What may prove to be a theme of the trip.......
"So, what do we know about this place?"
"Nothing"
"Probably should have looked it up"
"Yeah"
But then again, why would you bother traveling if you knew it all ey? From now on we will try to share a small fact about each place.
Andorra is a tax haven, great shopping. The Pyrenees are picturesque snow capped mountains, but be warned not to look too hard or long at the surrounding environment whilst tackling the hairpin turns that creep up ever so quickly, whilst you're were left wondering where the warning sign was?
We had an amazing day driving up to Andorra, admiring the small villages each with their own castle and buildings that were built on the roads edge, or maybe the buildings were there first? Most likely. We stopped by the side of a river to enjoy our budget lunch of tuna and corn, a staple nowadays.
As we said Andorra is a tax haven, so although on a tight shoestring, we did manage a spot of shopping, a couple of hours worth. We may have acted as though we hadn't seen shops in months, truth is it had been a week.
We reconvened at Lilly Pad for a team meeting, as we do at around 6 or 7 each day to decide the plan of attack. A campsite was decided upon and Kate put the address into Mio (our not so trust worthy GPS). Off we tootled, hairpin after hairpin we wound our way down through the Pyrenees. We sailed by a campground and passed comment about its size and whether it looked any good, it looked alright, but Mio was taking us to the one we had picked. Hmmmmm......
As we ascended another winding, gorgeous mountain with beautiful views and our destination drew nearer our scepticism grew also. It was unlikely that there was a campsite set among the thick forest and tiny villages, our favourite, Castellbo because of the quaint buildings and beautiful scenery.
We finally decided that Mio had let us down the garden path again and although she had taken us to a beautiful place it was not the right place!! Kate was determined to continue on as she was overcome with the curiosity of where the roads we had come across lead to as they were not on any maps we had and Mio was completely lost!!
So we kept driving, and driving, and driving up this beautiful mountain until Hilary convinced Kate that it might not be a wise move to be stuck up a mountain without GPS signal
at 1130pm at night! Reluctantly Kate agreed and we headed back down the mountain. After a stern word with Mio and a recalculation we thought that we had finally found the right coordinates for the camping ground. Turns out the large camping ground that we had come across earlier was the one we were looking for, how ironic! Thank you Mio for that scenic route.
