Spanish Road Trip in the Summer of Covid

My children are quickly growing conscious of the fact that ours is not an ordinary family. But at 7 and 10 years of age, it remains entirely uncertain what sort of lives they will choose for themselves.

On the one hand, our son could easily end up living in an old restored school bus, caravanning from the Alps to the Himalayas with a troop of trapeze artists and street performing philosophers. Our daughter could just as easily pursue an MBA and wind up in a corner office at a multinational corporation. Never again would she worry about running out of cash at the end of the month or getting stuck in a car that might not reach the end of another meandering road trip. Just as long as they don’t grow up to be litter bugs or xenophobes.

But in times of ongoing pandemic and looming lockdowns, a healthy and stimulating homelife has never been more important. And that can be a bit of challenge when the dog days of summer come scampering into our remote mountain village in the Spanish Pyrenees.

Peace and quiet in the Pyrenees

A pinch of Catalunya squeezed between France to the east, the microstate of Andorra to the west, and the entirety of Spain to the south, we generally feel pretty stimulated here. But it’s easy to sink into the oblivion of stony escarpments and rolling pastures, especially when school is out and lockdowns are imminent.

That’s when mom and dad begin delving into their cyber chores and creative enterprises, as the children get sucked into the mind vaporizing void of the iPad. Welcome to the Summer of Covid.

And when your only defenses against pandemic are face masks and quarantine, that leaves an eclectic family like ours only one option: Road Trip to the sea. Ordinarily, we’ll head down the mountain to the Mediterranean at least once or twice in the summer. But this is no ordinary summer, so we headed across to the Atlantic instead.

Cross Covid excursion over Iberia

Getting from our rugged hilltop to the world class beaches of San Sebastian takes about 7 hours without stops. But naturally we stop a lot, and so we opted for a two-day layover in Zaragoza.

The capital city of the Aragon region isn’t typically considered a highlight of Spanish tourism, but for country bumpkins like us, it has more than enough to offer. Not one but two cathedrals, the monumental Plaza of Pilar in the heart of the city, a host of museums, a fortified palace from the 11th century, and enough ice cream parlors to keep the blood sugar levels at an inhospitable range for the coronavirus.

Indeed, Covid-19 has been disastrous here in Spain. If the numbers are reliable, the country has suffered close to a quarter million cases and nearly 30,000 deaths from the 2020 pandemic. The spring lockdown was one of the strictest in the world. Officially, children under the age of 14 were not even permitted to step foot outside the house for six weeks.

Spanish authorities gradually lifted the lockdown in May, and by June it looked a lot like it did in the U.S. Throngs of Spaniards were rushing outdoors to resume a life of normalcy. And with summer weather, the urge to get outside and cram onto beaches and into tapas bars is stronger than ever.

Traffic was sparse at the tourist attractions, as travel restrictions are keeping many would-be travelers at home this summer. And Americans are not even allowed into Europe until further notice. But it was plain to see that the locals were out and about, filling up the bars and cafes. On the streets, we saw that most people were wearing masks, and so we kept ours on most of the time as well. But nobody wears a mask when they’re eating and drinking, and that’s where the greatest numbers gather.

To Basque in the sun

After two days in Aragon, we pushed onward to Basque country. I’d heard great things about the green city of Vitoria-Gasteiz, in the heart of this semi-autonomous region, so that’s where we organized a home exchange and set up our “base camp.” From Vitoria, it’s about an hour to the more popular destinations like Bilbao, San Sebastian, and the alluring Atlantic coastline.

Approaching Basque country, known to locals as Euskadi, we realized that none of us had ever been swimming in the Atlantic Ocean. Not as far as we could remember anyway, not in the last 25 years. So I made it my goal to hit the shore in San Sebastian on my birthday. And our beach loving offspring got behind this idea 100 percent.

