Fresh Fruit En Route

Wildflowers are everywhere I ride. The greatest variety you see blooming out of the ditches along the side of the road. Within one small patch, it's not uncommon to find five different species growing alongside one another, each with it's own unique hue and shape. They are beautiful to pass like nature's own colored warnings for the edge of the road, thin rows of color that twist and turn like we do descending, ascending, descending. But even more exquisite is the scent that they lend the air, a subtle exotic garnish to the pungency of prevalent orange and jasmine blossoms. My favorite flowers appear to spring forth from naked rock, their mother vines draped to the ground. I can pass through a curve, steeply canting my bicycle to the apex, and with an outstretched hand towards a bordering face of rock, be tickled by what seem to be hundreds of delicate red butterfly wings clinging to the granite.

Yesterday, Alex Largo showed Jackson and I the cherry trees alongside a road to Beniarrés. We stopped for a quarter-hour to pick the first mature cherries of the season. In a short time, we will have fresh pears, apricots, peaches and figs to rob off the trees, returning home with our tiny jersey pockets bulging. Jackson said in Venezuela farmers shoot looters off their land. Here in Spain, I think we'd just be scolded and asked for our daily mileage.