Day 256: The beginning of the end

High point: Martha has cleared customs!

Low point: The search for a mobile internet solution for updates to the website, computer says no

First night ever in a hostel, and a nice one at that. The others have made comments on my snoring, but I’m quite sure its all fictitious. The room was quite a sight first thing.

A good start to the day, with a meeting at Sea World’s offices at 9am. Eric from shipping company Sea World Services has been a star and has managed to get the fire engine cleared by customs in record time, hopefully this will enable us to unload and get going by lunchtime tomorrow. This obviously depends on how long it takes to re-inflate the tires and reattach the lights that had to be taken off for the shipping from New York to Valencia.

The Spanish know how to make coffee, and down on the beach, James had to do a runner from the man trying to sell him some sunglasses. Steve decided to give us a beginners yoga class on the beach, my flexibility has been called into question, and that was on level one yoga.

After yoga, Steve and James had a go at filming the introduction for the Power Traveller competition, 19 takes later, you decide on the result. Martha has covered 28,286 miles to date, the competition is to guess how many miles in total she will cover, so 28,286 so far and the final stage to go. The route is on the website, get your guesses in, the prize is a great yellow Power Traveller Explorer which I’ve been using, it recharges my iPhone super quick. My video footage from the competition can only be described as market stall and dell boy.

A big thank you to Katrina at Original Travel, for putting us in touch with the Valencia Tourism office, Desiree, from the tourist office has arranged press coverage for the morning, and I think the crew will be with us from when we unload at the dock, to when we leave Valencia.  Result!

The language barrier has been a bit of an issue in finding a mobile internet solution for when we’re on the road, going to have to take a punt and hope it works. Actually just came across a lovely lady who has given us, what we think, is a good solution. Fingers crossed.

Whilst James and I went hunting for an internet dongle, Steve and Amy have been hard at the admin, I cant actually believe how much work there is to do with both logistics and keeping the website updated. Saying that if Steve didn’t take 19 takes to do a video clip, he’d have more time.

This is my first ever blog, and the others have been giving me grief about my inability to write and construct sentences, so this blogs nice and short, before I sign off, a big thank you to Giovanna from www.HostelBookers.com for kindly getting the hostel in Valencia donated.

Lets hope the compressor works tomorrow to re-inflate the tires, the manual method is not an option!

Mehul

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