18th June - Bilbao

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The El Greco campsite in Toledo generously laid on a live band last night.  This being Spain, of course, they played until quite late in the night, and were pretty loud, so neither of us got to sleep at a reasonable time.  So when the alarm went off this morning, it was promptly silenced.  With one thing and another, we left at 10am, having filled up with fuel from some of our remaining jerry cans.

Another long day of driving isn't much to write about.  It was hot, it took a long time, the scenery was quite nice.  You do notice that the Spanish roads are still large and empty though.  There was an element of irony when I emptied our last jerry can of fuel into the truck, then a couple of hours later nearly ran out of fuel because we couldn't find a petrol station.  I'd have been a bit peeved if we'd run out of fuel, having carried 220L of spare fuel around for the last 15,000km!

We had decided to treat ourselves to a hotel in Bilbao.  Partly because we've been living in a truck for three months, but also as a birthday present from me to Nicki, as she'll be in South America for her birthday and Christmas.  We drove into Bilbao looking for something about 4*, with parking for the truck.  Anybody who knows Bilbao will know that space is at a bit of a premium here, so parking is limited, and all the hotels have underground parking, which are totally useless for us because we can't fit.  We stopped at a couple, and the second one suggested we go to a hotel near the stadium, because there's on-street parking there.

We ended up at the Hesperia Zubialde, which was exciting for a number of reasons.  Firstly, they have a parking area outside which we fit in, and we can use because there are no matches on at the stadium.  And it's free.  Secondly, the room has a BATH!  And a TV!   And Air Conditioning!  It might be hard for anybody who hasn't lived in a 20' truck for three months in African heat to realise just how exciting this could be for us.  The clincher is the free wireless internet access.

So we're tuned into CNN and Nicki's in the shower while I'm writing the blog.  Tomorrow we'll explore Bilbao.  But let me tell you more about the exciting things you'll see on the blog over the next few days!  Can you contain yourself?

I'm currently uploading a couple of videos to Google Video, of some of our truck antics in the desert.  Once these are published by Google I'll post a link for your viewing pleasure.

We've compiled a list of useful stuff to know, the sort of stuff it might have been useful to know in advance, and also some random stuff we just felt like saying.  This'll be posted in the next few days.

Next is our Country Rating Chart.  We've rated the countries we've visited, totally subjectively, on 30 different attributes we could think of, from the quality of the bread to the loudness of the Muezzin.  Adding up our scores gives a ranking for each country.  Will Gambia take the crown?  How will the rank outsider Western Sahara bare up?  Find out soon!

And, saving the best until last, we've spent a while compiling a BOOK out of the blog entries, maps of where we went, lots of photos and other exclusive bits and pieces!  We'll make this available as a free PDF download by next weekend.  It's really aimed at family & close friends but anybody is welcome to download a copy.

Right, I'm off to have a bath, because I can.