Avila

Mar.14-16 By Eric

is "Obras" meaning "works." We saw lots of signs in Spain, and particularly Avila, using this word to mean "under construction" or repair. It also can be used to mean a work of art.

After a long day climbing and descending mountains, we entered Avila across a 20 km long, flat valley. Avila sits on a lump in the middle of the valley. From a long distance we could see the silhouette of the top of the cathedral and several towering cranes -- and I'm not talking about birds, though we were to see lots of those too. Cranes dominated the sky lines of just about any town in Spain with a population of 5,000 or more. "Obras" signs abound.

Later we learned two reasons for all the obras, both having to do with the EU. First, the EU sends a lot of money to Spain and much of it is being spent to improve infrastructure and restore monuments. Second, with the coming of the euro, people with lots of "black money" (money not accounted for in any tax documents and therefore non-existent as far as the government knows) in Spanish currency are having to spend it before the Peseta becomes obsolete. Those with lots of pesetas to spend sometimes invest it in some kind of construction project.

Avila was the first town we had been to that was completely surrounded by medieval city walls. The walls were surprisingly high -- about 10 or 12 meters. In places the walls serve as the back of the cathedral or the side of buildings. When the walls were actually used for defense, it was possible to walk entirely around the city on top of the walls, which are a few meters thick. Due to obras, they only let us walk on a little bit of it.

I was impressed. But what I really wanted to see was a re-enactment with boiling oil being poured onto would-be attackers and catapults launching boulders at the walls.

Instead we saw lots and lots of storks. They had built huge nests on top of even the pointiest church steeples. From the walls we could get a pretty good view of them. I still don't understand why the nests don't blow off in the wind.

We spent a lot of our time in Avila out in the rain trying to get money. Because of a miscalculation and our bank's incredible slowness, we didn't have any money available in our checking account at the moment. So our ATM card wouldn't work. This was the first time that had ever happened to us on the trip. We went to a half dozen bank machines before deciding we had to get a cash advance on a credit card. Then, since we didn't know our PIN number for the credit card (we never use it that way), we couldn't do that either. We went into five different banks before we found one that could to a cash advance by hand. The all kept telling us to use the bank machine.

The little money scare inspired us to start conserving money. We went to the market and bought orange juice, bread, cheese, and other sandwich stuff so we could have lunch and dinner on our hotel room.

The markets are great places, if you can get used to the strong smell of fish. The closest thing in America to the markets in Spain and France (and probably elsewhere in Europe) is the farmer's market or, in Pittsburgh, Wholley's Fish Market. They have various "stalls" that sell particular things like fish, vegetables, fruits, or sausage. Unlike America farmer's markets, these markets occur everyday (except weekends) in buildings made especially for the purpose. The European markets are really very much like the markets in Asia except more organized and in fancier facilities. On either continent they are fun to visit because the they are full of locals.

In Avila I used our new stove for the first time. We had had it sent to Poste Restante (general delivery) in Madrid along with our tent and other camping stuff. I cooked Tibetan tuna casserole (the tuna casserole I devised for our camp stove while we were in Tibet) and we drank the wine our innkeeper friend Gerard had given us in Bayonne, France. We had wanted to send the bottle home as the beginning of our wine cellar, and in fact, Gerard had suggested we do that. But we were afraid the wine had frozen as we crossed the Guadarrama Mountains, and if it had frozen, we didn't want to pay to send it home. It turned out it had not frozen, but after enduring many huge temperature swings, it probably would have gone bad soon. Good thing we drank it when we did. It tasted great. Merci bien, Gerard!!

We were excited to start camping again. We rode out of Avila on a sunny warm morning. The sky was crystal clear blue. Half the day the land was totally rocky and used only for pastures. The other half, it was completely free of rocks and the land was tilled. There was no place that was half-way rocky.

One thing we don't bother sending from America was a tarp for under our tent. We figured we could get another one at a hardware store. But as we rode along, we saw a free solution: feed bags! which had blown up on the side of the road. Over the course of the day, we gathered two nice, clean empty bags that served quite well. We also rescued a fertilizer bag out of the mud, and when it dried (on the back of Joan's bike) it didn't smell bad at all. The three bags together were big enough to work as a tarp, and hardly weighed anything.

We set up camp for the night in Alba de Tormes and I cooked up some noodles. The campground, much like all the others in Spain, charged by the person and by the tent. They also charge by the vehicle but usually not for bikes. Only a few campers shared the space with us, and they looked like long-term guests. We just picked a little grassy area and tried to remember how to erect the tent. The showers were excellent, by the way, and very clean.

In the morning we decided to seek out the thing that got a mention for Alba in our guide book: the heart of St. Theresa.

next: St. Theresa and her body snatchers

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