Day 13: Aljucen to Merida

March 2, 2025

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One of the great features of our Casa Rural was the heater. Even though this is Spain, it is chilly enough that heat is really critical. With the heater, we passed a very comfortable night. The setting that worked best for us was 22 degrees, which we again note is the default temperature of our Volkswagen eGolf. Quite some research may have gone into that choice. In contrast, at Ibis Budget they were suggesting 19 degrees. They must either be younger, or driven to save money (theirs, not ours) on fuel.

The Casa Rural also won favour again for the quality of it building materials. The photo below shows the bathroom sink, which has a ceramic tile backsplash in part, and also glass tiles on the side. But the mirror was most impressive - built in with coloured framing tiles that are mated to the backsplash tiles.

Similarly, the steps leading to our room are tile, while the wall beside is solid stone. The tiles are nibbled to mate with the stone, and the joint is caulked. Readers who are into home reno will recognize that this is good work. In Europe, on the other hand, it is not so likely this was done by the owner. More likely this is the work of a tile and stone craftsman.

Another feature of our place was that the corridor downstairs seemed to stretch on forever. That is, the building presenting such a humble face to the street is actually huge. This is another Spanish characteristic - the fact that gardens and courtyards, pools and other features are not visible from the street. It's the opposite of "curb appeal", that operates with North American real estate.

Down the corridor and out onto the street, the appearance is the mentioned humble approach:

We spotted this raptor in the sky right away. Based on its tail and the colour we were able to extract from the photo, it's a Black Kite. That's a new one for 2025, but we had already seen it at Coimbra, Portugal last year.

Our starting temperature was 9°C, which is cooler than our official minimum for happy cycling. We put on almost all our clothes for the event. Dodie, however, needs short fingered gloves to control the GPS. With my poorer circulation, I was suffering even with quite insulated long fingered ones.

We quickly got back onto N630, and especially with this being Sunday, we encountered other riders enjoying the road. They were all lycra warriors. On the other hand we have only seen one pair of touring cyclists so far.

Dodie continues to distinguish herself, by being able to spot camouflaged birds on the ground or in trees, at a distance. Take for instance this very distant Northern Lapwing:

The region we were passing through was mainly unpopulated. But like in France and Germany, you can often observe an entire town in the distance, clustered around its church. Pictured below is one such a case. Unlike in France, for instance, the churches tend to be hulking, lacking elegant spires, let alone twin spires.

Some birds continued to pop up for us as we cranked along. Below is what was a very distant and dark one that we thought was a Rock Sparrow. But now we are reverting to the very common Corn Bunting.

Here is a Western Cattle Egret (on the left!). The authorities often throw curves about naming. In 2023 they split Cattle Egrets into Western and Eastern ones. Eastern ones have a few browner tones at different stages of life.

We only had 15 km to reach Merida, but in that distance we had strong and cold winds. And when it started to rain, cold became an increasing problem. Had we had to go 60 or 80 km on the day, we would have had to take some kind of extraordinary measures. Of course, our rain pants would go on, but beyond that - what?

We rolled up to our hotel - Hotel Zeus - in Merida at 10 a.m., frozen and hungry. We had every reason to expect that they would stick to their 2 p.m. check in time, and had no plan for how to stay alive in that event. Presumably we could find a restaurant somewhere, but we later saw that that would not have been all that easy.

As it happened the desk worker ushered us deep inside the hotel to stash our bikes, said that our room would probably be ready now or soon, and booked us in to the buffet breakfast, that was still ongoing until 11. So we went from shivering in the street, to the breakfast lady carrying over plates of scrambled eggs and bacon while the hot drinks machine spat out potentially endless hot chocolates.

Soon we were on our way to our room, where we could finish warming up, before walking out to see the town.

On our way to the elevator - the Zeus perhaps beats out the Casa Rural for staircases. The one at the Zeus is entirely of marble! In fact the front desk room, front desk, and everything around is straight marble.

Merida turns out to be a fairly plain town, except for it claim to fame - about 25 Roman ruin sites, sprinkled throughout. The view from our almost downtown hotel tells the tale:

Using the hotel's map of the 25 sites, we scratched on a walking route that we could do in the one afternoon. Web sites about Merida describe two day tours, but our game as usual was for a quick spin around. Not that we would bring our bikes for the spin. We were still planning to stay warm, hunched up in vertical walking position.

