Water, water, everywhere, but not a drop to drink...

There have been a couple of instances during my cycling on this trip thus far where some item has been seemingly close at hand... but impossible to obtain.

One of the obvious examples is grocery stores. In most towns and cities, even relatively large ones like Granada, supermarkets of all sizes are closed on Sundays (as are most other kinds of shops). This can be very frustrating, as you might imagine...

The first example I ran into while cycling was at a Lidl. Lidl is one of the largest supermarket chains in Europe - I believe it's a German company - and they specialize in low-cost food. I was happy to see one when I arrived in Guadix. However, the packages of food available there were all unsuitable for biking. For example, instead of being able to buy a package of cookies, I would have had to buy a package of three packages of cookies (picture something the size of a large cereal box). Again, a bit frustrating.

But the best example so far was my experience in Ayna, a town nestled on a cliff in a canyon. Of course, at the bottom of the canyon is a river, so it didn't occur to me that the lack of water in the bathroom might not just be a problem with my room... It actually started out as a trickle, enough to wash my hands and face, but soon dwindled down to nothing.

But when I arrived at the front desk of the hotel (which, I must say, at 30€ was much cheaper than I expected, given that my room had a balcony that faced a 1000' cliff), saying 'Tengo un problema', the man already knew what I meant. From what I could put together ('obra', 'el pueblo', 'todo'), the whole town was without water at the moment, and would be for another 45 minutes or so... for reasons unclear except that it had something to do with construction work that was going on.

But alas, after returning from my hour-plus saunter around town, which included stopping at a local tienda and guzzling a coke (as well as checking out an amazing mirador carved from a cliff that was hundreds of years old), there still wasn't any water coming out of the faucet.

Eventually, after I returned to my room after dinner in the dining room at 10 p.m., I finally had my chance for a shower!

The next morning the water was still fine, so I headed off for some breakfast without any concerns, but when I returned to my room, the water flow was tapering off. Knowing what would soon follow, I hurriedly filled my water bottles, and - success! - just barely managed to top them off before the water was finished again.