World Tour 1998

Snowboarding in Andorra

Please select a topic

	Andorra Factfile Background notes and orientation
	Soldeu The village, it's atmosphere, the state of the snowboarding, finding accommodation, photos and links.
	Pas de La Casa Andorra's largest ski resort, what's there, where to stay, photos and links.
	Andorra La VellaAndorra's capital and shopaholic's paradise.

2.1 Andorra Factfile

Andorra, is a tiny land-locked independent European republic, nestled high up amongst the Pyrenees. It has just one main road running the length of the country, from French border to Spanish border, about 40km long. It's so small you could drive round the whole place in less than a day. Until this century, Andorra's tiny population of around 6000 barely scraped a living from poor mountainous land (and a bit of smuggling on the side). In recent years, the tourist industry has sky-rocketed, and Andorra's population has increased steadily to around 65,000 today, largely due to immigration rather than procreation! This growth has in my opinion left it's scars on the country, whose valleys are traffic choked, and where almost every flat piece of land has been 'developed'. Andorra La Vella, the capital city is no larger than a provincial English market town, but far uglier. Things improve once you leave the valleys for the fresh air of the mountains. Andorra's lowest point is 900m, at the Spanish border, and it boasts 43 peaks over 2500m high.

Skiing in Andorra

The republic has several reasonably impressive ski resorts, the best known being Soldeu , where we spent our first week, and Pas de La Casa on the French Border, where we later spent two weeks snowboarding in the most amazing powder snow I have ever experienced.
The prices in Andorra are much lower than other West European ski resorts, and as such it tends to attract a younger crowd of people. Andorra's other distinguishing feature is its duty free status, which can prove very tempting. Indeed there are many bargains to be had, and a visit to the traffic choked capital Andorra La Vella offers much for shopaholic members of the family. Unfortunately, some visitors take the low booze prices as a challenge to try and drink as much as they possibly can in the space of a week. I've never seen so many totally legless people as we did in Pas de La Casa, and at times the streets resembled the aftermath of a Milwall football match. It has to be said that the nightlife is excellent if you have the stamina, with plenty of swinging bars and clubs to choose from. The ski resorts certainly do live up to their reputation as 'Ibiza in the Snow', so, do not come here if you want quiet evenings playing dominoes by the log fire.

2.2 Soldeu El Tarter

Soldeu village is pretty much a single street affair, with around eight hotels, and a good smattering of bars/nightclubs. The bars are all pretty good value, and tend to cater for a young crowd of people. Our favourite night out was the Pussycat bar, with a mini dance floor, and occasional live music. The town can be very noisy at night. One night, we were woken at 3am by a crowd of revellers continuing their party in the street, but most other nights were ok.

The ski area is fairly extensive, being integrated with that of El Tarter down the road. It is very much geared towards beginners, with lots of long, almost flat green runs, and an excellent English speaking ski school. It is for this reason that we came here, since this was Katie's first time snowboarding. In less than a week, the school managed to get her confidently doing linked turns down green runs, not bad really.

- Katie's first day.

Before ever taking a single run on a snowboard, Katie had bought a board, bindings, boots and stylish O'Neill gear. "What if you don't like it?" I asked her. "There's no option, I'll just have to" she said. Fortunately, within a few weeks she became a black run demon. And now she says "I'll never ski again".

Adrian in Soldeu Snowboard Park

Anyone who's done more than a few weeks of snowboarding before will probably be bored to death at Soldeu. There are quite a few red runs, but to reach them requires quite a lot of traversing on seemingly endless green runs. There is also a 'snowboard park' with the obligatory spotty teenagers and grunge music. The halfpipe here never had any snow on it all season, but there are a couple of excellent jumping ramps.

