I am not made for hot and dry. I was happier on the north coast and in the mountains. I miss trees. I miss other green things. I need to move on. Last night I spent hours planning several options for today.

The first option involved an excellent looking campsite which was either a 2.5 hour drive from where I was or was a 2 hour fast drive then a really nice route through some recommended roads and a really interesting-sounding fortified village. The campsite sounded fabulous, too. But when I woke up, all I wanted to do was GET THE HELL OUT OF DODGE!

Just to be fair, the place where I would have left the highway was the best-looking area I passed. It probably would have been wonderful. As I approached it, and the hills became green and red instead of white, I rejoiced. You can only barely see the landscape in this picture, but I was yelling and howling with joy as I saw green on hills.

Why do people talk about the south of Spain??? It is SO dry and barren. Give me rain and green. I loved the north of Spain. I loved the north middle of Spain. But when I went south, it became a sometimes picturesque but always dry land. At the coast, it’s full of tourist parks and hotels, but they don’t look very appealing. The prices of everything go up, but the ambience has gone down down down.

I have decided that my best bet is to try further into Catalunya. I am at the border now. There is a nice little beach cove near(ish) my campsite, but the water was too cold to swim here. I went to the pool, also cold, but comfortably so. If you actively swim, you warm up just fine. All of the Dutch people here and the Spanish guy in the maintenance room (only time I saw him, so I don’t know his role) thought I was insane.

weird. I took a really nice selfie at the beach, but I guess I deleted it. 😦

There are LOTS of Dutch people in this site. I am getting bad at Spanish again because I keep having to switch back and forth, and I’m not used to it. There’s an English guy hanging out with the Dutchies, and he keeps saying that I should speak “American,” but I think that’s because he doesn’t understand when the conversation goes into Dutch. The woman running the restaurant thinks it’s funny watching me switch languages and has decided to work with my Spanish, which I appreciate. She has also noticed that my right hand is browner than my left hand. I think I forget to smear sunscreen on the right, since I use the right to smear it on the left. 😀

Anyway, as gezellig as this campsite is, it is NOT what I’m looking for. I will move on tomorrow. Hopefully I will find a good base camp tomorrow, and if not, I will move on again.