was excellent. We got into town with a few solid hours of daylight left, so we had time to stop at a few tapas bars, park the bikes, and take a little walking tour to the town's vista. Arcos is perched on the edge of a huge cliff that overlooks a horseshoe valley. When
you look down into it you feel like you're in a plane, you're so high.Back in town, we had stopped at place for baklava. The guy who ran it was from Egypt, and said maybe he should start bicycling so he could lose his stomach, which was well endowed, but not totally round. But he said his wife doesn't want him to lose his stomach 'because she is afraid I will get smart.' It took me a few moments to realize that 'get smart' was a euphemism for 'sleep with others.' He went on. "But I said, no I will not get smart. I will be smart only for you and not for anyone else." He added: "Women are always thinking bad things."
I was thinking, he's a nice guy, but what a sexist! And it really gave me pause about riding in Morocco. Eric and I were still trying to figure out if we should ride in Morocco before going to Italy, or go straight to Italy. Every day, we'd ask each other about our Morocco index. His generally hovered around 50 percent (50% for), while mine swung wildly between 0 and 70. After meeting our baklava man, I was down to around 30.
That night we slept in a nice campsite, where once again, a group of Spanish folks rolled in at midnight and spent an hour loudly setting up camp. They were even worse than the guys in Dos Hermanas the night before. This group was a family, and the dad was throwing loud temper tantrums, slamming his car door, getting in and dri
ving for five feet, screeching to a halt, throwing around tent poles, you name it. Meanwhile he let his young kids run screaming up and down the road, right outside our tent. I explained to him in Spanish that this was the second night that someone had started camping next to us at midnight, and he said, in Spanish, if I understood him correctly "That's how it is." Which I guess is right.The next day, we headed east to Ronda. The scenery was great--lots of rolling hills, occasional sheep, and no big ugly buildings like the kind all over the coast. Just after El Bosque, we met an Austrian, who was riding an unloaded bike (his girlfriend was driving their van, with all their luggage). He had a huge moustache, like a caricature of an Austrian. Then, a few minutes later, as our Austrian friend rode ahead, we met some British women who were cycling from Ronda. We swapped info on hills and camp sites. As we rolled off, they warned us that we had a hell of a hill ahead of us.
We did. We met the Brits while we were going downhill, but soon after that, we started climbing a massive hill that topped out at 1103 meters. It wound up and up and up. It was sunny but a chill wind was blowing, so I had to stop often to put on and take off various layers.
Just past the top, we rode into Grazalema, an excellent town (it calls itself the balcony of the local mountains, but we had to ride way down to get to it) with a huge trade in tourist lunches. Busloads of tourists get dropped in town probably every day for lunch. If we had arrived in morning or in late afternoon, we would have had the town to ourselves. But as it was, we were shoulder to shoulder with about 300 tourists in a town smaller than Sausalito (in Marin County, California, just north of SF). Luckily, we found a great bar, and got one of our favorite dishes: pimientos fr
itos, or fried pepper. They are huge green peppers, fried in olive oil, and heavily, but not too heavily salted. They go great with beer.From Grazalema to Ronda, we had excellent views, a nice empty road, a few ups and down, a sweet, 10km descent on a big highway (a 376), and then a long, brutal climb up to Ronda. Ronda is a lot bigger than Grazalema, and has a bridge over some vertigo-inspiring gorges. But we rolled in just before dark, so we didn't have time to walk around. We decided instead to hot foot it to the campground just outside of town, and come back in to Ronda the following morning before heading on to Gibraltar.
The guy who ran the campground were a hoot. When I showed them my American passport, he gave me grief about the USA's appropriation of the word American. I appeased him by saying I was from America del Norte. Then he looked at my passport more closely, and saw that I was born in San Francisco. "From Californeee," he said, with a perfect Beverly Hillbillies accent. But he swore he'd never seen the show, though he recognized the theme song after I sang it.
The next morning, we rode back into Ronda, which was a disappointment. Aside from the amazing view of the gorges, we didn't have much to do there. We didn't really want to see the bull fighting museum, which probably would have been good if we were in the mood. Instead we just got breakfast and headed out. By the time we got back to our campsite, we had ridden about 7km. That made for a 7km warmup ride on what turned out to be a huge day into Gibraltar.
Next: Gibraltar
