The irony of fate

Until some days ago, Tamara and I were vagabonding around Galicia, with no clear plans but to go somewhere East one day soon. After "rescuing" Robin in Oporto and leaving him with Valentina, direction South, we decided to follow Robin's steps backwards into Viana do Castelo and Galicia, and let us inspire by the wonderful people that took such good care of him in the previous days.

Viana was not as nice as we expected though, the festivity was loud and full of gross churrascos. A huge line of stands occupied the whole coastline at the docks, with people selling all sort of crap. A caravan bearing the header Pop Musik was playing loud, fake music while a surreal crowd of people of all ages and sexes stared stupefied in the blinding spotlights at two screens that showed scenes of drunk girls at some mass concert showing their breasts on camera. Tamara asked for leftovers and we dined on free rice, chicken and olives. That night, I left my phone in the car that brought us there from Oporto, but I didn't care. Exceptionally, it was legal to camp inside the city, so we found a nice park next to the river beach and crashed there. When we woke up he next morning, we were hungry. Suddenly, a huge bus with dozens of passengers all wearing the same t-shirt arrived, and they set up a huge camp kitchen, a beer tap, and started eating copiously. While I was staring at them, Tamara got up and introduced herself to them with a big smile. They looked at her with suspicion, but eventually she came back with a plate full of deep-fried crab claws and other things. We still had some bread we got for free the previous night, and olives. That was probably the best breakfast we'd had in a long time.

We hadn't really clicked with Viana and its people, and the beach was too windy, rocky and cold. Leftover fruit and greens at the market were not great. So the next day we set off shortly before sunset. We hadn't really agreed on a destination, but it was clear that eventually we would have had to cross the border somehow, so I just wrote Vigo on the sign and my loyal companion didn't complain. We walked up the hill into the setting sun, wondering if we'd have ever get anywhere that night. I caught up speed, reached the designated gas station, and put down my sailor sack to wait for Tamara to reach me. The sack was leaning against a street light pole, and the sign with it, so Vigo was basically almost completely hidden by the pole... I then started jumping like a monkey, with my t-shirt over my head, to cheer up my travel buddy, when suddenly a car pulls over, and stopped right next to my sack, without driving further into the gas station. A guy came out, smiling, saying, in Spanish with a French accent, something like I have to move some things to the trunk, you guys can sit in the back. I stared at him astonished, and Tamara, that was still many meters away, probably too. It was very unlikely that anyone would ever read the sign, since it was half hidden, but not only did they see it, they also stopped while we were not hitchhiking (and I was jumping like a drunk monkey)! We jumped in. His Galician girlfriend was driving, and they met while he was hitchhiking to a festival in Andalucia; I always pick up hitchhikers, she said proudly, and he said that that was the first time he picked up people rather than being picked up himself, and passed us a joint. I love this kind of rides, karma, connection. They knew exactly where we could spend the night in Vigo, and dropped us off at a huge park in the centre.

Still, we were hungry. So we walked into town looking for fresh dumpsters. We checked some, and a pizzeria for mistake pizzas and such, but we could find nothing. It was 11 p.m., cold and the city was desert. We sat around for a while around the entrance of an underground mall, until we heard some voices. A couple with dreadlocks and a dog were working on a dumpster just down the huge stairway, where we hadn't been. I went down and went like hola! hay algo de interesante aquí?, that was immediately counteracted by the girl with a stupefying sei italiano?, which sounded a lot more like a statement than a question. She told me she had a van and was going to drive to Italy soon. I started fantasizing about getting a 2000km ride from there to Milan, and parted from them with a bag full of packaged tuna sandwiches fresh from the day, perfect apples, and orange juice. We ate, made supplies, and crashed in a corner of the park that looked like a huge bed of fallen leaves, where we slept like babies.

The next day, we ate some more sandwiches and hitched to the beach with a guy that lived most of his life in Argentina, Calabria and India. He was a fisherman there, a boat mechanic here, and a drummer in India. One of those short encounters that can inspire you for weeks. The sea was as clear as spring water, the sand was white. A lady from a frutería gave us a big bag of ripen fruit. We ate some more tuna sandwiches, met the rasta couple again, I was not going to get a ride to Italy, alas. We crashed again in the park.

Some days later, after mixing with pilgrims in Santiago de Compostela, getting introduced to a whole village during a Queimada in the middle of nowhere, and meeting with Ana, my former flatmate in Reykjavík, and her Icelandic boyfriend Óttar, and receiving outstanding hospitality from her and her family, we ended up at a road restaurant outside Foz. Hitching was slow and boring, and it was already quite late in the day, after long time waiting in the morning to get out of the middle of nowhere where we were. We found a ride for one on a truck to Oviedo, Tamara went. I was alone, somewhere in Northern Spain, and little traffic. I walked to the highway and found another hitchhiker, a local, that was going to Basque Country to look for a job. He offered me to hitch with him, which would have been fun, but I decided to go back to the restaurant and ask more people. Almost immediately, I asked a couple for a ride to Oviedo. The lady threw me a friendly glance that I really liked - she then threw the same glance to her husband, who consented. She crawled in the back seat and fell asleep, while I was condemned to an endless conversation spacing from travelling, cold vs. hot countries, politics, health, psychedelic mushrooms, alternative agriculture and ethnobotany, all the way to Bilbao. I got off the car that I was completely exhausted, but also happy about the 400km ride. I tried to hitch a ride to Vitoria-Gasteiz, without success, then tried to find a place to sleep in a thorny orchard where there was no flat ground, and eventually fell asleep somewhere quiet, until the rain woke me up at maybe 5 am.

The plan was to find a ride to Barcelona, and either spend there one night or take the ferry to Italy, that was leaving that same day at midnight. The ferry was expensive though (50€), impossible to hitch, and I knew quite well that I would've never made it to be back on time in Amsterdam if I had gone via Italy. I tried from 7 in the morning until 2 in the afternoon, from multiple spots, always with a sign and my thumb, to hitch a ride to Miranda de Ebro. I could find none. I grew very tired and demotivated. When I reached my last hitching spot, a gas station in Etxebarri, I realized I had to accept my fate, instead of fighting it, and give up my plans about Italy. After 20 min from this realization, I asked a car that was indeed going to Catalunya. It was 3 in the afternoon, I could have made it to the ferry. That was a big temptation, but I didn't betray what I had just realized, so I turned down the ride. The next people I asked were a nice old French couple and they gave me a stupendous 150km ride into France, until the perfect service area. It was there that, while I was looking around, my ride arrived and parked right in front of me. It was a Belgian van bearing the weird xerography L'origine du prénom du nom de familie. I walked to meet the driver. He was alone, the van was really full, but I saw there was some space in the front. I opened my arms wide, with my last forces I exhibited the best trustworthy smile I was able of, and said bonsoir monsieur! vous allez en diréction de Bordeaux?

We talked and drove for long hours, in my broken French, and then in English, until we stopped at a cold service area before Paris, and slept until 7:30 the next morning. I didn't want to cross France again, that's why I preferred going to Italy instead, but fate provided me with an amazing ride across all of it. The driver and I connected very well, and the next afternoon I was in Bruxelles. Two more rides, the last one with a crazy Indian driver that checked my passport and asked what was in my bag before taking me, and I was in Amsterdam. I still couldn't believe it. My crazy driver drove me to a coffieshop to celebrate with me my fortunate and unexpected comeback, and got me incredibly stoned. All this had to be.