Tried to phone the bank (reactivate the cross boder marker) from our room, following the instructions provided but kept getting through to reception who wanted to know what we wanted at 7.30 in the morning! After our third conversation with reception we gave up and went for breakfast, a comparatively basic selection of medialunas and coffee and cycled into town to look for a phone shop. After 10 minutes of punching in codes, hash keys and listening to the banks entire selection of services we eventually got through to a human and reactivated our card. Cycled west long the lake and stopped at the first campsite up an incredibly steep track which required our first push. We were led to our pitch by a security guard with ‘Chips’ style sunglasses, lots of shoulder bars and badges and a serious expression which we could not crack. Rode back into town on super light twitchy bikes and did our usual stop for coffee which turned into a major meal. Although we knew continuous eating would probably not help our ‘situation’ we couldn’t seem to stop craving food. When we got back to the camp site another security guard stopped us and demanded to see our papers and then jerked his chin to indicate we were safe and could pass his tree. When we got back to our pitch another security guard sauntered across with a clip board and demanded an explanation to the discrepancy in the date I had written on the check-in form. I had mistakenly written our arrival date instead of our intended departure date and he saw his big chance to evict the miscreants who had overstayed their welcome. After a lot of explaining, which seriously stretched my limited Spanish, we all laughed at my silly mistake and he slowly relaxed the grip on his hip baton. We returned to our tea brewing and realized why there were no big groups of students….it was certainly the quietest campsite we had been to which might mean a decent night’s sleep. I dread to think what might happen to people laughing or singing after 11.00! About an hour later a man came round advising us not to drink the water from the taps I had previously collected the water from, despite everyone confirming that it was ‘potable’. Not good for our ‘situation!’ At 10.00 the fires started and the guitars came out. We fell asleep to a couple that sounded like the Carpenters…it made a change to be lulled gently to sleep.
Note bird of prey!
Evening fishing
