Jean, whom I know from my time in the Maldives, kindly let me use her house for R&R (after only 5 days on the road) while she is working in Dubai. The mountains (former coral reefs) that tower over the town are stunning.
Sadly my attempts to ‘engage’ with several of the local English community came to nothing. I blame my slight ‘Orstralian’ accent which I expect puts me in the ‘colonial’ (rather than English) camp now. So I settled in for another night without any company. At least I have my blog to attend to and a decent book to read. And I get the opportunity to try to fugure out where all my data went that I backed up onto my external hard drive before I left.
STOP PRESS: After several visits to the only bar in the village, I stumbled across several of my compatriots who quickly dispelled my earlier fears - all funny English accents accepted apparently. What did strike me as odd though was that none of them seemed to have much of a command of Spanish. I felt quite smug.
I didn’t realise before how lonely solitary travel can be. I realise now I’m not cut out for it. Whatever came over me when I thought to ‘stealth’ camp alone. Come to that whatever came over me when I thought to travel such long distances by bike alone. I didn’t realise I was such a ‘people person’ before. People may disagree of course.
So the day went well, my clothes freshly washed, a decent bed to sleep in. And my mobile phone internet is now working.
But I won’t stay long. I need to salvage the key bits of trip having wavered from my original plan so far.
An oddly no one seems to miss me or email me. ‘Alec’s gone off on one again so just leave him be’ seems to be the general view. Ahhh.
