5:30 AM on December 4, 2022. The alarm goes off! All ready to start a new adventure. We meet at 7:00 AM at Barcelona airport. When we arrive, we see the whole terminal full of people with boxes and bicycle bags. We stand in line and wait! (two hours until we check the bikes!). Patience! We are 200 participants and there are many familiar faces.
At 11 AM we get on the plane and leave for Saudi Arabia to compete in the Neom Titan Desert which ends with the Beach Games (a kind of Olympic Games).
At 7 PM, we arrive at Neom airport, already at night. And the first restriction we encounter is that they make us leave the plane in «packs» of 30, without being able to leave all together. We pass the checkpoint and take a one-hour bus ride to the Athlete Village. Once there, we look for our room. They are bungalows with 2 beds, complete bathroom, coffee machine, television… Now I have to wait to see who my roommate is, since we can’t sleep boy and girl. We are hungry, so we go to the restaurant to have dinner, a very cool place with buffets with a lot of variety… and the desserts are delicious!
Now to bed and a good rest, a long day awaits us tomorrow.