Salamanca – Piedrahieta – Burguillo – Valdemorillo – Madrid: 270 km

The closer we’re getting to Madrid the more our anticipation grows. We wonder what awaits us in less than a week from now. Butterflies on our stomach for our adventure across the pond. I want to eat the biggest burgers, stay in the shadiest motels, see Canada’s glaciers and wildlife, feel America’s unbearable southern heat. I want to see fly-over country, desolated villages with nothing but a gestation along straight roads for days. I want to ride through pine forests, national parks, barren sand lands and corn fields. I kind of want to be chased off a farmland by a scary man with a shotgun. I want to visit a Target in the middle of the night, I want to eat at every fast-food chain we don’t get in Europe. I want the American experience. At the same time, I think I’ll miss Europe. I had the most amazing time here. But I’m also looking for an even bigger adventure, further from home in a culture and landscape that is less familiar to me.

But first we ride towards Madrid. Our days are covered with climbs, steep ones. But we pull through. We camp near water, swim, cook and basically fall asleep instantaneously every day.

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In Madrid we meet an old friend of mine. Renato. It’s awesome to finally see him again. We spend two days together, we see some art, we drink at the many squares and talk about our lives in different countries and what happened to each other over the last couple of years. Renato is hard to describe. He’s different form anybody I know. Wherever he turns right, I would’ve turned left. But that makes our relationship interesting. He opens my eyes to different ways of looking at things, or how to deal with them. It’s good to see him after all this time.

When Renato leaves Marijn and I move to a hostel. There’s some preparation to be done. We called ahead to a bike shop if we could have their cardboard bike boxes to carry our bikes. It’s not close to the hostel and the hassle in the heat is real. We store them at the hostel and meet Renato again for our last hours together. We meet some friends of friends and the evening gets later and later and blurrier and blurrier. Real Madrid wins the Champions League. We find ourselves on a large square, where we participate in the singing, clapping and general festivities. 

Satisfied and buzzing from the night we return back to the hostel. We can’t take the bikes inside. That’s a disappointment. We screw off everything that is easily stolen and lock them up. Inside another setback. Boxes gone. Shit. The night receptionist doesn’t know anything about any boxes. With the hope that they’ve stored them somewhere else we fall asleep.

Next morning, we find out they’ve thrown them away. Not great. We make a big fuzz about it. The girl cries. We check out, book another place on Airbnb. Get new, shittier boxes from Decathlon. About our whole day gone from moving to yet somewhere else and finding yet more boxes. Oh well, adventure awaits. We spend the next day packing and getting ready for the flight and stocking up on things we might need over there. In 24 hours we’ll be on the other side of the world, starting anew.