It continued strange to see the reflections of the flood emergency, but not to be in the thick of it. For example, sitting in the breakfast room at the NH Hotel, with our 10 jammer luxury food selections, we read on BBC that 10,000 troops have been sent to the city, and that the streets are closed, to permit free movement of emergency personnel. Yet looking out the window, we see traffic as normal.

It's quite disconcerting. The town of Paiporta is mentioned as an epicentre of the flooding, where at least 62 people died. But Paiporta is fewer than 10 km by bike from where we sit right now! Maybe the difference is the Turia River, that lies between us and there. In fact, maybe the Turia was part of the problem. It was re-routed out of the city after it flooded in 1957. Perhaps Paiporta and nearby Alfafar, both south of the revised river course, were the new victims of that flooding.

We read in the news today that the king and queen of Spain, together with the prime minister, came to Paiporta today, but that they faced hostility from people who felt that the government response - both for advance warning and then rescue - had been inadequate. They got mud thrown at them and the prime minister had to be evacuated from the scene. 

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We have some time before hopping a taxi to the airport hotel. It's a taxi that we have been assured will be here, and be able to make the trip. Otherwise, it's a 10K walk. We read (probably on BBC) that some people have had to do that in past days.

I am going to use this time slot to write briefly about our next travel adventure, which will begin less than a month from now. In some past years we have taken the Bike Fridays to the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, in the depths of our Canadian winter. But this year we had the idea of going to Costa Rica. The seed for this idea was planted in Yucatan, when we were looking for birds near Chichen Itza. We ran into a birder there, who mentioned Costa Rica.  Ah yes, our two girls  - Laurie and Joni had spent quite some time there in the past, with favourable reports of it being a nature paradise.

The only thing, we read some cycling reports, and the consensus seems to be that roads are lacking and drivers are crazy. We want to assess this for ourselves, but for this time our plan is to go without the Bike Fridays, on a guided tour of ecological research/bird stations. Without the Bike Fridays, it would be quite a stretch to be there as Cycleblazers, even if we have an objective of scouting its cycle-ability. We still want to blog the trip, so for this one time we will switch to Blogspot. That will mean a learning curve for us, in terms of the details like uploading photos, saving drafts, reading comments, and so forth. One thing that always bugs us when looking at non Cycleblaze blogs is the tendency to put the latest entry first. We much prefer to think of the blog as a story, that begins at the beginning and goes to the end, and not the reverse. Maybe we will find a way to make Blogspot do this.  (Ah, I think I now have it listing the entries in "correct" order, but I don't yet see how to read them in order, like a book. Working on it!)  Stay tuned for a link to the Costa Rica blog, on the final page of this blog, when that happens. 

Our taxi showed up exactly as scheduled, and whisked us to the airport hotel with no problem at all. As we have been saying, this is just kms from dramatic weather and political events. As tourists, we are having a lucky or protected time of it. Now all we have to do is to find our way to the airport departures, around 3 in the morning, and our struggles will then move to trying to negotiate the almost impossible Charles de Gaulle airport.