Accommodation must be booked well in advance in all Andorran resorts. All of the hotels are locked into deals with tour operators such as Panorama and Thompsons, which means that beds are for th most part pre-allocated. Occasionally, some beds are released at the last minute, but this is rare. The tourist offices in Andorra do not have a good idea of what's available either. Their stock response is pretty much "no chance matey", which quite often is simply not true. We managed after a bit of hunting around to get a room in the incredibly cheap Hotel Maistre Soldeu, run by a charming elderly French couple who first came to Andorra in the 1960s. The hotel cost us GBP 13 per night, for both of us less than half the price of any other hotel we found in Andorra. Whilst the bathrooms are shared, and the room isn't exactly the Ritz, it was clean and comfortable, and a stones throw from the ski slopes.

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2.3 Pas de La Casa
The town of Pas de La Casa is quite large, but nicely compact. There are over fifty hotels and apartments to choose from. Being right next to the French border, there are dozens of shops catering for the cross-border bargain hunter, with a more extensive selection than any airport duty free zone, and considerably cheaper too. Cigarettes at the time of publishing were selling for 76 pence, around a fifth of the UK retail price. Electronic goods are significantly cheaper here too, with savings of upto 50% against UK retail prices. The only catch is that Andorra is outside the EEC, so there are strict limits on what can be taken out of the country into neighbouring France, and the French Customs are very sharp.
Night time in Pas - (Note Adrian with 'board bum' beard)	Pas has a good selection of bars and clubs to choose from, most of which are pretty hot and sticky joints with loud music.
The ski area at Pas De La Casa is the largest in Andorra. It is not a stunningly beautiful resort, being mostly wide open, with huge 'freeway' like pistes running in parrallel down the mountain towards the village. However there is a huge choice of red and black runs, and ample off piste skiing opportunities to keep intermediate to advanced snowboarders well occupied.
Katie on the main red run back to resort in Pas De La casa	Most of the pistes are served by chair lifts, no telecabins, and the lift queues are tolerable apart from at weekends, when an influx of locals can make the wait time a bit too long. Whilst we were there, we were lucky enough to have three days of heavy snowfall, providing several fantastic powder surfing days, which were just unbelievably thrilling. Within the next year, the Andorran authorities intend to link the Pas de La Casa ski area with that of Soldeu, which would make it one of the largest linked areas in Europe.
Accommodation in Pas de la Casa is hard to come by for the independent traveller. As with most of Andorra, all of the hotels have deals with major tour operators, which means that spare beds are very difficult to find. We had some huge nightmares trying to find a place, and on our first attempt were compelled to leave the country and look for somewhere in France. However before we left, we pre-booked an apartment at the Condor Apart Hotel. This was fairly pricey at GBP 30 per night excluding food, but the room was extremely comfortable.

2.4 Andorra La vella, the Capital
Andorra La Vella is not a pretty place. It is greay and traffic-choked. In fact, the whole of Andorra has a fetish for motor cars. If every andorran took their cars out at the same time, there would be precisely 5.8m of roadspace per car, leading to an end to end traffic jam throughout the country. Andorra L Vella can take 30 minutes to cross in a car, which for a town the size of dunstable is pretty appalling. It is a good place to visit for bargain hunters. Its shopping streets are crammed with cheap electronics boutiques, duty free liquor stores and perfumeries, but it's all rather tatty and tawdry. The place lacks any real style or culture.
The Caldea is perhaps the one thing worth visiting in Andorra La Vella. It a vast swimming complex, housed in a magnificent mirrored glass structure, with angular spires reflecting the surrounding peaks. Here, you can pamper yourself in turkish baths, outdoor jacuzzis, saunas and water jets. It costs about GBP10 per person for three hours.	Katie's family in the steambath at the Caldea:

Adrian & Katie's World Tour News - Andorra	Last Updated: 4 June 1999
Web Page by Adrian Ball (adrian.ball@virgin.net)

2.1 Andorra Factfile

2.2 Soldeu El Tarter

2.3 Pas de La Casa

2.4 Andorra La vella, the Capital