In Santiago

It´s always kind of a down-er to say that I´m here. I keep thinking that one of these years when I arrive in Santiago I will say, ok, that was my last Camino. But it didn´t happen this year, so I guess I will soon be thinking about where to walk next!

I have had two nice days of walking with people all around. It was quite a different feeling. But I was glad to have a young German friend to walk into Santiago with -- we got up early this morning to arrive in time to get our compostela (the certificate that tells you that you have officially completed the Camino, as if you couldn´t figure that out for yourself), and then make it to the pilgrim´s mass.

Yesterday´s walk was beautiful and rural, through forests, over isolated roman bridges, a few romanesque churches thrown in. Today´s walk, all 17 km of it, was essentially through the outskirts of Santiago. It was a continual up and down, one after the other, until FINALLY, we came up a hill and could see the cathedral spires. As we got into the old part of Santiago, you could see pilgrims all merging from different Caminos onto the road to the pilgrim´s office,. There is a new pilgrim´s office, in my mind no improvement over the old one except that the stairs don´t squeak because they´re new. So there we were, all in one long line waiting to get our compostela. I´m not exactly sure why I keep getting them, but it just sort of seems like the thing to do, to get the official certificate, "suitable for framing." After that we took the obligatory picture in front of the cathedral,

and then popped in to see if the botafumeiro was in place -- if it was going to be flown at the mass at 12, it would be set up at 11. As we walked into the Cathedral, it was like magic. The 10:00 mass was nearly over, the priest was putting the incense into the botafumeiro, and the 7 men in brown robes were getting ready to hoist it up. And for the next few minutes, we watched as that enormous incense burner went swinging from side to side, reaching an amazing height. I´ve seen it fly a number of times, but it always gives me goose bumps to think that they have been flying this thing for hundreds of years, originally to kill the smell of all the dirty peregrinos, but now it just reminds us how we are all a part of that same flow over the centuries.

So here I am back in the Hotel Costa Vella. I think it´s a sign that I´ve been here too often when the woman at the desk jumps up to hug me, and her husband comes running out of the kitchen to say hi. This is a family owned hotel, so the owners are always there taking care of business. I was delighted to find that they had had a recent cancellation, so they moved me from their new "vanguardist" hotel, much fancier and more expensive, to my old favorite, where I will stay for two nights. And the weather is fabulous so I will be able to eat my breakfasts out back in the very nice garden.

So, for now, I´m off to be a tourist again, at least after I can check into my room, wash some clothes and take a real shower without wearing my water sandals for fear of what I might catch from the floor.

Two days from Santiago

I left the solitary Camino de Invierno yesterday, with a walk through cow country. Walking through cow country in Galicia means a couple of things -- having to dodge cow poop constantly, having to step aside when the herds go in or out to graze, having lots of local people to talk to early in the morning when they go to milk the cows (I talked to one woman whose 20-odd cows produce 350 liters twice a day, and she told me when she was young, they did it all by hand), and, worst of all, lots of loose dogs whose main job is to guard the cows but who also enjoy scaring the daylights out of me.

Since this Camino is un-traveled, the dogs are much more likely to be loose. I´ve had a lot of growling, mean looking dogs get near me, and have surprised myself at how I just kept on walking. Well, what else was I to do? Anyway, I am glad that the dogs on this last part of the walk will be tied up, there are just too many people around for dogs to run loose.


So, here I am on the end of the camino I walked last summer. I´m going to take it slow, since I don´t have a hotel reservation in Santiago till Sunday. Two more days of about 12 miles a day makes for a pretty lazy end to my camino.

Last night in my first albergue in a long time, I met a bunch of characters -- a German guy who has been walking for more than 6 weeks and who leaves every day at 4:30 a.m., a Spaniard whose only goal was to get to Santiago and who walked straight along the highways defying death at every turn, and a sweet Portuguese couple who try to make it 5-8 miles a day. So I will probably not see any of these guys again, but oh well.

Finishing a camino is always a double-edged sword. Not much elation, but certainly some sense of relief -- whew, I´m here. But there is also the very strong sense of, oh, no, I´m not going to walk tomorrow, what will I do. I will just have to figure out how to reconcile those emotions, like I always do, and I usually deal with it by starting to plan my next Camino. So if you are interested in walking next summer, now´s the time to speak up and be heard.....

Rest day in beautiful rural Galicia

Yesterday afternoon, after I finished my long and pretty hard third day in a row, I was in the town of Rodeiro and called the Casa de Santo Estevo, www.ribeirasacra.com, whose owner has become a camino friend. Within a half hour, Ian was in town to pick me up and take me back to the little piece of paradise he shares with his Dutch wife Irene.

 

I can only say that it´s hard to imagine a more perfect place for enjoying the views, the green, the water.... AND the incredible romanesque church next door. Walking around the outside was a big treat in itself, but late in the afternoon as we were sitting outside under a big umbrella chatting, Irene saw the "woman with the keys" arrive to put some flowers in the church. Off I sped, and got to spend some minutes inside. It is a tall romanesque church, with some of the high arches beginning to transition into a gothic point, but the romanesque in the capitals and the doorway is unmistakable. In fact, Spain´s experts have concluded that the door was carved by the same Maestro Mateo who did the Pórtico de la Gloria in the Cathedral of Santiago. For me, the real show stopper was the font -- a baptismal font, but certainly pre-Christian, just covered with all sorts of unintelligible signs that some call runes, I think. It was pretty incredible. This is an incredibly rich part of Galicia, filled with romanesque churches and monasteries, stunning landscapes, it´s not called the Ribeira Sacra (holy river bank) for nothing!


