African Mopeds

The last five weeks and some 2'500 kilometers and a bit converted us into real riders... Well, only moped riders, nothing to deal with the frightening eagle-and-leather fans driving their enormous bikes ! No joke, travelling on our mopeds is such a pleasure and a fantastic way to discover new places. What's more, it's not as slow as we thought : we're already in the very south of Spain near Gibraltar. To make it brief, our mopeds are the best travelling companions ever and the most reliable vehicles as not the slightly breakdown happened since the departure. I know we, French people, are very famous for being much too proud about our beloved country but let me tell you something : France is really beautiful. When going through Ardèche or Gard and even Hérault, we discovered really nice and bucolic places where we enjoyed pitching the tent on calm and green riversides. We must all the same admit that we also had some hard times when we had to deal with very heavy rain near Montpellier, which was not the best condition for camping. Even worst, around Perpignan, the wind was so strong that it became really dangerous and almost overturned our mopeds under car's wheels. I guess this is part of the fun of the adventure as well !!! Crossing the frontier between France and Spain was quite of a solemn moment. We even had fans on the roadside that day, cheering us with shouts and applauses. Ok, it was only four of them but still, it was enough to make us feel really happy ! Once in the flamenco country, we thought our mopeds needed a bit of a rest so we spent several days visiting Barcelona and making the most of this fevered city. Art museums, great buildings but also tapas, sangria and churros... We enjoyed each and every pleasure of Catalonia capital city. Once back on our mopeds, we discovered an all different Spain with its old little villages that seem to have frozen in an older century : black-dressed ladies going to the church, old men playing cards in local bars, cats lying lazily in the sun... Something incredible happened to us a few nights ago... well maybe not incredible but at least crazy. We were sleeping very deeply after an exhausting 300 kilometers-day when a terrible storm woke us up. Still sleepy and with the feet in the water, we had to move our tent which was about to be flooded under the threatening thunders. It took us two hours before we came back in our warm sleeping bags as the storm was a huge, impressive and very long one. Think about it tonight when you'll be comfortably lying under your duvet. As I wrote earlier, we're now in Tarifa, the southest city in Europe. From our campsite, we can see the African coast that we'll reach tomorrow ! Yupee ! Can't wait to go there ! Tarifa, 31st of May