Andy’s life had gotten rich, beautiful and a lot more complicated over the last few weeks. He hadn’t mentioned Alicja in his texts to Josh because in his mind, she was about to leave. She didn’t really like it here, the menial jobs, the discomfort, the absence of any kind of town center for miles. But Alicja was still there.

She usually left in the morning with Andy’s car, played some music in the neighbouring towns. Her goal was to save enough cash to make an offer for Andy’s car and leave for good. But busking was mostly good for daily expenses. She usually barely made enough cash to pay for gas.

It made her pretty anxious, knowing that she wasn’t getting any closer from getting out of ‘La casa’. They talked about it, Andy and her. He wasn’t against selling his car, but he wasn’t gonna give it, no matter who asked. The other viable option would be for her to go back to her old ways, hitchhike her way through countries and make do with a few bucks. That’s what she had done for a while, but now it was winter and she was really tired of it.

For now, she had to start doing her part. She couldn’t just hang out and play music here, there was at the very least some cleaning, gathering, carrying, cooking to do. That was everyone’s job.

---

Back in France, Josh was stuck in Grenoble. He wasn’t a professional hitchhiker at all but he could tell how much the city was a mess, traffic-wise. There was a huge highway running along the west side of the city and cars were coming and going in absurd places. There was nowhere to really stop and get to the people who were traveling further than just a few blocks. He was so disappointed that he started walking out of the city, hoping to find a saner traffic out of it. He walked for a few hours into the suburbs without much luck. Well, Spain was still that way, after all.

He got a cheap sandwich on the way and was fairly disappointed: French bread could be as tasteless as English supermarket loaves. From the country of bread and pastry, that was a shocker. Maybe investing a few more euros would have been the right choice, or maybe the French didn’t care about sandwiches at all. They would be like ‘This ham and cheese pollute the taste of my delicious wholewheat’. Maybe. In any case, that was the worse bread he had tasted in a long while.

He had time to think. He counted cars and their colors. There were roughly two white or red cars for a black one. Sometimes he stopped at traffic lights and took the liberty of chatting with people. They were usually nice and understanding, but they really couldn’t. Josh started to understand that he would very likely have to find somewhere to sleep that night. Maybe it would be best not to get too far away from the city, after all?

Soon after five p.m. that day, he got picked up by a burgundy truck going to the Pyrenees. Josh felt so much relief from hearing that he ended up sighing very loudly and sighing in his seat. He was only stopped by the seatbelt tugging at his throat.

Near the place where Josh had stopped to call out cars, a man in a green bomber jacket started up his engine. Soon after, his blue compact car was following the truck.

---

Josh had the hardest times on the mountainous parts of his trip. Not only were they the coldest, least welcoming parts of the hitchhiking experience, there were also less roads and less people on them. It was miserable for him to stand at down with his thumb up and watch seven pick-ups pass him by without a look, only to realize they were going on a hunt. There were metal screens on the back of them with dogs barking. The vehicles were probably packed with men in camo jackets holding rifles and staying silent. It was probably a good thing that they didn’t want to help him out, he would have been very uncomfortable anyway.

So, mountains were the backyard of the world. Who lived there and why would anyone try to cross one? Josh was, unfortunately. Out of curiosity, one time at a diner lost on a curve, Josh looked at a map of Spain. He had been there for two days, avoiding a snow storm and he wanted to figure out just how much mountain there was in Spain. He was pretty disappointed: until then, he had thought of the country as a sort of giant beach along the Mediterranean sea. As it turned out, the territory was slightly more complex than that.

That was also the moment he figured out where he was really going, instead of just ‘south’. He read again the text messages with all the information and he made a plan of all the places he needed to go through in order to get there. He could have gotten to the next town and gotten on a bus for a few bucks, but this way was a new challenge, something that was at the same time exciting, appealing and a real pain to go through. He wanted to stick through it so he could tell his own adventures one day. He felt wild.

---

In Granada, Alicja had given up at last, thanks to Nacho who found that a friend had this place she could stay at for free, but in the city. The girl and her friends had opened the squat in an abandoned train station. It wasn’t a very legal venture, sure, but the day she learned about it, she packed her bags and asked Andy to get her to the bus station. They ate lunch then he drove her there in the afternoon.

Things had been strained a bit, but there was still a lot of affection between the two. Andy was not a hugger, but he still held her in his arms for a while.

“OK,” she said, breaking out of it after a while, “we stop the goodbye here, or I will not want to leave.” She gave him a lopsided smile, picked up her guitar and bags and sat in the bus shelter. She waved while he started the car again, then he was gone.

That evening, Andy got a message from Josh, saying that he was in Jaén. He thought he would be arriving the next day if everything was fine. Andy wasn’t so sure about it, given the pace he had been going: Josh had left Ms. Giraud more than two weeks ago. Still, he prepared. He was happy Alicja had left, as he didn’t want to handle two guests at the same time. He found Gabi in the garden and told her, then he proceeded to trim down the prickly hedge that ran along the vegetable patch. There were no vegetables, but winter was the best season to cut trees and things, as Gabi had said.

Indeed, Josh finally arrived at the neighbouring town in the afternoon of the following day. He called and Andy went to pick him up. He didn’t want Josh to spend two more days reaching La casa.

Josh was excited by the end of his trip. He was dirty, tired and he had lost quite a lot of money in meals and cheap hostels, but he had lived his big adventure! He had so many things to tell Andy that he didn’t know where to start.

He didn’t notice the blue compact car that was parked nearby.