[post of
Saturday 8th of September 2012]
We accept
the fact that we won’t find Gabriel’s glasses. After all, it’s only money and
there are few days left of the trip. If we look at the whole month (and the
more than 1,600 km we went through) overall, and the worst thing that happened
us was to lose Gabriel’s glasses, well, we’ve been quite lucky. No big problems
to the wheels, no harsh falling down from the bikes, no broken up radio, no
major muscular injury… yesterday we saw that the Polish couple we meet the
first night at Sakai, the same people who have spent the last three years
cycling around the world, got their bikes stolen in China. So there we go
again, it could be far worse than losing some glasses!
So we have
breakfast, pack our stuff, and off we go again. Today’s plan is to get over the
urban landscape we’ve been going through in the last days, leave at one side
the roads with too much traffic, and to take an alternative route through the
mountains to get to Biwa Lake which, more than a lake, is an interior sea with
salt-free water.
To get to
the huge amount of water enclosed in the mountain, we have to go up-hill
through quite difficult sections of the valley. Gabriel is getting tired but,
fortunately, Ainhoa has brought some Panini with Jamón Serrano [note: typical Spanish prosciutto]… and for
the first time in the trip, it is Ainhoa who’s leading the troupe. She’s got the
heaviest luggage and has to wait for Gabriel at the top of the hills. The
landscape is, again, beautiful. We go up until the lake and we go around an
island for nearly a half an hour until we get to the camping. Like other times,
it’s closed, but this time is locked and chained. We look for a quite place
outside the camping and around the lake, and we lay down the tent. We chose a
lovely spot alongside the lake coast and under the harms of a sequoia that
gives us shelter against the pouring rain.
After
dinner, we have one of the more amazing experiences of the entire trip. We walk
to a shopping centre nearby and get into a gift shop. The inside is simply
unbelievable: unicorn underwear, toilet brush with microphone, ice trays to
make ice cubes in the shape of Alien, a massage machine for the nose, an action
image of Albert Einstein, a vinyl with the soundtracks of the most popular
videogames… and much more!
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