Lozoya to Madrid

We had to climb a mountain pass that day, Puerto de Navafria. The climb basically started at Pedraza and continued for the next 20 kilometers. As we climbed, the temperature dropped and the snow got deeper.

Even so, the last 10 kilometers of the climb were great. We entered a tall pine forest that completely shielded us from the wind. Not a single vehicle passed us for the next two hours. This concerned us a little. Last time no cars passed us it was because the road was closed ahead. But according to highway signs, the pass was open. And the road was mostly clear of snow, just a bit slushy. We stopped a couple times to chow down on Chips Ahoys. The climb was a lot easier and more satisfying than our ride against the wind the day before.

The road wound around on the descent and, unfortunately, we had to take it pretty slow due to the slush. Occasionally we got a glimpse through the trees of a huge valley with a big lake in the middle. The lake turned out to be Madrid's main reservoir.

We stopped at the bottom of the hill in the little town of Lozoya. As we parked our bikes in front of a cafe, a middle-aged man with rounded features approached us. He was wearing construction work clothes and a ski hat with a Korean flag. He was from Madrid but spoke perfect English.

"I think I'm doing a pretty good thing, working up here on a cold day like this. Then I see you on bicycles! My hat is off to you!" He said enthusiastically. "Are you going inside?" The next thing we knew, he walked in with us and bought us a round of coffee.

This samaritan's name was Martin. He spoke English because he worked at a U.S. military base for 20 years, until it closed in the early 90's. Now he collects a pension from Uncle Sam. After our coffee, Martin gave us a tour of the house he is restoring. It had been his parent's home until they died. It was in pretty bad shape. He said if he didn't have to leave town that night, he would let us stay in the house for free, but he also said we'd be better off in a hotel. We agreed.

That was the first time since southern Thailand that a complete stranger bought us anything. It made us feel great. It makes such a difference when we feel like the people in country like us.

Lozoya lies in a little valley between two passes in the Guadarramas. We had already done the first pass, and wanted to save the second for the next day. So when we left town, we rolled just 10km over flat land to the next town, Rascafria. The wind blew hail pellets down the road in pretty, fast moving white waves. We stayed in Rascafria for the night.

At dinner we asked the waiter if he knew the weather forecast for the next day. "The same," he said.

He was right. First thing in the morning we started climbing the second pass, called Puerto de la Morcuera. The trees on this mountain had been logged fairly recently so we didn't have much protection from the wind. We stayed warm enough while riding but didn't take many breaks. It was just too cold to stop. If the wind had not been mostly behind us (it was blowing hard from the west, we were heading southeast) we might have hitched a ride. A car passed us every fifteen minutes or so.

The wind got worse as we got higher and we kept wondering where the top would be. Unlike the pass the day before, this one had a lot of false summits.

The road leveled off a few kilometers before the final summit then it started to roll up and down. When the clouds cleared enough for us to see 500 meters or so, we got views of a barren, wind swept snow-covered bright white peak. It looked like how I imagine Antarctica. The peak was so white it was hard to see against the white sky. Around then we saw the road just disappear into a huge pile of snow. It looked as scary as a lot of the terrain in Tibet. Luckily, not long after that, we found the summit: 1793 meters.

We stopped for a minute to take a photo and put on some more layers of clothes for the windy descent. My thermometer read about 25 degrees F and in that wind it felt like Antarctica. However, the difference between this place and Antarctica or Tibet was that the town far below us, Miraflores, was much warmer and free of snow.

We barreled down the mountain, stopping just once to rest our hands, which were tired from squeezing the brakes. Just about 20 minutes later we were in a warm restaurant in Miraflores, ordering the menu of the day which started with a huge, hot bowl of stew.

In Miraflores it was about 45 degrees F and the sun shone now and then through breaks in the clouds. But our downhill was not over. We continued generally downhill all the way to Madrid. A lot of times when you're biking, people will say, Oh, it's downhill all the way. And it never is. But that day it was. When we looked behind us we could see the cloudy, frosty looking mountains we had just crossed. They looked inpenetrable.

Looking ahead into Madrid we could see a few skyscrapers, including a pair of glass-clad buildings leaning towards each other. They looked like an open drawbridge.

Much of the way into Madrid we rode on a freeway. The shoulder was actually a designated bicycle lane. We saw several other cyclists going in the opposite direction, most of whom waved to us. They all were on road bikes, decked out in bright spandex. Quite fashionable these Spanish cyclists.

Of course the bicycle path ended suddenly and dumped us about 10 kilometers from the city center. No alternative route was offered. We tried getting on the subway but the subway only takes bikes on Sundays, and it was a Friday.

We wandered around lost for about 30 minutes. Finally we figured out where we were and found a main street into town. We went right past the drawbridge buildings we had seen 30 kilometers earlier.

Traffic in Madrid wasn't so bad. We got onto a huge main (eight? ten-lane?) artery that moved right along. The only trouble was the huge traffic circles. The cars dodged around, jockeying for position. That unnerved me. Not Joan. She jockeyed around with the best of them as if she too were protected by 3000 pounds (well, in Europe 2000 pounds) of glass and steel.

We rolled into the tourist district (near Puerto del Sol) about 5ish. It reminded us a lot of Kathmandu: lots of hotels, lots of tourists, and lots of crowded narrow streets.

We hit the buzzer for the hotel recommended in our guidebook, and over the loudspeaker, they probably said "come on up." But they said it in Spanish, and then they hung up the intercom, so we thought they were full.

Instead, we stayed in our second choice, a nice, friendly, inexpensive pension on the third floor of the same building. A pension is sort of like staying in someone's house. You have to ring the bell to be let in and they treat you very much like guests of their house rather than customers.

Unfortunately, we chose the same pension as a group of American sorority girls. They were out late, up early, made lots of noise, and insisted on talking about everything in the hallway. They talked about the shower a lot -- how it works, how their last shower went. Every visit to the bathroom seemed to require a debriefing afterwards. All the girl talk, plus the fact that our room was really dark and gloomy, bummed us out.

We stayed two nights, then moved to the place upstairs, (the place we thought was full), which had a gorgeous well lit room on the street. The street noise--every night was Bourbon Street, right up til dawn, sometimes--drove us nuts. But we learned to live with it.

Also it was a little awkward staying there, since we kept running into the owners of the first place, who were offended that we switched. We didn't know enough Spanish to explain why we had moved.

Next: Madrid

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