desert

Day 6, Andorra – Zaragoza; ~300km, 3 cars, many hours of waiting time

The next day I walked back to the main road going through Andorra. Two French-Algerians picked me up and brought me to the capital of Andorra Andorra La Vella (Andorra, the old town).

They asked, if the logo of BMW is showing the beard of Hitler and let me sent a message to “all” Algerian football fans: “One, two, three: ALGÉRIE” and an apology that Germany beat Algeria in the world cup.

In a supermarket I bought some cheese, bread, fruits, vegetables and sweets. But I could as well have bought a 5kg bucket of Nutella or a package of like 200 cigarettes (I’m not a smoker, so if that number doesn’t seem that extremely high then please take it times 7,59).

A French couple then took me to a toll station near Lleida – yes I haven’t learnt from my French mistake. But in fact there was no other opportunity to stop. So after I waited for some time and ate raspberries growing on a tree, I walked to a service area. It was about 5kilometres away, but hasn’t been on the way of the French couple.

At the service area after having spoken to an eye specialist I got a ride near Zaragoza passing the Zero Meridian, which was announced by multiple signs. Before the driver left the highway, I ask him to drop me off at– take a guess – yes, a toll station again. I really haven’t learnt from my mistakes and this time, there was no service area nearby. At least people stopped, but there were all going to Zaragoza and getting out from there, especially at night, would have been quite hard I thought denying all offers. So in the end I just walked away for a kilometre and put my tent next to the highway; typical gipsy style.

Day 7 (Sunday), Zaragoza; forced stop, ~72km, 1 car

I recognized that the place I slept smelled like rabbit pee when I woke up. So I hurried getting back to the toll station. But there already some employees of the highway company were waiting for me, driving me to the national road, because it’s illegal to hitchhike on the highways – at least during the day when these persons work, because the evening nobody seemed to care.

So I found myself in a desert like surrounding, mountains with a huge bull in front of me and the sun slowly shining more intensive – a nice place for a red-head to wait for hours…. But fortunately I was picked up soon by Sergio who just came from Barcelona. Although he didn’t sleep the night and therefore was pretty tired, he drove me to several gas stations and helped me finding someone who would take me further north. But none of us had success.

At the gas station he drove me last I met the two fellow German hitchhikers Teresia and Jessica. They have been on the road in Spain including many cases of sexual harassment by truck drivers for 3 weeks. We decided to try to get further together. But after hours I proposed to go to a service area some 7 kilometres away; which we did under the merciless sun and in 41°C.

Of course we arrived exhausted and didn’t have much motivation to continue trying. Thus we bought some expensive gas station food and drinks from as dinner and went to a playground to pitch our tents and spend the night there. The nearby river Ebro was to dirty and too difficult to access to swim in it.

<– Previous (Day 4-5, Perpignan – Andorra)

Next (Day 8 (Monday), Zaragoza – Tapia) –>

–
Day 6