Having started in the autonomous region of Castilla-León, we headed south from Mérida through the autonomous region of Extramadura towards Andalucia. Saturday was an early start in the dark as we made our way through the mostly deserted city to N630, a newly paved beautiful traffic free road, largely made redundant by the A66, think I-5. South of the city after nearly an hour we were treated to a beautiful sunrise and the 50'F temperatures started to rise with the sun. We breakfasted near Viafranca and treated ourselves to juevos and jamon with delicious roasted bell peppers. Gerb was on the hook for payment. We rotate payments with each of us in turn paying for everything up until approximately 125 EUs are spent when the next guy takes over. Sancho rides free.
We made a side trip to Zafra, our first white village. Zafra means "cute white town perched on top of a ridiculously high mountain" in spanish. We coffee'd in the town plaza with a really nice bartender and his wife who gave us lots of local colour and history. A little (seriously, maybe 4'6") lady took us aside to the Plaza Pequeña, conveniently located next to the aptly named Plaza Grande, and showed us the official meter, carved into a large corner column in the square. It took even our spanish speakers a long while to figure out what she was trying to tell us. She was delightful, as were the 3 lovely nuns Laurie engaged in halting conversation in his version of spanish.
We carried on looking for a local farm road but Daryl's GPS took us back to the main road instead. It did, however, give us accurate turn by turn instructions out of Zafra. what we have learned is that for every tough climb, there's a nice downhill coast on the other side. Overall we've dropped 3500' since Alba and feel sorry for the northbound bikers. Later we stopped in another white village, Fuente de Cantos, a small little place. We just head for the biggest charch in town, and thats where the main plaza will be. on arrival we were hustled by a 6 year old urchin, who lead us behind the church to his mom and dad's restaurante, where we had a fabulous Menu Del Día, 3 courses plus drinks for 8.50 EUs.
We pressed on through the 93' heat and finally pulled into the only hotel in Monestario where we aced out two pilgrims and got the last four rooms, 28 EUs each including dinner and a picnic lunch to go. 116 kms overall. 93' seemed positively pleasant compared to our 99.1 in the desert day. Did i mention the buzzards that circled us in the desert. Truly.
Laurie's bike broke and desperately needed repair. A conference determined that cutting of a plastic disk might solve the problem. Laurie, the onlu one to regularly attend church, began the repair and soon hacked off part of his finger instead of the disk. Ross and Daryl doctored the bike while Grady doctored the finger, declaring stiches were needed. Grady walked an ashened Laurie to the local Urgencia where Grady handed over to a NURSE (yeah!!) who patched up the damage sin suturas, no charge. On returning to the hotel Ross and Daryl commandeering the local bike shop owner into opening up the store and fixing the bike, no charge. Dinner on the patio with a table of Brit pilgrims walking the El Camino, and off to bed in our 8'x8' rooms, seriously. On first viewing his room, Grady remarked "no cat swinging tonight, boys". Early next morning in the dark we headed for Seville, a mere 100 kliks away............
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