March 13th: Santa Clara to Castro Verde

Got up decently early and glad I didn’t have to pack the tent. It was chilly in the morning and I needed the winter jacket for the first hour of riding… everything is wet in the morning, the due is very heavy and my tent is still soaking wet when packed away. It will survive, I hope.

Rode out on some country trails for the first ten kilometres, and managed it in a swift forty four minutes! It was only nine am so feeling good about today! Then I entered the logging roads and man was there some climbing today… I feel like yesterday was worse but Strava said I climbed three hundred more metres today…. And also biked twenty kilometres more… so not sure how that works… 

Today, I hit my first dead end… it was in the mountains on a logging road that seemed to have just grown over in the past season, I trudged the bike back to the last intersection and left it there and walked down all the options, I didn’t trust the red line on the map anymore… First option, also a dead end, same for the next, there was only one road left so I hoped and went for it! And miraculously it took me out of the mountains! 

Also I call them mountains but I guess they are just really big hills… my max elevation was 364m, but still got some amazing views of the snaking logging roads amongst the forest covered slopes…

Amongst the list of things I lost today: my fav sunglasses… they just disappeared! I literally had them and then didn’t. I backtracked for about a kilometre and then gave up and moved on with the day. I have a spare pair but wasn’t expecting to engage them this early in the trip. I also bought some cheap ones at a bizarro shop run by this Chinese lady in the next town. She’s the first non European I have come across so far, but also didn’t speak a lick of English although we communicated pretty well. I guess she gets a lot of practice talking without talking here…

After the logging roads and an amazing downhill section that I didn’t have to break the whole way through, I finally reached this little town called Ourique. It feels like I’ve been trying to get here for my whole life, and it’s just been out of reach. I stopped at a cafe and got the most delicious coke and sandwich… first meal that wasn’t trail mix or chips in 2 days! 

My warm showers host was only eighteen kilometres away and it was only two pm… the rest of the way was on a service road and it felt good to move at 20km/hr for a while, I suspect I also had a nice tailwind or possibly that Coca Cola was kicking in. 

The next town was Castro Verde, I had about an hour to kill before I met up with my warm showers host, so I wheeled my bike around the town and looked for a place to eat. I went into one place that looked like a cafe/food spot, I asked the lady about food, she said something in Portuguese and it seemed like that was the end of the interaction…. Interactions here are pretty polarizing, either they are overwhelmingly warm and people try their hardest to bridge the communication gap, or they couldn’t be bothered and shrug at you as to say “move on son”. It’s a bit disheartening but understandable… Also I feel a bit silly walking with this bike around town and getting stared at wherever I walk, if I miss a street, I feel obligated to walk around the block because I don’t want to look like a confused lost tourist, or some wierdo lost homeless bike dude… it’s totally irrational but I guess this is where my ego is right now.

Met up with my host, they have a place in town they are renovating for air bnb and have a spare room in the back! Nothing fancy, a fold up bed and a kitchen, but this will be my first sleep indoors in Europe so very thankful! Susana, my host, drives me to her place for a shower since this spot doesn’t have one…. Another very gratifying shower after 2 days without one… feels sooooooo good!

Made some fried eggs and salami sandwiches for dinner, I have groceries for tomorrow and a hotel booked in the next town, Mertola and the end of Stage 37 of the European Divide Trail…. I spent a lot of time today on maps trying to figure out the next five days… there’s gonna be one pretty miserable day in between but I think we will make it!

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