But first came the car troubles. We thought we’d left those worries were behind us when we sold our VW bus and replaced it with a zesty little Berlingo. But there we were, just two hours into my birthday and 10 minutes outside of Vitoria when the dashboard lit up like a Christmas tree. Not one but three different engine warnings started flashing.

That’s when my resourceful wife added the Spanish Berlingo owner’s manual to her summer reading list. Apparently something was going awry with the exhaust system. So we drove around looking for a gas station that would be open on a Sunday and big enough to sell the special fuel additive we needed. But that didn’t seem to do anything, and we weren’t in the mood to break down in the middle of Basque country, 7 hours from home.

One by one, our hopes and plans were evaporating. And one by one, each of us in the car was dissolving into some state of grief, anxiety and/or despair. Perhaps a quiet day at one of the many parks in the green city, and first thing Monday morning we could hit up a mechanic? So off we went, back to Vitoria with a car full of dry swim suits and gloom.

Then, 20 minutes later, believe it or not, the warning lights just went off. So I flipped a pitch and made a bee line straight to San Sebastian.

One of the most popular beaches in all of Europe, San Sebastian is notoriously overcrowded in the summer. But with all the Americans locked out of the continent, and many Europeans still too timid to travel, it was easy to see that the jewel of Biscay was nowhere near its maximum capacity.

When we reached the sandy beach, we discovered a pretty big crowd after all, but still with enough room fro everyone. So we went looking for a birthday lunch first, and found something pretty nice, consisting of french fries, tuna and cephalopods. Then we circled back to the car for our beach gear and finally returned to the seashore.

But just when we thought everything was going according to plan, we saw that the high tide had swallowed up the beach and squeezed every sun worshipper onto the narrowest strip of sand. Police were now patrolling the boardwalk and refusing to let anyone else on the beach.

If you could have seen the arrangement of bodies on the beach; I can only describe it as an epidemiologist’s nightmare. And the looks on our children’s faces were equally horrific. So, plan B, again: ice cream cones. This is the Summer of Covid.

Damn the torpedoes

It’s the year 2020. We’ve already survived the liquidation of my bamboo store, a pandemic, a lockdown, and the threat of riots and looting. And I’ll be damned if they’re going to stop me from taking my family to the beach on my birthday.

It was about 7 pm when we rolled into Zarautz, a little beach town 20 minutes outside of San Sebastian. A bit late for swimming, but we still had still a couple hours before Spanish dinner time. And around here it doesn’t really get dark until after 10. So we threw our bags on the sand, and I charged into the Atlantic with children screaming (in a good way). And the waves were majestic.

So after two hours of body surfing and a birthday I’d never forget, the rest of the week was pretty much smooth sailing. We proceeded to indulge ourselves in the parks and greenery of Vitoria and the striking modern architecture of Bilbao. We even squeezed in two more days at the beach.

By the end of our trip, two more areas of Spain had resumed the dreadful state of lockdown. But things kept pretty casual in Basque country. Face mask requirements remained in effect in stores and bakeries, and hand sanitizer continued to be applied liberally. But none of that would stop us from having a good time and savoring our fair share of tapas.

Further Reading

If you found these adventures interesting, please consider sharing and subscribing to our blog. You might also enjoy my articles on Spanish Immigration and the stories of How I entered Spain in time of Coronavirus and How I met the Mayor.

One of the most interesting things I’ve read this summer has been The Story of Spanish, written by a Canadian couple who’ve also written a comprehensive Story of French. Part history, part linguistics, it’s filled with thought provoking reflections about the language we’re learning and the country in which we’ve been living. Among other things, I learned that the city of Zaragoza took its name from the Roman emperor and former occupier, Caesar Augustus.

Both books are available at Amazon. Note: If you follow these affiliate links we will receive a small commission at no additional cost to you, which helps us meet the cost of maintaining our website.

FEATURED PHOTO: Family selfie in Vitoria-Gasteiz, a city loaded with public parks and teeming with brilliant street graffiti.