The first day in Madrid proved to be a nightmare. Nowhere to park, wrong instructions for the Mori embassy, pouring with rain, impossible for a veggie to eat anything and a snotty woman at the mori embassy who insisted I go and get a letter of introduction from the NZ embassy

This was quite funny though, as the NZ embassy printed out a letter for me without even asking to see my passport, I just told them my name and passport number and they typed it into their form letter and printed it out. A waste of 22 euros and 2 hours but it was nice to see that the embassy, like NZ itself, seems to be mostly run my woman.

Having made my visa application I found the campsite in Madrid (quite nice), and promptly earned a healthy discount by helping the owner move some fridges around the chalets. Spent the night talking to a young australian couple who had been backpacking europe.

The next day I collected the visa from the helpful Mori ambassador and headed down towards Malaga on the coast. Other than taking the wrong motorway exit it was uneventful and I made it to Malaga airport at 1am in time for Chris's cheapo flight from London.

I meet up with Chris and we slept in a petrol station for the rest of the night, crammed in with my hopeless amounts of junk. Only the major parts of the landy were in place, with many small bits and pieces to be sorted out, so I had endless amounts of useless crap with me to help finish things off. Along with all of my other possessions that I hadn't been able to palm off on anybody before leaving.

Chris being a vastly experienced Saharan traveler and understanding the virtues of traveling light was rather bemused to say the least. What was I going to do with two hammers, a soft cuddly stuffed bear and 200 mini-disc's?