Welcome home. Enjoy your new house...hope it's ready soon! Looks like the bikes may be parked for awhile but hope there is enough snow for skiing. On your next visit to Victoria, if you have time, let's get together for coffee and travel tales.
Merry Christmas

The thing about PCR is that it is a chain procedure. They take the sample and do some magic that multiplies any virus. If they see nothing, they multiply again. After an agreed number of tries they give up and declare negative. Presumably a very tiny load could eventually be multiplied up. Anyway all that takes time, and I presume a very fast answer is a positive. But why our Mexican guys here say up to 48 hours is a mystery.

Al did the booking of the tests. The lab promised results within 12 hours; had it been much more than that, we would have needed to get to Malaga a day earlier. The travel day is hazy but I think we needed a negative test result to board a plane, any plane, although we were focussed on the requirements to enter Canada. People were lined up for tests with their luggage (the testing site was in the airport) but I suspect they didn't need a PCR test.

Thanks for the wonderful tale, Jacquie and Al, and the answers to all our various questions. We are sitting by the computer, now 26 hours since our PCR test, anxiously awaiting the results. We are marveling at how you were able to cut the testing time so close.

Thanks Jacquie!

There was a testing station set up at YVR and they were selecting people randomly(?) for testing. Al also heard someone being given a take-home test. We were just given a sheet outlining requirements to maintain a list of close contacts (and their contact information) and wear a mask in public places for the next couple of weeks.

Too bad about Paris. As you know, the Paul bakeries which are at CDG and everywhere are great quality.

From your description, it seems no one fussed about testing or quarantine at Vancouver or Victoria?

I normally bring snacks too, but it just wasn’t possibly to get any during our rides to our hotel from Antequera on Sunday or to/from the airport on Monday. The hotel was chosen because it was affordable and willing to store our cases for 5 weeks. It had a great place to work on our bikes but its location for other services was awful.

Sorry you had so many issues with your trip home. One thing I’ve learned is to always have a lot of snacks for the trip home.

Hello great to be reading your Spanish journal and re-living our own trip through here. Very good thing you didn't go down that unpaved route! We attempted to go down it but unlike the Andersons it had been raining and we got bogged in mud. We turned around and went back to the main road, but all our apps were indicating we wouldn't be able to access the A4 on our bikes so it was a huge loop nearly back to Marchena and another nearly 20km long goat track to cut across and get onto the A380 only to be greeted with a thunder and lightening storm as we got near to Carmona. I think we did over a 100km that day and one we won't forget!

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Well, we were just kids then. It was 2004, so Rachael was about 45 and I wasn’t even 60 yet.

Kudos to you! We climbed from Malaga to Villanueva on our first day ride but there’s a lot of up after that. The wind was frightening even with some downhill speed.

Yup. We’ve been past here twice now, both times on our way to Antequera thinking we’d bike up into the park. The first time we started in Malaga, and it was too hot and hard for our first day out. The second it was so windy going below El Torcal we could barely even walk safely. Next time though we’ll stay in Villanueva and go up for sure.

Funny, so are we! Nothing like moving goalposts. We now have done our Covid tests and are waiting for the results. Fingers crossed!