Besides, for months I had been hearing inside me a run run run that demanded me to get rid of that thorn stuck in my side months ago when I had to give up on my determination to walk through I don't remember what essential place in these mountains (and that I will never see again in this life), just because the snow was up to my waist. (In my defence I will remind you that the fact that I was wearing shorts and that the snow was very cold influenced my withdrawal).

The name of the Rockies will always remind me of the Lewis and Clark expedition in their quest for the Northwest Passage, the most emblematic adventure of all American travels, and symbolic of the spirit of nineteenth-century America: the excitement of leaving the past behind and heading west to discover new lands.

And what better end to my American adventure than to travel the most significant part of that route and share with them that state of continuous excitement and amazement, in which they surely found themselves as impressive turquoise blue rivers or poison green lakes appeared before their eyes at the foot of the rugged mountains. (Although after two years of travelling, I think that the sight of a tortilla de patatas would have produced a greater torrent of emotions and flooding of the tear ducts).

No, I recognise that I am unique in finding excuses to make a getaway.

So, excited at the prospect of an adventure and with my head full of little birds, I moved to Calgary in the footsteps of those explorers, to face, like them, uncertain dangers, unexplored areas, encounters with wild animals, tribes anchored in the past?

I am sure that if we make an exercise of abstraction and eliminate from the landscape the roads, houses, mac donalds, poles, cars, rubbish, Sunday people, and the two million Hindus I met on my trip... and the few natives I saw we changed their jeans and abercrombie polo shirts for beaver skins... the landscape that Lewis and Clark were discovering was practically the same as the one that now opened up before me (if anything, mine was more authentic).

And this is where I had planned to start telling my adventure with the scientific rigour that characterises me, sticking strictly to the facts without resorting to exaggeration, etc etc, but NOTHING happened to me, N-A-D-A, this has been my most boring trip, and by far.

Because I have had more of a sense of adventure playing bingo with an excursion of old people from the inserso in a hotel on the Levante beaches.

Well, the truth is that I did have a few mishaps but I won't tell you about them, because you're going to think I'm a disaster, and I don't want to give the wrong image of myself. If you want to meet them, you know, gin and tonic in a balloon glass and I'll start...

Because discovering at 12 midnight that the hotel reservation I had was not in Jasper (AB), province of Alberta, Canada, but in Jasper (AB), state of Alabama, USA, is something that can happen to anyone. Or not?

For a few brief seconds I considered the option of taking advantage of this small geographical oversight to sleep out in the open, looking at the stars... if it hadn't been raining cats and dogs since the afternoon. (Unfortunately, at that time of night I could only find a room in another sinister motel of the type run by Norman Bates' family).