River breeze slides twixt rocks,
Promising something cooler,
Without deliv'ring.
This morning's ride was a beast. Up the mountains immediately... where by "up" I mean "further up." We were already actually fairly high in Barrancos, as we discovered later in the day. Anyway, it was sweltering as soon as the sun breached the mountaintops. In the highlands, there isn't really a breeze.
After a couple hours of murderous climb, we made it to the N-120, which led (thank heavens) along a riverbed. That means that it was both flatter and cooler than the other roads: practically a new ecosystem judging by the suddenly lush appearance of the roadside. It was still not a cool day, though. We still felt like we were melting slowly into our shoes as the day wore on.
Up and up and up we went, all the way to siesta. Siesta for us usually means a fairly relaxed and cool affair of a few hours, of which we spend some eating and some computering and some napping. It's usually too hot to bike, but usually it's alright to walk around and see a bit of whatever town we've stopped in. Today was not like that. Today we could barely step out of the air conditioned supermarket without gasping, could barely touch our bicycle seats when they'd been in the sun. After sweating through lunch, we took an extremely uncomfortably warm nap under a tree in a parklet for several hours. At 18h30, it was still too hot to bike, but we had to.
Fortunately, out of town was down the hill. Essentially our entire afternoon ride was a long coast towards Seville. It whipped up a nice breeze to cool us down, and as the sun began to think about setting we paused in a town called El Garrobo for dinner. We got a fabulous deal on a delicious meal involving butter-fried shrimp, chicken-something, potatoes ali-oli (with garlic and olive oil), and fabulous desserts. Yum!