I reached Santiago in the late afternoon. I didn’t actually want to stay in Santiago for more than a few hours but the fact that there was no big enough green patch on the map that looked like I could hide a tent made me decide to go find a hostel in Santiago for the night. This also gave me some time to explore the city a bit. Before I could go sight seeing or start searching for a hostel I needed to take care of my bike. It badly needed the chain adjusted. And because I thought I had forgotten the wrench I had prepared for this kind of maintenance task at home in London I started looking for a tools shop which carried the 24mm wrench I needed. After two hours of searching I found one and could finally stop worrying about my chain which had been a concern for the last few hundred kilometers.

I parked the bike somewhere on the sidewalk as everybody does and walked to the main square where the goal of many catholic pilgrims is. Unfortunately the church to which many pilgrims travel by foot from far away was largely covered up for restoration but it still looked impressive.

The view from the opposite side.

There were many beautiful little medieval streets and buildings in the old part of the city.

After enjoying the quiet peaceful village feeling for a little while I decided it was time to take care of my accommodation for the night. Unfortunately I was a bit late to find out that all hostels had been booked a long time ago. After all this was one of the most important catholic pilgrimage sites. I put all my hopes into the last hostel on my list but they were also booked. However they had this old shack in their garden which they offered me for 5 Euros. It was just as comfortable as camping but at least it meant I didn’t have to get out again and start looking for camp site knowing that it was unlikely to find one withing the next 100 kilometers.

Instead of sleeping on one of the mattresses in the shack and having some spiders under my cover in the morning I decided to put up my tent inside the shack.

It was actually a very comfortable solution.

Before going to bed I decided to take care of my bikes chain.

I first loosened the rear wheel axle and pulled the wheel back a few millimeters thus tightening the chain.

From this…

… to this

The discoloration of the chain is not rust but soil particles. However the chain and sprockets were still in bad shape.

Lastly tightened the screw which limits the distance the wheel can move to the front and also the nut I had loosened first to reposition the wheel.

The next morning I also lubricated the chain.

The next day early in the morning I packed my things and went to the beach to wash my cloths. In the heat of the early morning hours everything dried quickly.

Also I had to lubricate the chain of my bike again.

The break pads seemed to hold up well enough so I decided they would probably last me until the end of my trip and I would get new ones once I was home in London again. I did however also notice that the chain had gotten a little lose. Unfortunately the tool necessary to tighten it was the only tool missing to complete my basic custom tool kit. I suspect that the mechanic who swapped the sprockets a two months ago had not tightened the screw well because the chain should not be this lose so quickly after having been adjusted. Anyway I had to leave it for now.

I set course for the desert to visit the first of the three western towns. Oasis Mini Hollywood as it is called.

With a Confederate flag, a Union flag and a Texan flag and the surrounding desert landscape it was difficult not to think that you were in the United States.

Huge cacti like these along the past thousand miles were a constant reminder that I was in a completely different part of Europe now but it didn’t feel like Europe at all.

Entering Mini Hollywood the first thing greeting you is a collection of “Indian” tents which I didn’t find terrible interesting and they looked a bit out of place right next to their enemies.

Passing the tents and a cacti garden the town center revealed itself. Some buildings are locked, some contain little exhibitions and some simply a fitting interior for their time.

One building contained an exhibition of wagons, coaches, and carriages. Below is the typical stage coach which can often be seen in the movies being robbed because they often transported valuables besides people.

Some parts of the town look more authentic than others and not all buildings still are or look the same as they did when they were captured on film a long time ago. They were constantly altered to suit different productions and to avoid buildings becoming recognizable. After all there were not many western towns like this in Europe so they were reused often.

But even if the buildings themselves didn’t reveal the film historic identity the landscape did.

Clint Eastwood riding into town eventually rivaling Lee van Cleef in “For a few dollars more” by Serigio Leone, 1965. As you can see the view and the landscape indicate the same location.

In some cases you can even see the buildings which played an important role are still there.

Like the “El Paso” bank which is being robbed in the same movie.

(Unfortunately the focal length is completely off.)

The now yellow bank building can also be seen here in the background in the middle in “The good, the bad and the ugly” when Tuco is about to be hanged. The facade was changed but the general layout remained the same.

And again the same building this time as Monterey Bank in yet another movie.

What is now The Yellow Rose saloon is where Clint Eastwood and Lee van Cleef checked in in For a few dollars more.

Walking through movie history like this was a great but eerily melancholic feeling realizing that all of this is really a museum now with no life in it left. A museum of not just the wild west as it used to be 200 years ago but also of the time when western movies were still in demand. Most movie legends who had their big success acting in this genre are now forgotten.

This became particularly apparent walking through the little exhibition inside the bank building showing film projectors from 40 years ago and on the walls posters of the movies shot in this town. The silence and faint movie score music playing from the loudspeakers in the distance together with the dark light in the room made the place (fittingly) seem like a mausoleum.

One of my all time favorite movies which had been shot here with my two all time favorite actors had a special place next to the entrance.

They Call Me Trinity – 1970, with Bud Spencer and Terence Hill.

Time had passed very quickly. It was already late in the afternoon and I still had two more towns ahead of me. My expectations here were exceeded by far so I left Mini Hollywood happy in search for more wester movie history.

That day I continued south-west to Cabo de Gata, the town which shares it’s name with the national park which encompasses it. The town was tiny but there was an endless seeming beach where people were lined up as far as the eye could see. Everybody had a good 50m of beach to themselves. I wanted to stop and take a break but the landscape didn’t look at all like I would be able to find a spot to make camp because still there was no vegetation to hide. To make matters worse just when I thought my last hope was a little hill a KM away from me it turned out to be a bird sanctuary complete with an observatory. So I would camp in a national park (that’s a no) and bird sanctuary (a big no) and there would be people scouting my location. A bit inconvenient I thought. So I kept going. Instead of focusing on the front of the hill I now went around it and discovered an amazing road which offered a breathtaking view. It was a bad spot to stop but I had to take some pictures. Unfortunately they don’t do the perspective (the deep drop) justice.

