"Where the hell is everyone?"
spooky town
After already spending a good week in Spain, it's time for a first blog of our Spain-Portugal trip. Our first impression of the north-east of Spain: 'Where the hell is everyone?'. The abandoned restaurants, boarded-up holiday homes in combination with the howling, snarling wind give a spooky atmosphere. Only the enormous amount of parking spaces (with associated prohibition signs for camping) and the yellowed signs of dance halls, crèmeries, crèperies, 'buy 1 cocktail, 1 free', prove that spooky-town is the bustling center for 'a week in the summer'. by the sea in Spain. The extensive facilities leave little to the imagination, how these small villages groan under the many 'tourist bags' during the summer. Now, during the winter there is: nothing, nada, nopes, not a person or a cat on the street, just a local peeking out from behind his window and Dennis, Debie and me. The abandoned villages do give us a nice gift: REST Let that be what we were looking for. The walks along the beach and through the nature reserves are beautiful, even in winter time.
(Fa)alicante
As we drive more south, we notice that the coast is starting to come to life: more and more restaurants are open (if you count the Burger King & Mc Donalds), slow trains drive up and down, there are people on the dike at all! In Alicante we notice a lot of activity on the beach for the first time, old people playing dumbbells, zumba lessons, volley-ballers, beau-gossen parking their Mustang at the beach for a coffee. Alicante is alive! Unfortunately, this seaside resort has already clearly been overrun by the virus of the 21st century: mass tourism. Huge football fields full of rental cars, large camping areas with charging stations and clean lanes and lanes show that this period is only a prelude to the larger work in June, July and August. Many passers-by with scarf and polo around the shoulders have a hard time looking at me when I wash my hair under the foot spray on the beach. Here we are clearly already a class 'higher'. At a kitschy purple beach bar, Dennis and I stare at each other over a piss beer. Get out of here!
The true mobil dream
Despite the many warnings, Dennis and I ventured to park next to the beach a few times. The many reviews on 'Park 4 night' vary: from 'fantastic quiet place near the beach where we stayed for 4 nights' to 'turned away by the police after 2 hours'. You will have to experience for yourself what will happen in the end, with the high hopes that the police are already tired of camper hunting or simply find it too cold to patrol the beach, Dennis and I park ourselves a few times on beautiful places with a view of the sea where the wind gently rocks us to sleep. We have not yet received a fine, but we have been sent away by the police. In some locations such as Alicante there is a tolerance policy: you can park and stay overnight if you don't overdo it (read: maximum 48 hours and no seats outside). Resulting in a large amount of gigantic parking lots next to the beach that are crammed with factory campers or mobile homes the size of a house.
If you think: nice and nice all campers together, then you are wrong. When Dennis Debie parks next to a large mobile home with a Dutch plaque, an old soured man comes out of his door to look us away. Antisocially, he stands with his arms crossed in front of his state-of-the-art bus, whining passive-aggressively about the noise we make as we maneuver our bus a few feet next to his. We take a long walk past the many mobile homes and factory campers in the hope of having a nice chat, but everyone invariably stays in their camper, their TV dishes sent in the same direction everywhere. The couples on board look at us anxiously, hoping we aren't scouting to park our bus next to theirs. The next morning our Dutch neighbor looks at us again angrily as we drive away. I stick out my tongue and smile sweetly.
Viva la montana!
The mass tourism, the large well-known retail chains, the sour mobile home attitudes, the many 'this is not allowed, that is not allowed' signs and warnings push us more towards the mountains. With the move to the interior, the fuss also disappears, the beautifully finished and clean lanes make way for robust roads where the edges have literally been cut, litter over the railings of the mountains and black charred burn marks from the firing. Not always an idyllic sight, but real. A small, steep job led us to an earthly paradise in the Bernia mountain range where we stayed for 2 days (which we normally never do). Pure rest. A vast and wide view makes us look down on the long skyline full of apartments that Benidorm represents: no, we are not going there. The few who pass us Ola'en us kindly. A local has an extensive conversation with us in Spanish, he bravely tries to explain to us with hands and feet that he comes every day to get his water at this mountain tap. This is where Debie belongs. Together with the untouched and breathtaking nature, the fresh various herbs on the top of the mountain, the interior forms a reliable and quiet place for us to travel with the van. Unfortunately: you can't surf inland, so you will definitely find us on the coast, but the real Spanish identity is more likely to be found in the mountains than on the coast!
