Ahhh road trips are a beautiful thing. Last week the 5 trippers rented two cars to embark on an epic journey from Granada, Spain, north to Bordeaux, France then south the San Sabastian and end in Pamplona.
We started off making very good time, we were a few hours ahead of scheduel driving through Valencia, stopping briefly for some Paella by the beach and walk along the coast for a few hours. The next morning we drove to a magical place tucked away in the Pyranees called Andorra. Andorra is a country tucked between Spain and France, which is probably unknown to many people due to the fact that it is one of the smallest countries in the world. The country basically consists of one freeway that is lined with electronic stores and a beautiful mountainous backdrop. All of these electronic stores seemed to have migrated to Andorra for many reasons. I hear electronics love the cool, dry climate, the nice people, and the fact that the Andorra government charges 0% tax on all electronics in the country. So after a lofty 6 hour visit to the country, we continued our journey to France now equiped with a new voice recorder, camera, memory card, 10 pack of CDs, 25 DVDs. Ironically, the one tripper who needed all new electronics and thus was the most excited about our trip to Andorra (Aaron) left the country only having bought a book and a fast food extra value meal (with a beer as the drink).
So, pretty nice road trip so far, right? Its hard to imagine that very soon we would be cursing at French soil and kicking small piles of French dirt. But I digress...
After wasting some time driving in the mountains and hiking the French Pyranees, we finally made our way to Bordeaux. The drive was incredible, we wanted to avoid toll roads so we drove on the smaller rural roads which was amazing. About 70km outside of Bordeaux was started seeing rows and rows of grape vines. Our mouths were salavating, knowing that in a few hours we would be enjoying the previous generations of these grapes, at the Bordeaux fete du vin. Of course the festival was awesome (documentary coming soon) we met some incredibly generious and outgoing french people, tasted some amazing wine, and also went to the most amazing, modern wine bar I have ever seen (which was also quite cheap).
At 9:20 am, 2 July 2006 the trippers began to wake up, sharing incredible stories from the night before, energized from all the fun they have been having the previous few days. They took their time, showering (which, by the way will be the last hot shower we will have available until July 9th) grabbing their last pan au chocolates and eclairs (which I think Brandle has an unhealthy obsession to) before leaving France. Around 12:30 we started to head out of Bordeaux looking for gas stations as we were leaving the city. We first stopped in a small suburb just south of Bordeaux which was a horrible idea since we almost got lost, and the city has absolutly nothing to offer except a crazy van driver who almost backed up into the Nissan (one of our two cars), until Mike laid on the horn, to which the driver of the van stopped momentarily, then continued to back up, giving the poor little Nissan a love tap. Afterwards we headed to a different gas station where Mike was changing gears until our shifter got stuck in one gear. Conviently we were located right next to an autoparts store so Nithin and I mustered up the best french we could think of and headed inside to see if they could/would help us. (around 1pm)Although I had taken many French classes at school, I must have missed the day we covered the vocabulary for ¨We were shifting our car and a gear got stuck. I think something is wrong with the transmission.¨ Among the 4 employees we were talking to, eventually they understood the situation and two of the very very kind employees came out and looked at our car. Deciding, realitvly quickly, that they could do nothing there, they helped us call the Europe car office to see if they would fix it. (Around 2pm?). Phone calls were made, first to the French office, who told us call the Spainish office from the payphone at the mall across the parking lot. We got through and were transferred again and again until someone eventually told us the tow truck was on the way. The next hour and a half consisted mostly of shooting each other with toy guns, eating ice cream and even holding a ¨Chaco Sandal Tan-Off¨ which I´m pretty sure was the first ever sandal tan-off in history.
3:30pm, we see a tow truck driving around the parking lot, we flag them over, and they start to pull on just about every moving part under our hood. After about 10 minutes they say they will tow the car and we need to call europcar to get a new car. We were having difficulties understanding them, and we never saw any offical papers or anything saying they worked with Europcar, so we were a bit reluctant to have them take our car, without having a replacement there. Half of us stayed there to try and explain that we wouldn´t let them take our car until at least we had heard from Europcar, while Nithin and I ran back inside to make yet
another call to Europcar. Well, they said to let them take the car and that just now they were going to send a taxi to take us to the office. An hour passes, we call again and they say they´ll call us back when they know whats going on. No call. Almost another hour passes, and we decide to pack all five of us, and our stuff into the one car we have and we drive back to Bordeaux, mexican style! Oh yeah, and just as we were leaving they finally called us saying that NOW they were sending a taxi, and that we had a replacement car waiting at Bordeaux train station.
It took until 7:30 until we were driving away in our new Volkswagon, because, of course, the lady at the Bordeaux office had no idea we were coming, or what we were talking about.
Well what´s a trip around the world with a few problems?
Labels: france, Ryan Lewis, Spain
Our investigate teams found this video that shows the running from start to finish the day that Nithin and Mike ran with the bulls. If you look closely and in slow motion, you might be able to see us!