14th October (rainy morning but clearing with showers, cold - mild) 320 km by car

We woke at 7am after a reasonable sleep and it sounded like our neighbour did too as we could hear him using the toilet – that’s how thin the walls are.  In fact, when I went to pull my charger out of the wall, the socket came with it, so I carefully put the screws back into their holes and pushed the socket back into place.

Got the wages done and one day’s blog uploaded while Pete got a shower and tidied up.  Then I showered and we went down for breakfast at 9.30am which was included in the 42 Euro price for the night.  Well I don’t know about you, but I reckon two pieces of fried bread and a cup of coffee do not really warrant the lofty title of a continental breakfast.  But I have to give it to them – the coffee was great! 

Back upstairs to load some photos onto the computer before checking out at 11.15am and hitting the road for Vigo.  We had a tremendous turnaround with the weather overnight and it makes us so grateful we got such a perfect day for our adventures yesterday.  It had gone from 28C and sunny to 8C and raining – it must be the edge of Hurricane Leslie which had been lashing the coast of Portugal yesterday.

We set off in the rain and the scenery was nothing to write home about, very plain you might say as we were indeed on the plains and true to popular belief, the rain in Spain does appear to fall mainly on the plain.  Very, very glad we have a car today!

What a difference a day makes.  Look at that weather!
The car park at our hotel this morning.

Pete here - After driving for a short while, decided to get off the N roads, which are like the secondary roads, with speeds of around 80kms and jump on the A roads, which you can do 120kms on, but everyone does about 150kms at some points. I have to say that generally in Spain I have been impressed with the standard of driving after expecting a nightmare of a time….however, there is still time and we still have to encounter southern Spain.

A lot of agricultural land as well as a lot of wasteland today, but what was noticeable was the parched and burnt land, where they had the fires over summer.

Evidence of the fires over summer through this area

For the eagle-eyed, you might notice a strange green blur on the left side and a couple of orange bits - those are the relection of Pete's undies and socks drying on the dashboard.  I believe he wants to patent that idea too.

Those fires actually jumped the motorway and anyone caught on the road when that occurred, must have thought their time was up. Drove for two hours straight, then took a break for a coffee and something to eat at a service cafeteria. In that time we’d covered 240km and that was just cruising. If we had roads like this in NZ, we’d be in Auckland from Taranaki in no time at all.

The second half of the drive, we actually had a lot of hills - glad we're not cycling these!

The view from our hotel last night - quite a
difference from the mountain views!

Ju here - We arrived in Vigo at 5pm and turned onto the road our hotel was on to see a guy standing in the middle of the road, gesticulating that we should park where he indicated.  We were very confused – yes I had booked online, but I hadn’t said when we were arriving, what kind of car we were driving or anything that would have the hotel recognise us.  Had our fame spread this far?  Or did Booking.com now send a GPS magnet through your phone so they could track your arrival?  We decided he must have us confused with someone else or wanted to rip us off, so kept driving, only to find another man up the road doing the same thing.  It was then we realised they were parking scouts who made a living off finding car parks for people – we guess you were expected to pay them if you took one of their suggested car parks.  We noticed that here there was no such thing as not parking on the corners at intersections – in fact these seemed to be the primo places as they were a little bit easier to get in and out of.  Found our hotel easily enough- the hotel room only cost us 32 euro for the night, but the underground parking cost 9 euro, and it was very tight!  Managed to get in without scraping the car – hope we can get out again intact.

We were desperate to stretch the legs so after the lovely young Czech girl czeched us in, we took the cameras and went to see what Vigo had to offer…..and it was not a lot.  Just a big city with lots of shopping and cafes.  A few nice park areas but the waterfront was very industrial and not very inviting and we actually found nothing we wanted to photograph.  Being a Sunday we found one convenience store open and bought milk for our breakfast tomorrow, then headed back to the hotel, keeping an eye out for somewhere to eat.  Spotted La Ruta Burger and went in there.  It was now 7pm and we ordered a beer and a wine and asked to see the menu.  The waitress said the kitchen didn’t open until 8pm but she would ask the chef if he was prepared to start cooking now and lucky for us he was.  Pete ordered a chorizo burger which he said was delicious and I created my own burger with chicken, lettuce, avocado and mushroom – some of my favourite foods and most of which I haven’t eaten for two months.  It tasted so good I said to Pete if they were open for breakfast, I’d go and have it again.

Back to the hotel room where we finished the mammoth job of sorting through and editing all the photos we took yesterday.  Lucky for us the wifi was playing the game and uploaded 35 photos very quickly.  I’d just posted it and we had a call from our friends Jason and Lauren who have just moved back to the UK from NZ (yes, they are both nuts, but in a delightful way).  It was so cool to be able to see and chat to them and was a nice way to round off the evening.

We didn't get many photos today, so here are the rest from yesterday afternoon.