30 hrs hitchhiking non-stop have brought me an amazing 2005 km (1246 miles) in the past days. I left Madrid on Monday at 3pm (I just couldn’t wake up earlier ) and arrived downtown Brussels on Tuesday at 9pm. I travelled at an average of 67 km/hr which is really fast, specially with the experiences I’ve lived on the way.

It wasn’t very hard to get on a car on the A2 in Madrid direction Barcelona, so I didn’t wait for more than 10 mins and I was on my way. An guy from Ecuador that had lead a protest fighting for immigrant rights in Spain was the first to pick me up. After a while I was riding with a truck driver that would take me all the way from close to Madrid to Barcelona. He was nice and we ended up talking for hours, several more as we ever expected. Traffic jams troubled us in the first half of the trip. After the 45 min break a big accident blocked the highway and all trucks were speaking on the radio and telling everybody to turn back, to use the alternate route because the Guardia Civil had closed the highway for 5 hours… so there we go, 30 kms in one direction and the 30 kms back and then back again… but it wasn’t so simple. Hundred of trucks all turning around in towns that have surely never seen so many trucks in their life. Ok, ok… it was me who never saw so many, but incredibly many trucks in my life. All gathered there, around, everywhere. The roads were blocked, the line of trucks in front and behind seemed not to have an end. The sides where full of trucks making their mandatory break or using the opportunity to sleep for 9 hrs… era la insuspicia aquello! (¡¿que tal Oliguardi?!). After an hour we were rolling on the alternate highway… just to find us going at 10km/hr most of the time. It was after midnight when we arrived somewhere before Barcelona.

At around 1 am I hitched a ride with a German truck (Wirtz) and 23 tons of frozen strawberries. I rode with him all night long until noon and past Lyon. He had some great stories… drove the famous trash people to Barcelona for example.

Took a car with Turks and Italians, then a British couple, then a Polnish driver in an Irish truck ending somewhere next to Brussels where a Morrocan insisted on leaving me at the train station in Brussels with a ticket in hand to Rotterdam. How’s that for a ride? Yes. Long.

PS. I forgot to say… the scenery was fantastic. The north of Spain and the south of France is breathtaking. I crossed the Greenwich meridian at night and they had lightened a bridge marking the spot in Spain provoking a nice feeling when passing under it. Umm… what else? I’m tired now.