Yeah, bad day. In fact, it was so bad that it gets it's own post. So the day started off good, Josiah, Rachel, Kevin and I met at 9:30am and walked over to the tourist office for maps and then the bike shop to rent bikes. The owner seemed really nice and even gave us a little discount. Then we headed off. The route that we were going to take from Denia to Pego involved an old train track transformed into a bike path.
View Larger Map
This picture shows our path. It was pretty crazy!!!! So we're on this nice little path, it's gravel, but a very nice gravel, and easy to bike on. Spirits are up because it is taking a lot less time than we initially though it would. Then the true disaster began. Kevin and Rachel were riding behind Josiah and I and they called out to us to stop. We turn around and notice that Kevin is bending over his...flat tire. We should have known to turn around and just forget about it, but we just were so excited about Pego. So we sent Kevin and Josiah back to exchange bikes and Rachel and I kept riding. Since the guys were not with us we did end up getting lost about 4 times, but between asking directions from like 5 Spaniards and just guessing we ended up eventually finding our way. It took about 45 minutes to an hour for Rachel and I to get to Pego which included a little spill on Rachel's part, which may have been because I ran into her...oops. Once we were in Pego and getting close to the part where the Natural park began we realized that Rachel also had received a....flat tire. This meant that she had ridden the 2 hours to Pego and was now not going to be able to see it because she had to start back to Denia...walking. About that time the guys caught up with us, Kevin had gotten a new bike so he was set to go. We were kinda frustrated and hungry so we sat down and ate our lunch on a road between orange tree orchards. After lunch Rachel began her long walk home and Kevin, Josiah, and I headed off to see the Nature Reserve of Pego. We were super sad to leave Rachel, but she insisted, and we figured we were going to catch up any ways, since she was walking. So off we went. The first part surprisingly went rather smooth, the only glitch being that we accidentally missed the first turn off, and had to take another a little later on.
This dirt road lead us up to the river. Now let me say, I've never been more disillusioned by a river in my life. It was really ugly and there was trash in it, and it was a let down. It did sound pretty though.
From there we decided to follow a terrible dirt road. I'm sure if it could have been any worse I would have been off my bike instead of just bouncing around. After a while of following this road, we stopped to look at the map and try to find a way back towards Pego...only to realize that we were officially not on the map anymore. Now, we weren't lost, just north of the map.
So we took a path back south a bit and found the road that looked like the highway again. At this point we just decided to head towards the sea...because we actually knew where that was!! So we biked for like a few minutes and then saw a sign that said....Provincia de Valencia! That was not such a good thing cause we live in the provincia de Alicante, which meant we were now like a looooooonnnnnggg way from home. We decided continue in the direction of the highway we could sort of see and ended up finding another road along side it.
About now Kevin, Josiah and I are talking about how unfortunate all this is and kinda moping, so to life spirits I commented on how this dirt road wasn't too bad. Wouldn't ya know it but like 10 seconds after that the road turns into the worst dirt road ever, I mean like even worse than before filled with potholes and rocks of all sizes. Next we found a viewing deck of the marshlands....very uninteresting, all grass.
Continuing on the torturous road we next found a puddle, but we were able to bike around it. Then, of course, as Kevin is thinking in his head "well it could have been worse" there appears in front of us a HUGE puddle. I'm talking like river across the road.
It was huge and we couldn't go around it so we ended up biking right through it. Now we're really laughing cause this day is such a ridiculous failure that it just cannot get worse...hopefully. We ended up finding some really crappy bridge to cross the river (boards laid across the metal frame of a telephone pole).
After this things went a little smoother for a while...we crossed another river (thankfully with a real bridge) and actually found the real road, which we almost got run over on...that was slightly scary. Then the trip back to Denia went pretty well for a while. We had about 20 min where nothing happened and our spirits were lifted a little. Then, it happened. Josiah and I stopped to wait for Kevin because he had been doing something with his bike (and we realized we were on the wrong road). Kevin pulled up next to us, stopped his bike, and said "look" and pointed down. There was ANOTHER flat tire. Well, by this point we were so fed up with all the awful horrid things that had gone on that we just walked over to the right road and then hopped on our bikes (Kevin with his flat tire and all) and rode off. In another 10 minutes or so we caught up to Rachel still walking her bike and Kevin and I got off and walked the last like 4 or 5 miles back home, hoping that our troubles were over.
Back at the bike shop we tried to express just how unhappy we were with our experience and how much of and inconvenience it was for us, but the owner was very unsympathetic. He was upset with us for all the dead bikes and we ended up having to pay him 20 euros on top of what we had already paid. It was ridiculous, but we were just sick of it. After that we went to llao-llaos and ate frozen yogurt to help us feel a little better about the day. So basically, it really was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day...except for the frozen yogurt, chocolate and company.
No comments:
Post a Comment