#34. The bike diaries, day 3 - Horse Stories

Day 3

Up in the mountains, light heart, heavy legs

 It´s the 1st of July and everything hurts, so I wake up late and look at the map to choose a route to my next city.
Two options: 1. either I follow the hikers' path in a quite flat and relaxed region...; 2. ... or I go up in the mountains in a hard yet gorgeous landscape.
What the hell.
And I take the road to the mountains. Guess I was not born to the easy ways.


But first I make a stop in the bakery to have breakfast. The cute tatooed waiter is looking at me as I place my order: a machiatto, 2 croissants, a cheese sandwich and one veggie snack, please.
- To eat here or to go?
- To eat here, of course.  And two more sandwichs to go, if it is ok for you.
And he keeps staring at me nonstop as I eat 2000 calories in less than four minutes.


There´s something about heading on a bike into the hard mountains. You follow the road, they stand right in front of you, and you're never sure you're gonna make it through. There's some sort of arrogance going on for you're defying them somehow, but you also need to show some respect for they can crush you easily in no more than two seconds.
As for me, I went all the way up 4 mountains, and more than once I thought I was about to die. I stopped to have water and to breath, no one around, and those for sure were the hardest 20km I have ever done in my life. Going down into the Rioja valleys was gorgeous, and I guess it was so only because I knew what I had to endure to reach 60km/h downhill for more than 20 minutes.
Yesterday I know something of mine was left behind in those mountains, for I arrived in Santo Domingo de la Calzada with a light, very light heart.


I arrive in Santo Domingo and go out to get some bread. In the door of the hostel a guy in weird clothes is just arriving in his horse (!) and asks for a piece of my baguette. I give him some and a banana, and he vanishes. Three hours later he's looking for me in the common area, a lemon in his hands. He gives me the lemon as a gift, lie his head in my thighs and tells me about his life around horses in England. In his highly polished British accent, he then tells me he likes to be around people sometimes, shows me his Swiss knife, asks about me, makes me laugh and cleans my extremely filthy glasses. "I need to leave now", I say, and he replies with a "it's been nice to lie on top of you". Then Dean says he likes me and promises he will write me someday, whenever he gets to a computer in his way to San Sebastian, up north.
Horse stories.