FROM THE LION'S HEAD
Dear friend:
We got it. Finally, we are in Cape Town. We are about to have dinner and drink a bottle of Constantia wine. From Lion´s Head Mountain, I see far away two oceans and the lights of the city. I feel good but I heard the wind whispering “It is time to go home”. And I know the wind says the truth. It is time to be at home with my people. It is time to speak Spanish again. Someone has asked me why I write these mails in so terrible English, especially when a lot of my friends are Spanish. The reason is simple: I was living this adventure in English and in English I was trying to get by with people. My English is terrible, but is Ok to understand jokes. I felt that I have to tell my trip in the same language I was riding it.
But arrive here was not easy. How we say in Spain: “till the end of the tail, everything is bull” (hasta el toro, todo es rabo). When I was so self confident and thinking the adventure is over, I got sick. Maybe too much relax, maybe something I ate, maybe the hard rain and the cold wind, or maybe all together at the same time, but the fact is that I felt like dying on the bike. Riding was a torture. During the last three days, I have spent more time seated on the toilet and sweating in bed than never before. You can trust me, is not good at all being sick alone in a hotel room 20.000 km away from home and asking you in the dark if it could be malaria, food poisoning, a simple cold or the fucking ebola virus.
The first night in South Africa was a nightmare. In a place I don´t want to remember the name, when I was about to fell down of fever under a heavy rain, I stopped in a dirty petrol station. When I was about to ask for the nearest hotel, a guy asked me where I came from. “From Spain”, I murmured. “Oh, I am Portuguese, we are brothers, you are going to pay nothing. I´ ve been here for 30 years. All of this is mine, No te problema”. I looked at the fat guy and his 9 fingers, I looked around the stinky shop he runs, I looked at the crappy rooms he was kindly offering me, I looked at the suspicious workers who were staring at me with big and ugly smiles, and then I looked at the clouds pouring cats and dogs and I heard the bad wind beating the road. God sometimes uses hard jokes. That night my landlord kindly explained everything about the illegal market of diamonds he runs (no te problema), I had whisky with two other Portugese brothers, and from my bed I heard till the 4 am the loud noise of the crowded pub he also runs. And, of course, in the “no te problema” place someone picked few things from my bike.
We got it. Finally, we are in Cape Town. We are about to have dinner and drink a bottle of Constantia wine. From Lion´s Head Mountain, I see far away two oceans and the lights of the city. I feel good but I heard the wind whispering “It is time to go home”. And I know the wind says the truth. It is time to be at home with my people. It is time to speak Spanish again. Someone has asked me why I write these mails in so terrible English, especially when a lot of my friends are Spanish. The reason is simple: I was living this adventure in English and in English I was trying to get by with people. My English is terrible, but is Ok to understand jokes. I felt that I have to tell my trip in the same language I was riding it.
But arrive here was not easy. How we say in Spain: “till the end of the tail, everything is bull” (hasta el toro, todo es rabo). When I was so self confident and thinking the adventure is over, I got sick. Maybe too much relax, maybe something I ate, maybe the hard rain and the cold wind, or maybe all together at the same time, but the fact is that I felt like dying on the bike. Riding was a torture. During the last three days, I have spent more time seated on the toilet and sweating in bed than never before. You can trust me, is not good at all being sick alone in a hotel room 20.000 km away from home and asking you in the dark if it could be malaria, food poisoning, a simple cold or the fucking ebola virus.
The first night in South Africa was a nightmare. In a place I don´t want to remember the name, when I was about to fell down of fever under a heavy rain, I stopped in a dirty petrol station. When I was about to ask for the nearest hotel, a guy asked me where I came from. “From Spain”, I murmured. “Oh, I am Portuguese, we are brothers, you are going to pay nothing. I´ ve been here for 30 years. All of this is mine, No te problema”. I looked at the fat guy and his 9 fingers, I looked around the stinky shop he runs, I looked at the crappy rooms he was kindly offering me, I looked at the suspicious workers who were staring at me with big and ugly smiles, and then I looked at the clouds pouring cats and dogs and I heard the bad wind beating the road. God sometimes uses hard jokes. That night my landlord kindly explained everything about the illegal market of diamonds he runs (no te problema), I had whisky with two other Portugese brothers, and from my bed I heard till the 4 am the loud noise of the crowded pub he also runs. And, of course, in the “no te problema” place someone picked few things from my bike.
