Sorry for the typos and spelling errors but I'm using voice recognition on my phone and you know how that works.
Arrived in Barcelona and made our way to the campervan rental place. This is about a week or so ago. We picked up our camper and made our way out of town to supposedly a nudist resort. We drove off the main Highway and onto a very windy but well paved road. Sort of the kind of road that would give the dragons tail envy.
Then it turned into a gravel road. Then a dirt road. Then we forded a couple of streams. This was a lot for a two-wheel drive van. The van is made by Fiat and it's old in America as the ram workmaster. Over here it is the Fiat Ducato, please. It's powered by diesel engine has a 5-speed manual transmission. It's been over a decade since I've driven a diesel and 10 years since I've driven a five-speed or in this case a 6-speed. It did take a little learning and of course I stalled the damn thing right at the van rental place.
Anyway the dirt road got rough and rougher and I kept up the momentum so we wouldn't get stuck. We finally get to this place and it seems like it's better days were behind it. All the pictures in the internet showed a bright and happy place with lots of people. Here it was dingy and run down and there was nobody there. But since we had gone this far we decided to stay the night. The owner told us to drive down a steep hill that looks more like a tractor trail. We managed to do this as it was dry and turned around and parked in a nice bucolic area. Our first night in the camper!
I asked the owner if we would have trouble getting up the hill, as if it got rainy it looks like it would turn into a mud pit. He replied the water would run it off is not to worry about it. That turned out not to be the case.
So naturally that night it rained. And dry dirt turned into slippery mud that was almost like grease. What's even worse is the giant rocks sticking out of the road turned into slick glass like sections. I made a running start of the hill and the traction control kicked in. The traction control on this type of van depresses the engine horsepower so the engine started lugging and cutting back. We backed down the hill and tried it again.
Two more tries and no joy. We got halfway up the hill and the thing just runs out of power. So we backed out again at this time I turned off the traction control in floored it up the hill and it's slipping and sliding. Unfortunately there's a big tree on one side and a giant rock sticking out the other. We back down to try one more time.
This time we make it further up the hill and the van starts sliding sideways fortunately toward the hill and not over the cliff. Suddenly I hear it loud bang as the wheel hits the giant rock sticking out. I asked Mark what happened he said you blew out a tire keep going. Oddly enough the flat tire ended up give us some more traction. I probably should have taken air out of the tire as it would have helped the situation.
We fought our way to the top of the hill and pulled into a flat spot. Fortunately the van came with a spare tire and a jack and tools that had never been used. Three of us got to work jacking up the truck and changing the tire. The rim had a 6-in dent in it although the tire seemed intact.
So much for our first day on the road.
Things of course have gone uphill since then. When I like about Spain and Portugal is the food here is very inexpensive. There's no egg shortage here and when you do get a dozen eggs they're huge and have yolks that are bright orange not the pale yellow you see in the states. And the ice. They make ice cubes the size of your fist you only need to put one in a glass. Why do they have such nice things here and we can't have them in america?
Of course, some people say, well you like it so much there why don't you move there?
Exactly.
