Day 3: Tavira to Matalascañas (150 km)

Today was the day of unforeseen insights and some laughter.

The first learing was that boarding the ferry across the Rio Guadiana to get to Spain entailed a time change of one hour – to my disadvantage because of reduced travel time.

Also, instead of listening to music I started increasing my Spanish vocabulary. However, I had obviously downloaded a rather old audio book because there were a lot of words to learn around exchanging money or where to find a telephone cell. This made me laugh out loud. How normal it is for us today to have a shared currency and mobile phones. However, it is not.

Around noon, I had some nice tapas for lunch in Huelva. The second learning happened happened a little later in the huge industrial harbor of Huelva. My navigation system (Komoot) had send me 5 km down a road that turned out to be a dead end and I had to return and cycle back. However, instead of being furious it made me smile somehow. I had had similar situations in other big harbors before.

Then followed the very large national park Coto de Doñano and the third learing. For 40km nothing but pine forest and dunes – but no people or villages. Then I arrived in Matalascañas which is a artificial tourist ghost city the size of a regular village and the last civilization for another 40km. According to Komoot the road would now follow the coast line and would then get to another ferry to Sanlúcar de Barrameda. Taking another route would add another 30-40km because of the detour around the national park. The problem turned out to be, that were just was no road. Not even a trail. It was all covered by dunes. What had been there once was long gone.

Since it was to late for the detour I decided to stay in the tourist ghost town which was really special. I used the gained time and the great scenery for some more drone shots.

Insight of the day: Unforeseen learnings can make you angry or amused. It depends on your state of mind.