IN FRENCH LANDS

During the next days we were adapting more and more, and now we want to mark our next destination, so not to go without sense like at the beginning. Until now everything has gone well, but we know that walking and hitchhiking is unpredictable, and sometimes we never know where we are going to end the day. Besides we have started to use Hospitality Club (HC) (This is a club in internet to exchange culture with people in the entire world ; also Couchsurfing (CS) is the same idea ) for stay with the people in their houses, and live together; this is the best way to know a country.

We left Irún by walk, cross the empty border and we are in France! When we cross Hondarribia and arrive at Hendaye, we tried to hitchhike, and we couldn’t be luckier…

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Here we met Enric, who brought us to Pau, and invited us to stay with him at his house.
Have a place to leave our heavy staff it’s a big advantage to visit any place, if not it will be difficult for us.
So, then we went for a walk to know Pau, a quiet city on the foot of the Pyrenees, which we could see with the truce that the weather gave us. We visited the main monuments of the city, the cathedral, the palace… and we back to Enric’s home.
The next morning we left the city by foot, and hitchhiking we met Nacho, a cool guy from Galicia who brought us to Tarbes; then with one more, we arrive to Auch, where for first time we used Hospitality Club; it couldn’t be better, the Mathieu family were very kind with us.
The old city of Auch is medieval stile and here it was born the legend of D’Artagnan.


Like we usually do, walking and hitchhiking we arrive to Tolouse. Nice and big city with beautiful architecture. In the night thanks to Sarah of HC, we went to a nice university party.

A problem that we have is always go out the big cities, like Tolouse, where we needed to walk like 10 kilometer to could hitchhike on the suburbs, as near the centre was impossible.
The rain accompanies us again, in addition of cold; for that the first car which stops we went with the man despite he didn’t go on our way. Unfortunately we were agree with the guy to stop in Auterive, and he left us in that town far away from everything, there were nobody, either buses to go out of there. We hitchhike hopeless, and yes! Somebody brought us to the toll on the highway, where the first car which stops brought us to Carcassonne; we covered this trip in 6 hours when usually it takes 1 hour.

In the city on Carcassonne is located La Cité, a impressive medieval city fortified.

FIRST DAYS

Finally we decided to leave, in spite of the bad weather; though it wasn’t raining too much at the beginning, after half an hour the rain join us during all the day.
We left Santillana del Mar by walk, we went across Puente San Miguel, Torrelavega, and we took the road to La Montaña.


For a while we felt comfortable with the weight of the backpack, we were worry for that before start; anyway when we arrive to La Montaña we decided to try to hitchhike but it didn’t work until we arrive to Las Presillas, where a baker from La Vega de Pas, so-called Joaquín, picks us up, and who gave us some biscuits and a bread.
We continue walking from Sarón, but we didn’t walk a kilometer and the rain started to be very heavy, we had to refuge under small house for a while.
But we had to continue, and again hitchhiking, a Portuguese guy picks us up and brought us to Colindres, where we walked little tired to Laredo.
The day wasn’t really good for the bad weather, therefore we thought to camp in a camping, but everything was close at this season; finally we camp hide on the forest with the sunset.

Next day we felt the effects of the weight of the backpacks, so we decided not to walk a lot and try to hitchhike more, also to cross Spain fast.
We were lucky and brought us to Castro Urdiales a weird man who had discover a effective product against rats mixing old bred with fried sardine… And from here one more to Bilbao, a man who we have to be grateful for his kindness, and his good travel advises, Manu, and for the big lunch that we are going to eat in his honor with his economic help.
Manu left us in a good place to hitchhike, but at this time we weren’t lucky and the rain started again. So we gave up, and we took a bus to Irún, us I said before, to go out Spain soon.
In Irún the rain hits strong again, and we spent the night in a Youth Hostel.

OBJECTIVE

The objective of this travel is not gain a record, or make the round around the world (it won’t be bad) Simply we want to know deeply every place that we tread, to know the people, the culture, the day by day of the life.
We always put as a goal Australia, not for something special, although this country we like a lot; if we want to know well Asia, Australia it is a good place to put the end of the travel.
A motive of why this travel is to escape of this consume society where we live; every day we want more and more and although we don’t want, the wheel obey us to be inside and follow the rules. We want to go out of the wheel, to broke with everything and see that we don’t need all this staff that we believe essential.
During the travel not everything will be nice and perfect, one day we will miss a hot shower, a big lunch full of cholesterol or a simply bed. But we are sure that all this thing will be compensate with the experiences of the day by day; go to sleep one night and don’t know what will happen tomorrow morning.

ITINERARY

Basically the itinerary is showed in the map. But we have to say again that the improvisation it will be always present; so we will modify the route more or less during our way.
The main transport that we would like to use is our legs and hitchhike; anyway we will use for sure buses, train…camel, or any unusual medium that we will find.

PREPARATIONS

If I look back I have to say that one of the guilty of this travel is my parents who showed us the experience of TRAVEL and we are very proud of that.

In our case everything started in a travel that we did to Patagonia on January 2005; this idea it was taking form and the final decision was on August of the same year. So we spend more than one and a half year saving money and preparing everything.
To “prepared” it we majority use internet on travel forum or travelers websites…A part of that we bought some maps: Europe, Northeast Africa and Arabic peninsula, Middle east, India, China and Southeast Asia; we marked on them some possible interesting places to go, depending of the different way that we will take.
We have informed of the requirement of each country, to get the visa, to have a general idea because it changes frequently.
Another of our ideas is to travel always with the best weather; stay with good temperature not only is comfortable, we need to bring less staff on the backpack. For that we supposed to be in winter on countries near or below the tropic, and in summer the opposite.
Resume, we have a general idea of each country that we probably will visited; in a big travel like this, more is impossible to prepare. We have to leave almost everything on the hand of improvisation.

EQUIPMENT

This is the equipment for both:
(We describe the equipment that we are bringing at the moment; at the beginning of the travel it was different, much heavier)

Camping:

-2 sleeping bags
-2 camping mattress
-2 multiuse knives
-lighter
-frontal torch

Clothes: (per person)

-boots
-flip flap
-shorts
-transformer pants
-2 pair of socks
-underwear
-2 shirts
-jacket
-rain cape
-sun glasses

Cleanliness:

-soap
-shampoo
-toothbrush and paste
-towel
-toilet paper
-shave kit
-cotton swab
-tweezers
-comb
-small mirror
-nail clippers
-lip protection
-sun cream

Medical kit:

-cicatrizing
-bandage
-syringe
-thermometer
-purify water tablet
-doxiciclin
-lariam (only in cause of got malaria)
-Ibuprofen
-Tonopan
-Trombocid

Other accessories:

-Digital photo-camera
-4 memory cards
-Laptop
-MP3
-solar charger and adapters
-map of the country or area
-notebook and pen
-Backpack cape for the rain
-needle and thread
-document bag (passport, health card, money, credit card…)
-False wallet (in case of rob)

HEALTH

Following the recommendation of Foreign Health, we have been vaccinated or prevent against:
(I’m writing the vaccination that we already have and are necessary for the travel)

-Hepatitis A and B
-Japanese Encephalitis
-Typhoid fever
-Yellow fever
-Meningitis
-Cholera
-Tetany and Diphtheria
-Rabies