Alright so, onwards towards Madrid. I left Mundaka on christmas day and the road was nicely very empty.

I mean that during the whole days driving, i probably saw less than a hundred cars on the roads before arriving near Madrid.

Seeing more of the mountains was very neat, until Spain there is mainly flat lands to drive on.. Also obviously the sun shining made for a very nice day sitting and enjoying the views.

The negative thing about the mountains are the uphills... There was one particulary long uphill with a 6% incline and i found out that my van could only do 60km/h with the gas pedal pinned to the ground and third gear on....

Luckily, as i said, there was pretty much no traffic on the roads so i could go at a snails pace and not worry too much about it.

Again, seeing this kind of scenery really has a great feeling. 

One other downside happened while driving here, and that was the van kind of overheating.. Not to the point of having to stop and call for help, but to the point that i had to stop and make a quick fix... So what i did to be able to continue with a little less worrying, is that i bypassed the cooling fan's control so i had it with an extra button. Meaning i had the cooling fan on at all times, not just when the van feels like cooling the engine's temperature.. That gave me some respite.

Because, obviously, seeing the engine's temperature rising too high was causing an increase in my anxiety, and not being able to just drive with little worries is a useless stress factor when so far from home.

Well.. It is what it is.

After crossing the mountains, it was much easier to go on with the car doing okay and me making good advancement on the road.

So, got to Madrid, and my plan was to surprise my friend Claudia, who had absolutely no idea i was even close to here..

And the surprise went perfectly with the help of her boyfriend who knew i was coming and he managed to keep her in place so i would find the perfect place for the surprise.

And surprised she was! I do have to give myself a pat on the back for managing this..

Perfectly managed to give her some christmas gifts aswell on the right day.

    :)