One more time, a Lumix camera looked at the damp conditions and took itself out of commission. This was the ZS-60 that had theoretically been repaired at Victoria. "Zoom system error" it whined, as we consigned it to the bottom of the clothes bag to reconsider its position. Instead we pulled out a ZS-70, one that Scott had mailed to us. The 70 is bigger and heavier than the 60, inexplicably, since its functions are almost identical. But hey, the 70 is working, at least for now! How ridiculous that we have to carry a rack of cameras just to keep shooting on this little trip.

As we headed out on our short tour of Merida, I decided to leave the Nikon P950 in the hotel room, and to go with the ZS-70. I regretted that a bit, because various distant water birds turned up on the Guadiana River, and better photo quality for them would have been nice.

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Just by the hotel was "Casa del Mitreo" the excavation of a Roman suburban house. The site took the usual form or a protective roof, and an excavation of various walls and floors on display beneath. Frankly, to me it does not look like much, but this sets archeologists hearts a flutter.

Our next site was the Bull Ring, built in 1904. It is a colourful building. Not sure if it is still in use.

We entered the main streets of town, finding them interesting but not spectacular.

We turned a corner, and ran straight into the Temple of Diana. It is very impressive, just standing there amid the ordinary modern houses.

As the sign notes, somebody built a house inside the temple at the end of the 15th century. Shortage of building lots? You can see the house over at the back of temple.

The people in this region are quite taken with wearing Roman style clothing. Here is a store with some selections:

The town of Merida is basically all built on top of former Roman stuff. So here in the middle of a normal street is an illustration of the Roman street that lies beneath.

Here in Merida, as in Caceres, children are turning out in some sort of costumes. At home we associate this only with Halloween, but here in Spring it is some sort of Carnaval season.

One of the most impressive Roman remains in town is the aqueduct. The towers go on for quite some distance, and sort of march through the modern buildings a bit, as they come from the direction of the river Albarregas, which is a tributary of the Guadiana.

Here we see more of the complete aqueduct structure. The towers are linked by arches for support, and of course the water was flowing in the very top part.

Many storks were nesting atop the columns.

This is the Roman bridge across the Albarregas

Some more columns, with the supporting arches between.

We crossed town now a bit, to cut from the Albarregas over to the Guadiana. Again we were in the normal streets of Merida. They actually looked strangely (or not so strangely) like the streets of Merida, Mexico.

This street in Spain could as easily be in Mexico.

A walkway took us down to the banks of the Guadiana. The Guadiana will later be part of the Portugal/Spain border, when it flows South, beyond Badajoz.

This statue was given to Merida in 1997 by the city of Rome. The sign notes that Merida had been called Augusta Emerita by the Romans. This name figured in Brent Irvine's blog about his visit here with his son Alex in 2024: https://www.cycleblaze.com/journals/tour26/

This is the major Roman bridge across the Guadiana here.

Near the bridge, on the east (old town) side, is the Ninth Century alcazaba, Moorish castle. According to the Merida tourism website:

"The purpose of this fortified palace was multiple in nature: to serve as a headquarters for Umayyad administrative offices and as a residence for the local governor. However, above all, it was used to filter access to the city from the Roman bridge, the shelter of the Arab minority during the repeated local revolts against Cordovan power, and the square where troops belonging to the Emir were stationed – either to quell the revolt of the meridíes Mozarabs or to carry out bullying raids in the Christian kingdoms of the North."

From the bridge area we walked to the main square, Plaza de Espana. We found some rather more interesting buildings in this area:

We accosted these costumed ladies, who agreed that some sort of Carnaval was in the works. But they and the dressed up kids were all we ever saw of it.

We walked back from the Plaza de Espana to our hotel, where we eagerly unpacked such photos of birds as we had gathered by the two rivers. The photo quality was not great, but we had fun in our room seeing if we had anything new for the year.

The Gray Heron is European and differs from the Great Blue that we have at home. That make it new for us for 2025!

The big camera would have been very clear with this Cormorant, even at moderate distance.

This distant Graylag Goose is very broken up. But we included it here because eBird often rejects it as an exotic, or something. Here in Merida, eBird seems to like it.

Although this Muscovy duck was clearly frolicking freely at the river, and even had two "anchor children" born here, eBird drop kicked it from our list. They branded it an "Exotic Escapee". It needs to be careful not to get deported to its native Mexico.

Tomorrow's forecast is for 7°C and rain. Tune in to see how or if we make it through. The rain is still forecast for the afternoon, but temperature could reach 15°C to help save the day.

Today's ride: 25 km (16 miles)
Total: 267 km (166 miles)

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