How to put a bike in a suitcase....

... in 7 easy steps (not!)

interesting ( or not ) stats

So as promised here are some stats you might enjoy reading

Travelling info:

-Total distance covered: 1102 Km
-Highest altitude: 1378m ( yes you guessed it right, it was Pajares!!, although Boca del asno was not that far behind)
-Total ascent: 11600m ( yep thats right, almost one and a half times the Everest!!!)
-Total descent: the same, started and finished at sea level ( bummer)
-Provinces crossed: 9 (Asturias, Leon, Zamora, Salamanca, Caceres, Badajoz, Cordoba, Sevilla, Malaga)


Food consumed:
-15 loafs of bread
-1/2 kilo of jamon
-1/2 kilo of cheese
-1 salchichon ( type of sausage, amazing!)
-millions of chocolates, cookies etc that were eaten either as per usual or scooped with a spoon cause of the heat!
-28 litres of fruite juice! ( i think i am sick of zumo de melocoton y uva and piña y uva!!!)

Animals encountered:
-15 snakes (one of which was alive! not so good when you have a fear of snakes!)
-5 hedgehogs
-millions of rabbits
-lots of birds: eagles, storks (seem to be the national bird of Spain), owls, vultures
-some amazing peakocks (ok they were in a park but it still counts!)
-4 lizards (aparently some were quite rare, saw them in Monfrague national park)
-a few million carcasses in different levels of decomposition (nice!)

Finally wanted to give you the moto of this trip which we had to learn the hard way and that is :

THA PAIN IN SPAIN IS IN THE MOUN-TAIN!

Raniska

[Trip log] Day 15: Antequera-Malaga

Cant believe it! we finally made it!!! after a long long long day we arrived in Malaga. The day started quite lazy from Antequera cause we though we were going to have an easy, i repeat an easy 50Klm ride to Malaga. Problem number one: the wind was so strong that day that instead of our usual 20K/h ( i know we are stars) we were going with a max of 8K/h and the wind was getting stronger and stronger. Have a look at the video! Problem number two: although i was assured that this there was going to be a small uphill for a couple of kilometers and then ALL downhill to Malaga, the road kept going up and up, steeper and steeper!! small parenthesis: the previous day as we were looking around Antequera to see what there is around, we noticed that there was a national park called el Torcal. But when we found out that it was on the mountains and about 15Klm away we decided to give it a miss for obvious reasons, well ... thats what we thought!!! came to realize very soon that we were going up that mountain !!! So its 1pm and we have just finished climbing the mountain ( boca del asno), yes i have admit the el Torcal was great but not worth 900 meters of climbing at 35 degrees! So as we are getting really tired and we think this is the end of the uphills, we decide to have stop and have lunch. There we meet an really nice ( what seemed nice at the time) old man. He was from the area, even gave us water , cause we run out, and told us that there were only a few more hills to go and then it was all downhill to Malaga. Problem number three: that NEVER HAPPENED!! there was NO downhill, it was aLL uphill, well up and down but it felt all up. I really wanted to go back find that lovely old man and give him a piece of my mind!!! So 7 hours later, we finally arrived in Malaga and there just in front of us was the mediterrenean sea!!! mission accomplished: cycling through Spain from the Atlantic to the Med in 15 days (including 2 rest days). i am only going to give one sentence for Malaga cause i dont think it deserved any more than that. Not a pretty city, wouldnt recommend it, horrible beach , avoid at all costs! (although does have really nice seafood, maybe you should go afterall) So i think this is were we have to end this little blog and say a big thank you to everyone that has supported us through out this trip. It has been an amazing experience, both physically and mentally challenging and at the same time got to see a very interesting aspect of Spain. I loved it!!! Also a special thanks to Yari for his help and putting up this site for us :) For those of you that cant get enough of this blog, we have compiled some stats of this trip just for a laugh which we will be posting shortly, so keep looking, Raniska

At Malaga

Arrived to Malaga 3 hours ago, finally! Last leg of the route was very hard. We'll post some photos if we find internet. Cheers!

Day 15. Malaga is near!

View Larger Map

Climbed a huge mountain, "el Torcal", only 30 km to go. Cheers!

Unusual photos!

A little bit of everything

Cheers!

Pedro

Touring Cordoba...

in a Segway!



A weird photo we forgot to post :-)