Day 8 (Monday), Zaragoza – Tapia – Iberian Peninsula by Auto-Stop

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Day 8, Zaragoza – Tapia; ~670km, 3 cars, a couple of hours waiting time

I got up early. I wanted to continue. So I said good-bye to the two girls who wanted to take it easy and the first people I talked to at the service area were eager to give me a 470kilometres lift, which was awesome. It was a Spanish couple and the husband wanted his wife to speak English that she was learning at evening school. So it was a win-win for Carlos, Anna and me.

They were heading to Llanes in Asturia so we passed the rainy Basque region. To be honest like the people who never heard of Andorra, I would never have imagined that Spain can have some kind of rainforest of Eucalyptus trees. But the clime covers the northern countryside in green. The beaches are wide and empty, which may be reasoned in the stormy Atlantic Ocean. Nonetheless I liked that part immediately; not only because I had escaped the heat for some days.

At the last gas station before the crossroads of the highway to Gijón (my direction) and Oviedo (south) I spoke to a Pakistani, if he was going to San Sebastian. So after only minutes of waiting I got a ride again. The problem was, he was driving in the wrong direction. I mixed up Santiago and San Sebastian in my head. That’s why he of course was going to the right direction, but in the same time I was driven back to where I just came from…. Luckily after some kilometres was a small service area where I ran over the highway to the other, the right side.

There the time passed, cars came and went away without me. At 10pm an employee gave me a free tea and pitied me. But shortly before midnight, Ainoa, a girl from Basque region, took me to Taipa where she was working and which was only 10 kilometres from Ribadeo, where I intended to go. Unfortunately she refused to speak English, so it was quite a quite drive.

Having arrived in Tapia at about 2 in the morning, I walked along the cliffy coast until on top of one I pitched my tent and fall asleep to the sound of breaking waves.

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