Checkmate
It’s always fun to see how things work out when life doesn’t go according to plan – come to think of it, that’s just about all of the time, isn’t it? As I explained to PJ, the worst that could happen was if we dawdled (or more accurately, got stranded) in Andalucia for longer than we’d originally intended, we’d probably have enough time to go on a tapas bar crawl to sample the finest tapas in all of Spain – and the world! In this particular instance, I finally got my wish to ride in a DHL truck within minutes of our arrival at the Linares service station at 0530 h Continental time. Our kind friend going to Seville, amazingly enough, was Romanian, spoke only some Spanish dialect and had no idea where Singapore was. The swaying rhythm of the truck carriage soon lulled me back to sleep, with me snug in the all-enveloping darkness before dawn. It was not until later, when I was roused by pinpricks of light – the sunrise, Spanish side up – that I realised how far we’d travelled.
Just outside Seville, we met a very progressive Aussie chaperoo who said this about himself “Yeah, the Missus works and I make sure she’s got dinner when she gets home...she allowed me to come on this trip...she’s paying for it...whatever happens in life, just go with it.” This cool cucumber even went out of his way to drop us at a gasolinera on the E5 to Algeciras even though he was on the way to Cadiz around 100 km in the opposite direction. I reckon that wife of his has got to be some woman.
Because Tony is one lucky guy in more ways than one, we got our next hitch straightaway from a Spanish guy and his girlfriend on their way to the beach. This surfer dude had just returned from a month in Morocco and was familiar with the perils – and frustrations – of hitch-hiking. “Autostop? I have done many myself.” We bade him farewell at the point the road forked – one branch leading to Barbate, the other to Algeciras.
The next hitch was less forthcoming, and the two of us starting prancing about on the road to try to attract the attention of drivers – this greatly amused passing beachgoers.
One of these was a drop-dead gorgeous German girl with matching turquoise top, slippers, yoga mat and shiny new Fiat (we later found out she’d rented the car for her holiday). Her name was Julia, and she just so happened to be a fashion writer for German Vogue and a self-confessed semi-permanent resident of Ibiza when not covering catwalk shows. Incidentally, she’d never picked up hitchhikers in her life before us, but had seen us from across the road, and observing that we weren’t exactly basking in the glorious sunshine of southern Spain, had decided to offer us a ride to Tarifa where her hotel was. You might have noticed that up to this point, we’d been bent on getting to Algeciras – it is, after all, the point on the Spanish coast favoured by truckers crossing the Mediterranean sea into Morocco. As we cruised along the road to the coast, Julia languidly lifted her hand from the steering wheel to point at a billboard slowly coming into view, “Algeciras is very ugly, why not come to Tarifa instead? There’s even a ferry to Tangier, it only takes 35 minutes...” Suddenly, it all clicked: until very recently, only EU citizens were permitted to journey to Morocco via Tarifa, so we hadn’t known about this route. In addition, our trucker friends knew the trucker routes best. If we got to the port in time for the ferry, we’d be in Tangier by sundown – after a journey that would be almost 2 hours shorter than that originating from Algeciras. This we did, somehow, from a port almost as beautiful as the girl who drove us to it.
I’d like to think that getting lost is half the adventure.