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Sunday, March 26. 2006More Andorra
(written 11/4/06 14:28 Greek time, in Náfplio, Greece)
A slow-ish morning was spent making tea, waiting for the sun to make it over the high surrounding mountains and dry off the tent just a little before packing it up. We drove further up road 3 to the ski resort of El Serrat - along crazy winding roads up and up, parking our car further above sea level that Mt Kosiousco in Australia and getting out for a wander and snow-fight. We had come under ski-lifts and past plenty of ski-runs, and all around us people were rugging up for a day flying down the hill and being dragged back up. It looked like great fun, but neither our budget nor remaining clothing stretched to having a go ourselves, so we soaked in the fun atmosphere, got our shoes very wet, took some photos and then headed all the way back down to Andorra La Vella. Just for some variety, we picked road 2, which took us east out of Andorra, heading for France. There was plenty more places to ski, and some seriously windy roads on the way out. We paid (a lot) to use a tunnel at one point to save some time and dodge some trucks, but opted for the more windy and scenic road at other times. Popping out of a tunnel, we were almost in France. At the border, guards were stopping some but not all people, and we were just left free to drive back into France. Saturday, March 25. 2006Andorra
(written 11/4/06 14:06 Greek time, in Náfplio, Greece)
We have to admit, that our prime reason for visiting the political anomaly known as Andorra was to grab a fridge magnet to add to our collection. This tiny little place (much like Liechtenstein, really) is surrounded by huge mountains and is visited primarily for cheap skiing and the fact that everything is cheap when compared with either France or España. We arrived from the southern road (the only other possibility is the eastern road!), crossed no border check (although people heading out of Andorra were being stopped, presumably to make sure they didn't have too much cheapy alcohol/cigarettes/etc.) and stocked up on cheap fuel. We stopped in one camp ground but weren't really all that impressed and couldn't raise anyone to enquire about prices, so headed further on. Picking one on a quieter road to the north, we headed there, going through the only town of any size, the capital Andorra La Vella. We turned off road 1 and onto road 3, driving north up very steep inclines to Ordino. The crazy road sign-age and road-works made the driving a matter of having very fast reaction times or else finding yourself on the wrong road or driving up one the wrong way! On the far side of Ordino we found Camping Borda d'Ansalonga and waited a little while for the office to open - this time at least it was sign-posted as closed. The girl wouldn't give us a spot by the river, instead lumping us within the huge number of permanent vans, not quite what we had hoped for. However someone had parked in our allocated spot and the girl asked Liz "you like the river?". She told us to go a pick whatever spot we wanted by the river - much more like it! We set up the tent and had a cup of tea and lunch listening to the water go by and being pretty much the only non-Spanish, Andorran or French people there. The surroundings were goregous and the road relatively quiet, but eventually we headed back to Andorra La Vella to see what all the fuss was about. The 8km steeply-downhill would have been possible to walk but the return journey not much to our liking, so we drove instead, parking at a big parking station. We found somewhere for a coffee, noted there must have been a big funeral nearby and then spent the afternoon wandering up and down the shopping streets, pretty much the only local culture on offer. One of the things we could get cheap was photographic equipment, so after trying a few different places and a bit of deliberation, I decided to purchase a wide-angle adapter lens for my camera. The camera itself has a great zoom range, but when you try to take pictures in a plaza or of the insides of a building, for example, it's hard to fit everything in you want. Now, I can just screw this on the front and get much more in the picture. About a quarter of the price that I priced them back home too. We tried to get a couple of beers in a restaurant which had plenty of people in it, but apparently they were closed. We couldn't find a way in and when someone left I grabbed the door before it closed, only to be told they were closed until dinner at 8. "We only want a beer or two" was answered with "We are closed until 8". Most odd, we decided to take our money elsewhere and be done with it. After chatting for a while there, we moved on to one of the many cheap restaurants on Plaça de Guillermó, where we ate well enough. Back to the car, we noted the temperature at the bottom as 14 and I guessed we may loose about 4 degrees by the time we made it back to camping. In actual fact we lost 7, and a few more overnight, but we were warm enough in our little tent and warm sleeping bags, lulled to sleep by the bubbling river.
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