We had another sunny day on the way from Burgos to Santo Domingo, only our second in Spain. It was easy navigating out of Burgos, thankfully, but I angered several drivers while trying to get across a very confusing seven-way intersection with half a traffic circle in the middle.
We almost stayed another day thanks to Spain's post office which seems to have modeled itself after
the 1975 United States Postal Service. We thought we'd just stop in and mail a package then go on. But no. There's five copies of a form to be filled out. Four of the forms are identical but there's no carbon paper anywhere in sight so we had to fill our each separately with the TO: address, the FROM: address and the list of contents. Also there's not a single envelope of any size for sale inside. By luck I found a stationery store a block away.We spent the day on more fabulous, empty roads, practically bike paths, and all of them under a crystal clear deep blue sky. We even had a slight tail wind. It was cool, in the 50's, and the sun felt great.
The land rolled. We were about 1,000 meters above sea level but basically in a valley. We had great vistas across the plowed plains. In the distance to the northeast we could see snow covered mountains. I've never seen such spectacular jet trails criss-crossing the sky.
Before we knew it we had gone 30 kilometers. For lunch we arrived at a restaurant at just about the right time for once. Lunch doesn't really begin in earnest in Spain until about 1:30. I ordered ham and eggs
and got fried eggs with super thinly sliced cold ham - the kind I'm used to seeing only on sandwiches. We had beers with lunch, giving the day a real party feel.The terrain got hillier after lunch. We rolled down into and up out of valley after valley. We can never find a road that follows the drainage. It would be far easier, I believe, to ride across Spain east-west rather than north-south. By the time we get to Gibralter I think we will have crossed every stream, creek, brook, and river in the whole country.
At least we got lots of great views. The trees were just like the short shrub-like trees we saw on the way out of Bilbao. Not many were tall enough to block our view. The land underneath was still dry and rock here.
We stayed at a family-run hotel in Santo Domingo. It's a real tourist town because of the Gregorian chanting monks living in the old monastery. They monks have a few CD's out that sell especially well, apparently, in Britain.
You know a hotel is going to have character when at five p.m. they still haven't cleaned the rooms. This one was run by an large but short woman who wore a big colorful smock. She looked sort of familiar, like I have seen her in a cartoon or something. We were the only guests.
We walked up the hill behind the town and watched a truly great warm yellow sunset for the first time in a long time.
The next morning we went to mass at the monastery, three quarters of which was Gregorian chanting. They have at least one mass a day. We both thought it was an odd, sort of spooky event. Only nine people sat in the pews. The monks processed in down the center exactly at nine a.m. They wore three different type of robes - white, beige and dark brown - and a special ornate light blue robe for the priest that led the mass. They bowed to the altar in threes then took there places in the choir seats on either side.
The chanting sounded great in that large rock church, which had wonderful resonance. The walls were far simpler than most of the churches and cathedrals in Spain. It was more like a French church with just a few statues on each wall. (Instead of the super ornate, gold, baroque retables with paintings, statues and coffins, like we see in the rest of Spain).The building looked like it had been thoroughly restored. I wonder if the successful CD had anything to do with that.
After the ceremony we walked around the cloister which had a lot of impressive 800-year old carved pillars. One pillar would depict the nativity scene and the next would have hobgoblins or centaurs. I can't figure this out, but I think it says volumes about the Middle Ages. (Tourists: this was the prettiest cloister we saw in Spain, better-carved than anything in Salamanca, for instance).
One room off the cloister had a great collection of 16th and 17th century medical books. There were books by Aristotle in there. Some of the dusty books had huge, ancient bindings just like in the movies. I could just see some monk/doctor delicately taking the book from the shelf, reverently placing it on the table, and studying it to find some cure for the plague. The books were so impressive, you would almost think they knew something about medecine in 1705.There was a distillery in the next room. It had been used for more than just for medicinal purposes.
Just outside of Santo Domingo we hiked through a really impressive gorge (called Yecla). Maybe impressive crack is more accurate. A
small creek had sliced a 6 foot wide, 200 foot deep cut into the rock. At places the rocks were only about 3 feet apart.We rode only about 45km that day, to Aranda. The views, roads and weather were as pretty as the day before.
A small van full of men passed us as we entered a small town at about 2pm. Both the truck and us stopped at the bar. At least six men poured out of that little van. A few more came later in another van. They wore dirty overalls and tall work boots so I guess they were a consruction crew. The all handed little tin messkits, containing their lunches, to a woman across the bar, hardly saying a word. The barman himself was busy putting big sheets of white paper across the tables. Then the barman heated their food and gave it back to them.
The workers all ordered drinks from the bar, mostly liquor. Not a single one got beer.
We hard a hard time finding an inexpensive place to stay in Aranda. One inexpensive place refused to take the bikes and were rather rude about it. Eventually we found a somewhat run-down old place in a somewhat run down old neighborhood. It was cheaper than the any other place in town but felt like we got even less for our money.
At first a young woman said the bikes were no problem, then later a very concerned old lady rapped on our door. She spoke very fast and looked gravely at me. I couldn't understand anything except, "...no bicicletas ... no ... no ... no bicicletas...no, no, n
o." Theybikes were parked in a wide starwell, well out of anyone's way. I gathered she wanted us to move them. I ended up moving them twice before we got things straightened out.When we went out looking for dinner we had a bad attitude about the town but it redeemed itself. We went straight to an attractive wine bar we had passed during our exhaustive hotel search. After a couple of glasses of Prado del Ray (our favorite local wine), we felt a lot better.
There was an ancient church on top of which two pairs of storks were building giant nests with rather large twigs. The pterodactyl-like birds flews back and forth with their mouths full of sticks and occasionally dropped one on a pedestrian. Nest debris littered the sidewalk in front of the church as if they had just sold the last Christmas tree there.
We walked around town for awhile looking for just the right place to eat, a lot like Goldilocks. Eventually we found a place that was not too crowded, not too empty, not too loud, not too quiet, but just right. (JOAN: I think Eric is making fun of me here, but I can take it. I'll get him in another chapter). We had some more of our favorite wine, along with our favorite tapas: "Morsilla." Unfortunately this translates to blood pudding but it's really great anyway.
We sat with an older couple who lived in Aranda. At first we were a little afraid to talk with them. We feared our lack of Spanish would be tiresome for them. But we ended up having a great conversation, if a little simple. The man, with thick glasses and a wandering eye, had been a doctor. They had lived in Germany in the 70s and early 80s and still had a son there.All the newspapers were talking about a local couple who had been kidnapped in South America (Columbia?) while trying to adopt a kid. The kidnapped couple had just been released the day before, for "health reasons" according to the kidnappers, as quoted in the papers.
The woman was unemployed and the man earned $12,000 a year as a waiter. The kidnappers asked for $2 million. I think the kidnappers discovered how absurd this was so they let them go. Our friends at the table knew the waiter and his wife. They lived only 100 meters away from them.
Next: Muy Frio! Mucho Viento! on the road to Pedraza
