Manic Monday
Exhausting day so far. We awoke early to try to get a hitch but due to waiting for Eduardo to come back to the truck – we couldn’t just leave without saying goodbye – and other reasons, we only started hitching at around 10.30. We had little success at our first spot, so following the first rule of hitching – Location, Location, Location – we moved.
Our second spot was no better, and about 15 min in we were joined by competition: two cute Spanish girls about 30 m further up the road. They held up signs for Bilbao and Burgos, about 100 km and 250 km away. We waved at one other, but we weren’t happy when a truck passed us but stopped for them!
It had been raining moderately on and off all morning. By 12.30 we were drenched and decided to get lunch where we decided we’d take a leaf out of the girls’ book and so wrote ‘Burgos’ on our board instead of ‘Madrid’.
That proved no more successful than before, however. Perhaps it’s because we’re not cute Spanish girls. Xin Hui is 2 out of 3 but I’m none of the above. Truckers just kept signalling they were heading back to France, not into Spain.
We decided to try going back to the border, where trucks would definitely be heading into Spain. However, we found that foot traffic was prohibited on the motorway back to the border so we decided to try hitching back to the border.
By this time we were at the main petrol station of the truck stop of Irún where we had been camping out the past day. Despite the extreme proximity of our new destination, it still took a while to find a ride. A woman trucker pulled into the station and I suggested to Xin Hui that we might have better luck with her.
“The frontier?” said the lady, puzzled, “It’s just over there,” pointing.
XH explained we couldn’t walk there and also had heavy bags. She laughed and agreed to take us. She turned out to be a nice Portuguese lady who had a four year old daughter who was at home with her grandmother. Photos of the little girl were pasted in the cab above the windscreen. The little girl was adorable.
At the border at last, we waved and smiled hopefully as truck after truck sailed by. Eventually one stopped and we scrambled in. At 4.30pm, we were finally on our way.
Next stop, Burgos!