Oh Deer, another dodgy Hostal!

Well, here I am in a hostal because the camp site, which according the Internet is open all year round, is closed. I had prior warning as I chatted to a Dutch couple at lunchtime who had tried to camp at the same site the previous night, they arrived at the site to be greeted by a sign which said 'Abierto todo el ano' (open all year) – next to that sign was another saying 'Cerrado' (Closed)!

Welcome to Spain!

I rolled into Navahermosa with the good intention of finding some water and heading into the hills to do my first wild camp of the trip. I was frazzled, my bits were hurting and I stopped at the first cheap looking Hostal I saw. It was 20 Euros for the night and it looked like a proper Spanish dive with locals playing cards and dominoes, and rubbish all over the floor so I checked-in.

The first thing I generally do in Hostals is let in some air and light into the room, I opened the curtains, 2 sets of sliding windows and the ubiquitous shutters and the splendour was revealed!

With monotonous regularity I was greeted with a building site, I'd be disappointed if I saw anything else. There was of course a feckin great deer in the yard next door but nothing there to surprise me!

I'd been assured that there was WiFi in the hotel and there was, but it didn't work. The conversation to resolve the technical issues was interesting and fruitless. The barmaid seemed quite offended that I would suggest they had a problem with their Internet. She drafted the owner in for support and she seemed 'up for a fight' - I wasn't, she was bigger than me!

Whilst on the subject of bar staff, I have the greatest respect for bar staff in Spain, They will be there when I leave the bar at 10:30pm (Claire may read this) and they are there again when I go for breakfast at 8:00am. They do everything, serve drinks, coffee, food, sweep the floor and everything else, usually single handed, you rarely see a Spanish barman/woman not doing anything.

I'm the last customer in the bar tonight, purely in the pursuit of updating my blog of course. As is usual I haven't got a clue where I'm heading tomorrow. I'll have a look at my road map sheets before I go to bed and see what's south of here. There have to be more building sites to discover as I inch ever closer to the Med?

Ps - there was something on the menu called Venado, I asked what it was, I should have known!
I had the Squid.