I quickly gave up on my idea of looking for land. I realised it was probably a good idea to speak portugese before trying to negotiate land prices. Cycling back in to Spain from Portugal was probably the most beautiful countryside I've seen. Full of grandoise trees whose sharp brilliant greens contrasted dramatically with reddish barks, the broad majestic leaves stretching for the sky offering a pleasing escape from the endless non-native pine forests of Portugal. The predictabilitiy of the unpredicitable hills topped with endless wind turbines seeming to to make the coutryside fly makes a perfect backdrop to the misty electric blue sky. The magic was added to by the area being famous for having colonies of lynxs roaming about. If I could at some point get a little land in this "land of the lynxs" I would die a very happy man. I was ecstatic on reaching Spain, I could get back to learning Spanish, which I prefer a lot to Portugese. I find Portugese a little like talking Spanish but with a heavy Sean Connery accent.
The cycle to Madrid was a quick one, with me quickly covering the 200km from Plasencia to Madrid in two days. I got a cooking pot and spent the evenings on my journy cooking relativly edible meals. I cycled lazily in to Madrid up to Plaza Mayor where the Cubans were last time, and low and behold there they were again, only now they had grown to be about twenty or so in numbers. I wrote in one of my earlier blog entries that they were being deported back to Cuba but due to my very limited Spanish at the time I know now that that's not actually whats happening. They have been abandoned by the Spanish government, they have had all their benefits taken away so now they have no food and no housing. Many of them have kids and some are old and ill. On top of that they can't even really get jobs because the qualifications that they have in Cuba need to be approved by the Spanish government in order for them to be usable in Spain, there are doctors and teachers among them.
I stayed in Madrid with the Cubans for about twenty happy days, making friends with some touring journalists and a Romanian guy named Paul. I spent most of the days exploring with friends and the evenings playing guitar with the Cubans. Over these twenty days these Cubans became like family to me. I decided to leave for the northern mountains of Zaragotha before heading down to Granada where my friend from England, Zack was coming to visit for a couple of weeks. I soon hit the beautiful Rio Tajo again, this time near its birth place. It was possibly even more beautiful than where I had met it in Portugal. Its waters a perfect photoshop light blue, winding its way through bushy broadleafs and secretive shrubs, its waters the home of grand shadowy fish, its surface the breeding ground of mosquitoes and thus a feeding place of nameless diving birds, its banks a home for hiding herons and timid ducks and, on one particular bend, somewhere near the village of Aunon a resting place for me.
I cycled on to Guadalajara where just outside of it I found a beautiful wilderness park with the rio Henares flowing through it. I decided to spend a day washing my clothes. Im not using any soap or shampoo now so I have to spend quite a while soaking it in the river to try and wash out all the dirt. After I washed them and let them to dry I decided to continue on my way, when all of a sudden just as I wasleaving the park my chain broke. I was in the middle of nowhere and I didn't really know how to fix chains my self so ended up having to walk back the 10km to Guadalajara. I hate walking.
I got back to Guadalajara and met a guy on the streets called Jorge, we got talking for quite a while and he said he wanted to cycle with me to Valencia, I was already begining to abandon my cycle to Zaragotha and so I agreed. I found a park to sleep in that night, and the next day I went and got my chain repaired for free at a local bike shop. Jorge needed a few days to fix his bike before we rode and so I decided to go to Madrid for a few days and then come back to Guadalajara. I cycled in to Madrid which is a lot more of a challenge to do from the east than the west which I had only done up untill then. There were practically only motorways which I didnt really want to go on so had to cycle a 100km route around them in the blistering heat to try and find an alternative route. I couldn't in the end and so went the last 10km on the motorway into Madrid. Spanish motorways are no where near as bad as English motorways with nearly every driver beeping and shouting encouragment at me.
The two days in Madrid were pleasant and the cycle back to Guadalajara was no where near as bad as the cycle to Madrid. I stayed with Jorge and a women called Carmen on an abandoned farm just outside of Guadalajara. The farm was stupidly beautiful, small and rustic, with one room and a single bed and a river close by. Me and Carmen instantly hit it off and spent our time happilly swimming, eating and lazing about together on the farm while we waited for jorge to fix his bike, something which would be put off day after day after day. It was one of the happiest times I've had in Spain.
