Day 49 - Vera to Almeiras

I successfully woke up when my alarm went off at 5am. The reasoning behind getting up so early was to give everything a good charge at a socket that I had seen last night and continuing with the cable tie bike model. The others inevitably ended up getting up late and having coffee when in the petrol station cafe so we ended up leaving at more like 8am than 7. Michelle was clearly tired after the hilly day yesterday and soon fell behind. It turned into another hot day with very little wind. It was relatively hilly, although not as bad as yesterday. The landscape was more baron than ever in the late morning/early afternoon - the feeling of isolation was fantastic. We were just south of the Sierra Nevada mountains and I remember stopping at a tourist information hut in the middle of nowhere whilst waiting for Michelle. I sat on the concrete floor outside the hut in the shade with nobody around except me and the woman who was working in the hut. She didn't care that I was sitting there. After about 15 minutes Michelle caught up and after a quick break we pushed on. We caught up with the others at a petrol station a while later. It was the first place to buy food/water we had seen since setting off what must have been at least 3 hours ago so we had a decent break here. After leaving the petrol station we were soon onto a major road and back to civilisation for the rest of the day. I can't remember anything significant that happened between here and the end part of the day. About 10km before we were due to finish (according to Tom's cycle computer) we stopped at a petrol station at the edge of a beach town to get a last bit of food and decide what to do. We opted to sleep on the beach and after a relatively quick break we made our way the last few km's through the town to find a suitable spot on the long beach. It wasn't dark yet so the beach was still pretty busy. The others went to a bar or restaurant on the beachfront. I wanted some alone time so went a bit further along the beachfront to find a quieter spot. I cooked up some more rice before it got too dark and ate this ate this before making myself a flat surface to roll out my sleeping mat and got ready for bed. The lads turned up around this time and joined in getting ready for bed. We agreed a 7.30 leaving time. Michelle joined a bit later after a lengthy phonecall and we informed her about leaving at 7.30. We were all in our sleeping bags by about 10.30.