‘Cold is not the issue,’ says José, ‘but the fact that your holiday is over and that you need to work again.’
I told José that I am happy to go home and work, although it is a cold Hungarian home. José is our Airbnb host and he’s accommodating us from his third floor apartment in Málaga. He works behind a couple of computers, curtains drawn closed, balcony door open for the cigarette smoke to escape and a can of beer within reach.
A very short update about the Iveco truck which Geo and I fetched from Spain. In times like these, we´d waited for long to get this done. Mobile diary notes with Instagram snapshots on my creative weblog. 5 days of driving an overloaded truck through 5 countries, how´s that on the pshyche of one who passionately dislikes cars?
There is no need to debate whether a truck is better in cold and wet weather than a tent. A truck has the advantages a house might give yet it has not the prison-alike feeling of a house.
Now, just have a look how homely and fantastic the inside of a truck can be! Without planning, drawing nor measuring Geo has built us quite an amazing home. The ideal mix between a tent and a house.
Why would someone live in a truck?
Let’s start with why I decided to live in a truck? I dislike to live in a house. After being on the road for 5 years where I camped mostly in a tent I distanciated more. Then I met my husband on a farm in Paraguay. Geo, came with this extra ordinary idea (to which I had to get accustomed). He wanted to move out of his house too and I soon was appealed to the idea of living in a truck.
I had to get out.
‘Let’s have lunch at the Indian. You can walk home from there,’ says Geo.
I never wanted to eat at Indian restaurants outside India, sole exception London.
When cycling had stopped, the full outdoor lifestyle came to a halt as well. Yet desperately wanting to be out in nature there needed to be other outlets. That is not always easy to combine as the mindset has troubles adjusting: from a home base to try grasping that fleeting living-outside-having-no-home lifestyle. It has been some trying and searching, situations regularly and suddenly changed and having a steady base only recently, let’s see what’s in store.
The Transition
I have embraced the fact that I stopped cycling and am not missing it a whole lot. But sometimes there are these pangs of wanting to feel that excitement, the newness, the unknown, the full outside living, traversing vastness and fully soaked in to another culture.
A blessing and a curse came our way in the form of an enormous house where we had to take care for, which took us three full months to convert into 3 livable apartments that can be rented out. This prevented us from working at the truck, let alone to live in it. Nevertheless, preparing a house was a fun task in a beautiful surrounding. I loved the work and beautifying the 3 apartments, yet inevitably I missed being outdoors a lot.
A year in retrospect: I left Paraguay, tailing the trail of Geo, whom I married. Trying to combine a husband, a house, a truck and myself is a different cookie than traversing the world on a bicycle.
Perhaps the motorbike journey could be seen as our honeymoon. I met Geo while he was in the process of buying a motorbike and on that same motorbike we traversed across South America after we were married (we drove much of the route I earlier cycled). Before that, before we married, we got to learn each other and the Chaco by the very same transport.
Met conjo en puta di madre, veel geschreeuw, een nieuwe luier voor de liefdesbaby van het ruziënde stel, en een Jack Russell die ons goede morgen komt snuffelen, ontwaken we vanuit ons vreemde kamp.
De route door heet Extremadura vervolgd zich…
Het wordt steeds iets spannender, de hele reis.
Eindelijk, de lang verwachtte rustdag is aangebroken! We zijn op een camping aangekomen waar ook Steve zich thuis voelt. We staan nu op een camping midden op de Compostella route, rood verbrandde wandelaars komen en gaan, en tegenover ons een Nederlandse vrouw die topless van de zon geniet. Wij zitten achter onze tenten, omgeven door hoge heggen. Ons privacy gehalte is hoog.
Tot San Sebastian gaat het goed en dat is omdat ik zelf een landkaart voor me in de stuurtas heb. Maar ná San Sebastian heb ik geen landkaart meer, geen campinggegevens en zelfs geen idee van de hele route.
I’ve reached the Atlantic coast! I let go a little happiness yell when I see the ocean. It’s special and impressive to see this, especially when you’re on the bicycle. I’ve reached the Atlantic, again, on my own power and am surrounded by pine trees, sand and 3000 Harley Davidson drivers.
De avond ervoor heb ik vreemd gegeten: hapjes van Engelse Keith en zijn vrouw Jan, mijn eigen bereidde maar te vet gebakken aardappelen en groenten die net niet goed samen gingen, 4 stroopwafels en de verkeerde sojamelk voor de chai maken dat ik niet helemaal optimaal presteer.
Cycling Cindy