Had a delightful breakfast with fellow bikers, Jens & David from Denmark who had just come from where we were heading.

We traded war stories and each advised the other what to expect for the next couple of days.  We already knew we had a tough day ahead of us, so we pulled out at nine o’clock to a very brutal headwind.  Our first five miles was supposed to be the easy part, as it was the only flat spot for a very long stretch.  The climbing was long, slow and hard.

At our first tunnel we could feel the wind whipping through, making sprinting through the tunnel impossible.

Motril is the beginning of what they call “Costa Tropical” because of all the greenhouses; we heard the nickname is “Costa Plastico” We had been warned that the terrain would be filled with plastic covered greenhouses.  So at every bend we had the view of the beautiful Mediterranean or hillsides with plastic reflecting in the sun.

There were a few towns that managed to escape the plastic. This was a particularly pretty cove as was this one and this one with no road or walking path in/out, though the deer (bottom of picture) managed to find a way.

Our only break from the wind were the small towns we ventured through, note the steep rock on the left.  Since the interstate was not complete for this stretch, we shared narrow roads with cars and trucks.Three hours on the bike and we’d only managed to do 20 miles, twenty very hard miles.  Our wonderful break at lunch was sitting at the edge of the Mediterranean enjoying the view

but we could also feel the wind pick up; great, as if the 20 mph we had been facing all morning was not stiff enough.  But we still had a lot of miles to cover…..all up hill and into the wind, literally.  Unfortunately, the views

were still covered in plastic not that we took many pictures after lunch.  The climbing continued for three more hours with not much relief on the downhills; half the time we had to pedal downhill just to make forward progress.  The relentless headwind was full-bore on the roads that hung on the edge of the mountains we were climbing.  By 3:30 we’d reached our last peak and could almost see our pillows in the distance .

Our plan had been to have our last 20 miles flat as a reward for the mountains we knew we would be climbing.  But the incredible head wind was torture.  There was no place to hide from the wind (except behind Jerry), but there was also no place to stay at this point and there was no way to pitch a tent in this wind, so somehow we plowed on; there was what we thought to be a town ahead.  We found a fabulous two room apartment with a beautiful view and a washing machine (not in order of importance).  It was 5:15 in the evening and we’d been on the road since nine in the morning, six and half hours sitting on a bicycle….We Were Done!

BRUTAL.  As we look at the pictures from today, we wonder why they do not convey the pain we endured.  But at the end of the day, all we can rememeber is how brutal it was.  That is, of course, until dinner, which we start with some of the best calamari we’ve ever had and at least two baskets of freshly baked bread. Dinner was great too, but we’d eaten half of it before we remembered to take a picture.  We toasted our 54 BRUTAL miles and went to bed.