18/07/08 (continued)
And there we were, going up north, wondering how far we would get, and where we could find a place to sleep. As you might recall, I talked about insect spray at the end of the last post. Let me tell ya. We had an insect problem in our camper. My father was living in it before and got bitten all the time (and, before you think of it, let me put this clear: I'm completely sure he wasn't the cause of the insect invasion), but he had thought that in Cádiz there were some crazy mosquitoes, as he used to sleep with the door open, for fresh air. We noticed insect bites, and at first didn't thought much of it, but as time passed the bites grew bigger and all the time more appeared. From the kind of bites, multiple ones next to each other, we concluded they had to be fleas of some kind, and not mosquitoes, which is bad, because that meant they could be all over the place, in the mattresses, dirty corners, etc.
I hadn't that much problems, as I am pretty resilient to insect bites, but Carmen seemed somewhat allergic, and her bites became HUGE. After buying the afterbite product in Reus, and realising that it was useless, we decided it was time for a little bit more hard-core action. So we bought the insect spray in Barcelona, and on our way to France we wanted to stop somewhere to use it. But that implied that we also had to get all our linens and blankets washed, as well as all our clothes. We pin pointed a place on the map, Figueres, which seemed a probable place to find a laundry.
Read on for the complete tale...
When we got there, we suddenly decided we wanted to sleep near the sea, and we drove in that direction until we came to Roses. Ah, such a lovely place. We searched for a parking, and slept there with no other "incidents". Well, actually we had a little walk on the beach and watched some fishermen at the docks.
19/07/08
At the next morning we enjoyed a really nice bath in the Mediterranean, as the beach was gorgeous. Full of people, but still very beautiful. Afterwards, we searched for a beach shower, only to discover that there weren't any, and we had to get that salt off of our bodies at some kind of mini-showers thought for feet washing only, but everyone was using them for the entire body, kneeing on the ground. Great invention, yeah!
Next stop: a laundry. We asked in a bar and were told that we were actually in the south part of Roses, and in the main parts of the town there were some. So we drove 5 minutes and looked for parking, which we conveniently found in front of a supermarket. Carmen went on buying food and I searched for the laundry. I found it after a while, but it was closed until some time later. We went for a walk, and wrote some postcards.
Wen the time arrived, we brought all our textiles (a lot more than I wished) to the laundry and drove away from the town, in search of a nice place to ... kill the freakin' blood-hungry insects. We finally arrived at a nice little place where not much was going on and took all the mattresses outside. We started spraying like crazy and emptied the whole can. It was just enough to cover them all. Then we cleaned the whole inside of the camper, as we had some hours to wait for our clothes.
In the late afternoon, we drove back to town and parked. We went for our textiles and on the way back I bought another converter, a little more powerful looking one than the one that we had. But strangely, this one just gave enough juice to power the cellphone charger, and not the laptop adapter, even while the converter sported in a very big text "200W" and the adapter said it only used 60W. That was a deal breaker for me, and I returned the 60€ worth (but not in my opinion) unit. Luckily, the guys at the hardware store didn't refuse to take it back. I don't know what the heck is wrong with the double battery provided electrical system in the car, but nothing worked like I wanted, except for the portable fridge.
We then had another bath, but in a slightly uglier beach. After kidding around a while in the water, we went on to have a mini-shower in the feet-cleaner-things. But no one worked, because it was little after 18:00, and they had cut the water supply, like if nobody would ever have a bath after that hour. Weird.
We went to the parking and used our own water reserves to clean ourselves. And this is just another one of this precious hippie feeling moments we had on our trip: pouring each other water over the head in the middle of a public parking. Luckily, either nobody saw us, or no one bothered.
Afterwards, we were on the road again, headed to France. Just on the country border I used the last opportunity to make a national call without paying for roaming. I was a little bit concerned about a strange behaviour the brakes were showing on our way from Salou to Barcelona: sometimes the brakes didn't work until I pressed the pedal a second time. Not a very pleasant feeling, believe me. The same night we found out that I had left the hand brake pulled, and concluded the brake behaviour came from that.
Now let me just stop a minute here. That happened to me because the hand brake was located on the left side of the driver. Pretty normal, you Britons would say. Yeah, but this is not an english car, and it is really weird to have the hand brake lever on the left side when you are actually sitting on the left side of the car! I know the car is old, but this was either very strange or the car is plain prehistoric.
Anyway, I called my father, and asked him about it, just to be sure. We then went on to crossing the border over to France, and the first thing we noticed is that the French, in contrast to the Spanish, have the outside lines of the road dashed, and not a continuous line. We drove to somewhere near Narbonne and slept at a park we found.
20/07/08
In the middle of the night, we woke up, because a storm had risen over our heads, and the water drops were making an incredible noise. Lightning and thunder all over the place. Carmen told me that the strongest memory she had of previous visits to France was storms happening all the time, and this proved to be exactly the case.
On the morning there was again good weather, and we spent the most part of the day driving in direction to Switzerland, being the only notable thing happening was that Carmen drove a part of the way, and she had just recently got her driving license. Not that she drives bad, but in this very very big camper van, with the steering being somewhat defective and the streets being very very narrow. I almost got crazy always panicking that she would crash somewhere, and after a while she got very angry at me. Mea culpa.
After that, I drove the rest, and we almost reached Helvetia, staying that night in Aix-Les-Bains, a beautiful town with a lake. We parked on a public parking which seemed peaceful and nice.
21/07/08
The next morning a sprinkler woke us up, throwing water violently at one of our windows, and we had to reposition the car. We slept a little while longer, and the we continued on the road. We entered Switzerland by Genéve, where we bought a sticker needed to drive on swiss motorways and changed some money. I like the Swiss Francs!
Again, that day we spent the most time driving. Carmen also drove, and I didn't panic this time. Actually, she drove the whole way from Genéve to Zürich. I drove in the city, since I knew the way to my grandparents' house.
We arrived and parked in the driveway next to the house. Then, we took all the stuff we needed inside the house, clothing into our room, food into the lower kitchen. Then I showed Carmen the house and she kept repeating all the time that it was no house but a mansion. We used the internet connection in the house to plan the next day and check our emails, and shortly afterwards we went to sleep. Aaaaaah, good to have a real bed again!
... to be continued (in another post).
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