Paris Dakar Stage 15 to Nuévalos

Stage 15 of 60, Day 18 of 71: 125.7 km, 1651m, 5:34, 281 shifts, ave speed 22.6, max speed 58.4

After a pretty loud and bright thunder/lightening storm in the night, we had a civilized 8am breakfast.

We headed out of Zaragoza, mellow pace. I led for a while until Wytze took over and increased power. We were on a lightly travelled road, paralleling a main highway, but it wasn’t really scenic or special. Some stopped at a town at 48 km; I continued a bit more with Suzanne, and we passed through a couple of little villages that seemed to be mostly about wine making. We passed lots of grape vines, some still with grapes, others having been harvested. We stopped in a little town for bananas and snacks, the continued up the hill. There were a couple of climbs to lunch – Ype found another lovely spot with pine trees.

Since I had arrived early to lunch I left early and rode by myself but assumed the squad would catch me. The route went through about five little villages but I learned after the first one or two that it could be ignored and following the main road was quicker and easier.

Finally around 100 km, a friendly hand laid on my shoulder and we were back in the group. We rode together although the guys were really cruising fast on the up hills so I couldn’t quite keep up. But it wasn’t very far until we got to a nice downhill at 120 km to the town of Nuévalos, and don’t you know, we immediately spied a hotel with an outdoors bar. We had a couple of beers each, with olives and chips, then headed toward the camp. We had one last stop at a tiny supermercado to do some gift shopping for our excellent truck driver, Wijnand. It was his birthday today so we knew there’d be a celebration at dinner.

We found the campground and set things up. It was breezy so the wet tents dried quickly. After some soup, snacks and a shower, it was practically time to start serving dinner. We had fun on dinner crew and everyone liked the dinner. We started out with a Cava toast for Wijnand’s birthday. Bike Dreams had 4 bottles and we added a fifth. Then I presented him with our other present: a box of cookies shaped like nun’s breasts. With a severe/strange looking nun on the box. Dessert of course was a bunch of chocolate birthday cakes which we ran around serving. Then another epic round of dish washing.

Many people agreed the day was harder than the numbers might suggest. Quite a bit of the route had bumpy pavement and there were headwinds for a large part of the afternoon ride too. Well, we all made it and now get to sleep and do a similar day tomorrow.