So I left my wonderful couch surfing host Lia’s house early on Tuesday, though not as early as I wanted to due to alarm failure. By 9:30 I was in my spot, with my sign for Sete, and felt like it was a good start. Twenty minutes in, however, a girl passing by informed me that this was not the way to Sete, and that I should go to some other highway (one I was not familiar with). I actually knew that there were two routes to Sete, and I was on one of them, in fact the one that google maps suggested, but I would have felt foolish to remain standing there when all the locals knew that it was not the normal route. So I headed in the vague direction she pointed and looked around desperately for signs for the other highway heading west instead of north. I won’t go into the details, but I eventually found it, and it didn’t begin close to where I had started at all. I walked for at least an hour before I had found my new spot, where there was actually a sign that said “Montpellier”, which is right before Sete, which was comforting.
I was happy it was not raining this day, but after a few hours of waiting, I could feel the sun was just killing me, and I was almost out of water. I grew unsure of my hitching spot, until I found a cardboard sign that read “Marseille” on one side and “Montpellier” on the other side. This was a good sign, literally and figuratively, so I adopted it, and held it up for good luck since it had worked for someone else.
As I waited, I grew fascinated with the people I saw walking back and forth on a trail that led somewhere under a freeway overpass. It was like an anthill. I would see these disheveled people, most wearing worn out and obviously found clothes, walk off the trail and onto the streets and disappear for maybe half an hour and then they would return with random objects. They mostly seemed like makeshift building materials. Scrap wood, a door, piles of cardboard, buckets, whatever they could pull together from whatever the streets had to offer. I wanted desperately to see what was going on, or at least more about them. I wondered if these were gypsies, a people I have only heard bits about over the years. They seemed to fit the description of the fringe of city livers straddling a line of a nomadic artistic people with a rich culture, and an oppressed and impoverished homeless people. Eventually one of the guys, about my age or younger, who was wearing a shirt about two sizes two small, with pink glittery writing on it summoned me to the corner to ask where I was going. I showed him my sign and said Montpellier. We hobbled along in conversation for a few minutes before we both realized that this was because neither of us spoke much French. He asked where I was from, and I said America. “Oooh la-la”, he said. “Me, Roma.” So that answered my question that these were indeed gypsies. Now that our origins were established, he felt it was proper to ask me for some money, which I said I didn’t have (well, I had a 20 euro bill). He persisted, as did I. Then he said something that I didn’t understand, but he pointed toward wherever they were living. I imagined that this was an invitation into their living space, but I could not be too sure. Then he asked if he could come with me to Montpellier. This caught me off guard, and I said that I was then going to Sete, then taking a boat to Morocco. I thought this would deter him, but it only seemed to confuse him, and then persist that he wanted to come with me. I think if I would not have been so caught off guard I would have considered it, but at the moment, it just seemed like it would just add stress, and also make it harder to get a ride. If you have been following the news, gypsies are not always looked upon favorably in France.
After he left, I regretted not asking to see their home, but it was too late because I was almost immediately picked up. He wasn’t going far, but after 5 hours of standing in the sun, I was happy to be on the road.
He dropped me off at a roundabout, which had a snack bar (looked like a taco truck) tucked away off the road. I considered going there because all I had eaten was a bit of saucisson, but before I got a chance, the car pulling away from it was stopping to pick me up. And he was going all the way to Montpellier! And he was listening to Rihanna!
The boat from Sete was supposed to leave at 7:00, so I knew it would be a long shot to get there in time. We would getting to Montpellier just before 6:00, and Sete was another 20 or 30 minutes away on a different road. My ride did not think I had a chance, so I decided to point my thumb toward Spain, and try to get to Barcelona overnight.
I was dropped off in a truly terrible spot, so I walked along the highway for about a kilometer and a half (dangerous, yes) because there had been a sign for a tollbooth in a kilmoter. I don’t know what happened, but it was not there. So I got off the freeway and hit the nearest onramp for the highway in the direction of Barcelona. The only problem was that for all the traffic getting onto the freeway, they were all going east, while I wanted to go west. At one point I counted cars for about twenty minutes, and there was a 27:1 east to west car ration.
At 9:00, having still not eaten, or refilled my water bottle, and needing to pee, I walked to the nearest gas station, assuming that I could complete all these tasks while also getting some badly needed road information. I purchased a ridiculously over-priced tiny sandwich (there was no price tag) assuming that this would get me rights to the bathroom, water filling and road information. No bathroom, no water, but I did find out that the tollbooth was about two km further down the highway. It seemed like my only hope.
A long walk back to the freeway, then a long walk along the highway in the dark, and as expected, she had underestimated the distance. After 20 minutes of walking I arrived at the first sign saying that the tollbooth was in 2 km. I took comfort in knowing that they would at least have water and bathrooms as they always seem to. In this process, I found out that I walk, with my pack on, about 1400 steps per kilometer. Very useful information. Truck drivers would occasionally honk at me as they passed, though I am not sure for what purpose. To let me know they were there? I knew already, this just scared the hell out of me every time. It was probably to tell me to get off the road, but maybe if a truck driver ever stopped to pick me up I wouldn’t be so desperate as this.
When I got to the tollbooth I was horrified to see that there was no rest stop portion, nor a good (safe, visible, or legal) place to hitch from. I gave it my best shot, and after a couple hours, very close to what I had designated as my sleeping time, 1:00, a small diesel truck stopped for me. There were two guys, who were speaking Spanish, a relief to me, and an even bigger relief that it was not Spain Spanish. They were from Peru and Ecuador, and the three of us were delighted to have met fellow Americanos. This was actually very comforting, and it seemed like a familiar face in this long and depressing night. Their names were Alberto (the more personable driver), and his companero, Juan, or as Alberto called him “Yackie Chan”, for obvious reasons. It felt good to be speaking a second language and having it actually work, plus these guys were just typical fun-loving Latinos just loving life. I had expected to sleep immediately, but I easily stayed awake for at least an hour and a half. They were transporting equipment from Germany. They said they could drop me off at a town near the border, because they were going to sleep before heading on to Barcelona. Eventually, though, they offered for me to sleep in the back of the truck and then take me all the way to Barcelona the next morning. Sounded perfect to me.
They woke me at about 8:00, and I was still excited to have not had to sleep in the grass on the side of the highway the night before. They even cooked me a breakfast of rice and tuna, which was surprisingly amazing, though I was surprised that they weren’t eating. I offered to share, but they insisted they would get something on the road. They also insisted that I have one of their Beck’s beers that they had brought from Germany. Might as well enjoy the rambling life!
Alberto had a unique creative streak and improvised a plane from a bottle and some cardboard.
An hour and a half later, they dropped me off in a suburb of Barcelona and gave me the warmest wishes for my travels. This will be one of my more memorable rides, with some memorable guys.
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