Saturday October 18, 2014

A complete change of plan!! I hadn’t been completely happy about the decision to go to Morocco, but was ready for the adventure. However, last night there was a comment on the Blog from my sister Joy, which made me think twice about our decision (Comment Gibraltar to Castilla la Duquesa). This morning I received a comment on the Blog from my friend, Celeste about the Ebola crisis in West Africa that made me think again about the decision (Comment Malaga).

I asked Ralf where he would have chosen to go if Vincent (the English fella) hadn’t picked Morocco. He said he would have chosen Cuba and then the southern tier of the States. I would have picked the same thing.

We decided then and there to get a refund on the ferry and work out how to get to Madrid and fly to Cuba.  We only had 6 minutes to make it to the booking office to get a refund.  When we got to the booking office, we marched in with a purpose and told him we needed to cancel our tickets.  He called the ferry company and I could hear him saying something about the bicycles and then said No Cancellation.  I thought we may have to forfeit 20% of the fee but no refund at all was going to be a bit much to take.  I told him and showed him on the ticket two hours before ferry  we can cancel.  No cancellation, he said and then proceeded to get the 42 Euros from his cash drawer and give it to me.  A full refund, very confusing, obviously something lost in translation.

We went to the train station – we could get as far as Granada on the slow train tomorrow and then cycle the rest of the way to Madrid, which would take us about 8 days, we only have 10 days left on Ralf’s Shengen visa. (What visa Ralf says.)

We could get a fast train to Madrid tomorrow, but the bikes need to be boxed. There is no specialty bike shop in Algeciras and the only place that sold bikes was a SuperStore and the lady we spoke to didn’t have the authority to sell us empty bike boxes.

We can’t get out of the southern Spain for trying.

We decided to sit and have some lunch and review our options. Our staple lunch choice has been ham and cheese sandwiches, mainly because we know how to say ham and cheese in Spanish! However, today we were sitting at a Moroccan restaurant (in Algeciras) and Ralf ordered ham and cheese. The look on the waiter’s face was one of pure horror. No ham he said and then pointed to the restaurant, Moroccan. Ralf looked at me and then it dawned on him – Moroccan – muslim no pork! He always gives me good writing material.

We rented a van and will be driving the 668 k\’s to Madrid tomorrow. We will spend a few days in Madrid to arrange flights and pack the bikes into boxes.

Throughout our travels through southern Spain we have been unable to stay at a warmshowers host, no responses from our email requests. As soon as we head north again, we have responses from two warmshowers hosts and tomorrow we will stay at a warmshowers who will allow us to stay for the few days it will take us to arrange our flights etc. Thanks Jess.