After breakfast at the Rocade, we checked out of the hotel. This was quite an involved process that included the puppy trying to eat Jen's fleece. She extracted it from his mouth, but not without him leaving a couple of holes in the garment. We headed south, and as soon as we started climbing into the mountains the sky cleared and we saw the sun for the first time in what seems like months. The road took us from ~200m in elevation in Pamiers to a pass at about 2000m. The views from the road were stunning, with vast fields of powder just waiting to be poached. Jen and Witt were longing for their skis.

After crossing into Andorra and over the pass, we drove through several small ski villages, one of which boasted the "Aspen bar" and the "Colorado Tex Mex grille." We thought that we could sell our Colorado license plates for quite a bit here! We descended through the decidedly unattractive city of Andorra La Vella and entered Spain a short while later. One of the attractions of Andorra is that it doesn't have any sales tax, which is pretty significant when compared with the 19.1% charged in neighboring France. Diesel was selling for 0.56 Euros per liter ($1.69/gallon), as compared with 0.90 Euros ($2.72/gallon) in France. Needless to say, we filled our tanks. Even so, a full tank cost us about $65.

Our first stop in Spain was La Seu d'Urgell where we had a quick picnic lunch of the bread and cheese we bought in Paris. It was great just to be able to stand in the sun! After lunch it was back to the motorway and on to Barcelona where we picked up the Mediterranean coast. We picked a town at random and pulled off to find a place to spend the night. Peñiscola is a resort town during the summer, and in January we had a hard time finding an open hotel. We eventually got a room for 100 Euros for the four of us that has a huge balcony facing the sea. And, for an extra 5 euros (for all four of us) they let us poach the buffet set out for the senior group staying at the hotel. The food wasn't great, but for 5 euros, who cares? It was great seeing the mountains and snow this morning and falling asleep to the sound of waves crashing tonight!

We spent the day on the Spanish autopiste along the Mediterranean coast. The green truck has developed a disturbing shudder in the steering at about 55mph. We'll need to look into that at some point. We drove until almost dark and stayed at a roadside hotel. Each hotel room was equipped with it's own garage (kind of scary), but of course our vehicles would not fit.

We started the day imagining that we would be in Africa by evening, so we spent some time at the hotel filling up our water tanks.

The autopiste ended shortly after we started this morning, leaving us on a secondary road that hugged the coastline and passed through many seaside towns. It was much slower going, but more attractive. We stopped in one such town and had the oil changed in both trucks. Afterward we found a beautiful spot for lunch overlooking the Mediterranean. We drove on to Marbella where we stopped to have a look at the wheel alignment on the green truck. It was out of alignment and we spent some time adjusting it. At the same time we found an internet cafe and Graham and Connie went grocery shopping. According to our guidebook, Marbella is the "place to be" on the Spanish Mediterranean coast. We saw lots fancy cars and fancy boats. We ended out staying in Marbella until dark, so we found a hotel just outside town and went out for some Paella.