I followed the little serpentine road a few hundred more meters until I noticed a little gravel road towards the mountain.

There was a little bare spot just a hundred meters into the gravel road. It was a bit exposed but I knew I wasn’t going to find a better spot before nightfall. I didn’t set up my tent yet though, instead I went back to the beach to enjoy the sunset there.

After returning to my bike I noticed that there was a nice KTM bike with a German license plate parked next to my bike. It was great to see that I wasn’t the only foreigner traveling by motorcycle after all. I had already covered close to 50% of Spain’s circumference but this was the first foreign license plate I had seen. Coincidentally the owner, Tano just returned to his bike from the beach as well and we exchanged experiences and advice. It was a pleasure to find a like minded spirit in the middle of nowhere. He told me of his adventures in Africa which added fuel to my desire to go there as well.

I had wanted to return to my camp site before the sun had set but we parted ways wishing each other good look well after the sun had set and it had already been pitch dark.

Tano had told me that on his trip he once woke up to a wild dog aggressively circling him in the darkness. He only had his knife as a defense but this reminded me to also keep my knife closer during nights. Until now I had always left it at the bike. But there are lot’s of wild dogs and also cats which seem to have very little in common with the cute pets we love.

I set up the tent in the darkness with my flash light and hoped to fall asleep right after but the heat kept me awake for longer than I had hoped. The rhythmically flashing light beam of the light house close by illuminating the hills was a welcome distraction until I eventually did fall asleep.

The next morning I woke up from the heat once again. I packed my things while a friendly musician was watching my every move.

This guy was at least six centimeters big. I’m not really sure though if they are actually the ones making the shrilling sound of the desert.

Just before I got back onto the bike after having had a quick cereal breakfast I decided to finally add a new camera perspective to my GoPro camera recordings by attaching a new mount to my helmet. This would give the viewer a kind of 1st person perspective which should be particularly interesting on video recordings.

It was a nice idea but a bad execution as I later realized that I would not be able to open the visor anymore. OK in winter – NOT OK in the oven that is Spain in summer. So it came off at the next stop.

The next stop was Almeria. The city itself was not hugely interesting except for a Muslim fortress which unfortunately seemed to have no accessible entrance.

What nonetheless made Almeria important to me was the fact that it was the closest city to the three western towns I had added to my route. They were in the middle of the desert. Literally. The Tabernas desert is the only real desert in Europe and it was the shooting location of more than 400 movies. Among them most of the great Spaghetti Western movies. These three towns are kept partially in their original shape for tourists and there is a ticket fee to get in. Since I didn’t want to rush things and I wanted the merciless high noon sun for photos I decided to start my western movie history tour the next day and start looking for a camp site right away because I knew that the terrain around me was going to make this a difficult task.

I had to ride west to the next town to find out that there still wasn’t any hint of cover so I decided to return and go east hoping to find more remote places there. The opposite was the case but behind a busy parking lot of a busy beach I found tall bushes behind which I set up my tent as soon as the the sun had sat. I have camped at more inviting places but this was the best I could find. The photo doesn’t show the many bugs, the strange wires on the floor and the weird smell making me want to spend as little time there as possible.

The next morning I got up before sunrise to avoid being discovered. I was still tired …

… but everything worked out well and I could pack up my tent and and everything else without being seen.

In town everything opened after 10am so I still had a lot of time left before I could go to the tourist information office to ask about Maestro Leone and his work. Besides the fantastic scenery as mentioned before one of the reasons why I wanted to come to this area of Spain was that the great western movies, in particular the Spaghetti Westerns of the 60s and 70s have been shot here.

In the mean time I rode through the little lanes of the town during sunrise. The beautiful warm yellow tint of the morning sun was a good trade-of for not getting enough sleep.

On my stroll I discovered that unfortunately the vibrations from riding off-road had cost me a screw of one of the hand guards. Nothing a zip-tie couldn’t fix though.

Prior to leaving London I had read that San Jose was the location of some scenes of “A fist full of Dollars” but later at the tourist information office nobody had heard of San Jose having been the shooting location of any movies whatsoever. However they gave me some flayers advertising three separate western towns farther north which I happily added to my checkpoint list.

I didn’t want to give up San Jose just yet and after some internetting I found what I had been looking for.

I had actually already passed it twice but hadn’t known what to look for. The off-road track to the beach had a right turn which I hadn’t paid any attention to earlier. This time however I did.

My disappointment was big when I saw the “not trespassing, no driving” sign. It was private property.

I had already turned around when I reconsidered my decision. I hadn’t come this far just to turn around now, as they would say in the movies. So I parked the bike further down the main road and walked across the flat plane towards a building which I could see in the distance.

Along a little path I found this platform. Though this particular one wasn’t part of any western movies I know, platforms like these often appeared in them. Unfortunately I don’t know exactly what they are for but seeing this got me excited for what I might find next.

This was it! The house where Monco (Clint Eastwood) was busting out one of Indio’s men from prison in Sergio Leones western from 1965 “For A Few Dollars More”.

For the movie they had extended the top floor to be able to blow a whole into it but other than that it’s still the same building and still in use.

Finding this place in the middle of nowhere thousands of miles from where I started my journey was a great feeling and I took a minute to enjoy the moment before I got back on my bike in order to not disturb the people who might be living there any longer.