Spain 🇪🇸 - from the Truck Wash into the Semi-Desert
Sven Walther
Cleaning up first
After some genuinely exhausting days both we and Mammothon need a break. So we head for the area around Lleida - and make straight for a truck wash. We had collected “a little bit” of dirt over the preceding days.
Out near Lleida
The two extremely friendly guys at the wash cannot stop telling us how much they love the truck. That happens to us more or less everywhere, incidentally.
Freshly showered
With a gleaming Mammothon we then spend two nights at a campsite near Aitona - simply to wind down and enjoy the first Spanish tapas.
Two nights near Aitona
Monegros - and a crooked solar panel
Looking for remote places, we push on straight through a storm and into the semi-desert of the Monegros. Once there we squeeze Mammothon into a very tight gap under some trees.
Monegros
The real shock only comes when we open the roof hatch: one of our solar panels is hanging completely crooked. The wind was strong enough to bend the aluminium mount.
The wind really moves through up here
It looks genuinely bad - fortunately it turns out not to be that hard to bend everything back. Another lesson learned: extremely strong wind plus motorway is a rather unfortunate combination.
Monegros
Ebro delta
Central Spain via Madrid, or the coast after all? We ask ourselves that question - and a few Spanish friends along with it.
In the end it becomes a complete change of scene: from the semi-desert of the Monegros to the green Ebro delta.
Ebro delta
We walk right around the L’Encanyissada lagoon, spot countless birds - flamingos included - and find a genuinely good restaurant in the middle of this beautiful nature reserve.
Around the lagoon
This pitch is worth the detour
This free pitch is definitely worth the detour if you are on the coast road. And the funniest part: even weeks later we keep meeting campers who saw us there at exactly the same time. The overlanding world is small.