Killing Time in one of the World's Smallest Nations

Andorra is sometimes know as the “Principality of the Valleys of Andorra”. This name seems more than apt. Its capital, Andorra La Vella, merged with the allegedly separate city of Escaldes, and every other town in the country seem to sit at the bottom of valleys, consuming what little flat land there is. When I've mentioned Andorra to Spaniards the first thing that seems to come to mind is “oh, that little place where our politicians take their money”.

The best of inner city parking

The Andorran borders actually have customs houses, a rarity in the EU. I suppose this is to try and regulate the flow of tax free goods going back into Spain. In the supermarket it's not uncommon to see trolleys of 20-30 bottles of alcohol being loaded into Spanish cars. 

 

Despite having border controls no regulation really seems to happen. You don't have to stop, only slow down to 20km an hour. And very rarely does anyone get pulled over. One day however this border control cost me an our of my time, creating a ten kilometre traffic jam lasting well into Spanish territory.

Once in Andorra I headed to an Intersport I saw signs for, hoping they could help me fix my tent pole. I'd been sleeping in a broken, droopy tent for two nights. The people at Intersport couldn't help but a woman spent well over an hour slowing down her speech for me and choosing her words carefully so we could speak in Spanish. I was shocked at the end to realise her English was really good. We talked about hiking in Andorra, Via ferratas and various other things. After they couldn't help it was clear I wouldn't buy anything but yet again the world showed me its still full of people with big hearts that will go out of their way for foreigners.

My first day in Andorra this was a constant companion...

Now back out on the street I was hit with twelve degrees and pouring rain. The weather is uniquely fickle in Andorra. I headed to the autoshop down the road and explained to them that one of the windscreen wipers had stopped working. A lot of hand gestures were used to bridge gaps in my vocabulary.

One and a half hours later I left with a zip tie fix and twenty euros less in my pocket. And it broke again within three actions, batting torrents of water from the windscreen. Dammit! It would have to wait for tomorrow.

Better weather!

I found some camping and slept off the atrocious weather. I was pleasantly surprised by the weather the next day. I was greeted by a gentle, cool breeze and blue skies with wispy feathers of white.

I went to the shop the woman at Intersport recommended, an old fashioned outdoors store and told them what the problem was. They sent me to their other store. They have two. One that handles the general public and another selling technical gear. The guys at the second store spent 40mins fixing my pole, entirely for free. I bought some chalk as a courtesy. I needed some and I wanted to thank them in some way. Afterwards I headed up a Via Ferrata, right in the middle of the city. 

The first few stretches were super easy and I didn't even clip in. The things got more serious. A vertical wall loomed in front of me with an overhang 20m above the ledge I was standing on. I clipped in and started pulling myself up from rung to rung. Things got exposed real fast. Soon it felt like it was a direct 100m drop onto the houses of the city below.

After a few steep walls it shifted onto an arete with a few slab crossings and a lot of not so steep climbing on knife edges. It was spectacular. An hour and a half after leaving the ground, taking a lot of breaks for photos and to enjoy the sheer transition to the city in the valley below, I arrived at an hermita. There were no signs saying which way was down so I headed down the only track I could find. It went in the complete wrong direction.

After a lot of worry and considerable time I discovered this was because it dropped down behind into a valley, crossed into a small saddle, then dropped back to the car. I was very happy to say the least.

At about one I went back to the autoshop. The owner gave up his siesta time, when the shop closes, to find me a spare part in the city's scrap yards. All up the car stayed at the shop for four hours before it was fixed where I had almost nothing to do. I aimlessly wandered through the city, read at the car. Thankfully at the end of it the windscreen wipers were in perfect working order after a long time of not but very little rain.

Downtown Andorra La Vella, technically Escaldes I think

The next day I set out to climb a Via Ferrata, recommended by the guys at the old fashioned shop, at 7pm. They told me It takes 40mins up and 20mins down. This isn't the case. I was moving quite fast and after their stated time I was still craning me neck, looking at numerous walls and slabs disappearing into the sky. After an hour and a quarter or so the cables finally ended.

And then the fun started. I was climbing a steep sided ridge, again in the opposite direction to my car. Darkness was closing in and doubt about whether I'd gone the right was was growing. After 30mins of walking very fast I reached a saddle with a junction sign. I recognised none of the names on it. I took the one that headed down. In another 20mins I hit a road and felt the weight recede from my shoulders. 

 

Then I realised, again, I had no idea where I was. I was looking at a picnic ground in a picturesque bowl on the side of a hill that I had never seen in my life. I walked left, only to be stopped by a private property sign. When I got back to where I emerged a man on a motorbike turned up. I explained to him in Spanish that I had just climbed the Via Ferrata and didn't know where I was.

He enlightened me. My car was twelve kilometres away. He gestured to the back of his bike. Hop on.

A church on the descent, taken the following day

He took me back to my car at a very low speed, owing to the various hairpins, the fact I had no helmet and that he wanted to talk the whole way down. He moved from Germany to Andorra six years ago to work for Nissan and had supposedly been a boy scout for thirty years, the reason why he always helps people in trouble like myself.

I thanked him sincerely and just sat for a moment. It was now dark. I couldn't believe I'd gotten off quite that easily. Then I drove up to the picnic ground and camped.

The next morning I drove up to 2500m, looking for a different Via Ferrata, but to no avail. The temperature of two degrees Celsius didn't entice me out of the car for a hike either. I spent the day in Andorra La Vella, in a park, then on WiFi for a couple of hours. I plotted the rather lengthy route that lay ahead and simply talked to a few people back home. Then it was time to go. Back at the car I found a fine for 60 Euros, the cost of not being able to find a park and parking on the footpath for four hours. Maybe I would have been saved if I used the hazard lights. Oh well, paying fines when the car isn't registered in you name is an optional practice anyway. 

I needed to be in a completely different region of the country within a couple of days. The first section of road was the familiar stretch to Seu but past there everything was new. After several gentle valleys the road took the course of a number of gouges in the mountains with sheer rock walls, sometimes with intermittent lakes before entering the next. Then suddenly I was out. The land consisted of rolling hills, then it was dead flat.