I got the royal treatment in the Casa de Santo Estevo, a great dinner, some fine wines from the region, a late night sitting outside watching the night sky arrive. I wish I could have kept my eyes open long enough to see the stars really come up, but by 11, I was ready to pack it in, having gotten just a glimpse of what was coming next. But the pull of a comfy bed, with cool breeze coming through the window was just too strong.

Today, Irene and Ian took me to some incredible view points of the Sil River. Their house is located on the Miño, with lots of beautiful terraced vineyards. The part of the Sil we saw, however, was much too steep and rocky for that, truly a forbidding but majestic river gorge. At the very end of the tour, we stopped at some vineyards that are grown on 45 degree slopes. Imagine tending those vines and picking those grapes! Lunch outside on the terrace of their casa rural, and then off I went, back to solitude.

And now I´m back in Rodeiro, the town where Ian picked me up yesterday, ready to start off again tomorrow. I will probably connect with the Via de la Plata tomorrow, so I should only have one more day alone. I´ll have to make sure to think lots and lots of great thoughts tomorrow.

Beware of scallop shells pointing straight ahead

Well, the good news is that I am in Rodeiro, today´s destination, having had a third very hard day in a row. Well, no, that´s not the really good news -- the really good news is that I´m sitting in a little bar with a blaring TV waiting for a camino friend to come pick me up and take me to his family´s casa rural! He is British and his wife is Dutch and they run what looks from the pictures like an absolutely charming place hidden in the woods. So this means I will take a day off -- no walking tomorrow!

Today´s walk was beautiful, but pretty tough. The first 8 kms were confusing, with scallop shells on big granite mojones (I´ve been told the English word is bollard, but I´ve never heard that word) pointing in the wrong direction. I had been warned of the first one, so was ready to go in a different way than the shell marker indicated. But there were at least three or four more, all pointing straight ahead, when the guide book, and occasionally painted yellow arrows, indicated another direction. The woman I spoke with yesterday out in the middle of nowhere has the explanation -- the Xunta de Galicia (regional government) spent big bucks to put these huge granite markers with shell signs all along the Invierno to give it an official status, and also, presumably to help pilgrims find their way. Well, when the workers from the Xunta showed up with their mojones to install, a few realities presented themselves: first, that their little trucks couldn´t drive through the places where it´s easiest to get lost, so those areas are marking-free. Second, they really couldn´t have cared less about where these signs went, so they just plunked them down, shells pointing any which way, in order to empty their truck and finish their work day. I think that´s probably the essence of it, but the wonderful thing is that there are small groups of camino lovers in all these towns who take it upon themselves to get the yellow paint and help point us on our way. And usually, it works just fine.

I had a pretty stiff ascent, up into the clouds/fog, and when I was presented with an optional two km detour up to a sacred spot, the geographical center of Galicia, where there is a shrine and much holiness, I couldn´t resist. No matter that the promised beautiful view was going to be whited out, I just figured I was unlikely to return soon, and so I should go see what it had to offer. Well, what it had to offer was a pretty ermita, a nice cross, and large areas of rooted up earth where another boar had been at it again. So, back down I went, and the rest of the walk was either along the ridge with those huge windmills at my side, or winding through small green hamlets with ancient buildings.

One thing I´ve seen a lot of today has been something called "peto de ánimas", 16th century granite blocks with carved out figures of souls suffering in purgatory, and with a slot to make a donation to ease their suffering. Of course the boxes aren´t still collecting donations, but it is kind of funny to think about how people could have thought that paying money to the church was going to help the pour souls in purgatory.

So, if my arithmetic is right, I have four more days of walking and I will be in Santiago. I have really enjoyed this walk, but the solitary part is a bit hard -- today, for instance, I didn´t see one human being for the first 20 kms, and after that it was only a few farmers till I arrived in this town. But my last three days will be familiar ground, when I connect with the Via de la Plata, the camino I walked last year. From the reports I get from friends who are there, there is an abundance of pilgrims, so I will not be alone for long!

Belesar´s elbows down to the Minho River

Well, the glamor ended this morning after my 6 a.m. breakfast in the parador. The lovely night "watch-woman" made me a fruit plate, along with some pastries, and let me make my own coffee with one of those fancy machines that you put the capsule into. By 6:40, I was on the way out of Monforte de Lemos.

After about 6 or 7 kms on a very un-used paved road, there was a turn off into what you might call a "green tunnel." Beautiful, they are, as they take you through the country-side on paths between two rock walls on either side, but peregrinos know they frequently spell trouble. In about 5 minutes, I had already sunk into mud about 3 " above my boots. Ok, time for Plan B -- get off the path by climbing up on the side in a break in the stone wall and walk on higher ground. Well, that sounded good, but the higher round was filled with brambles, stickers, overgrown with green stuff generally. I fell backwards and miraculously managed to avoid falling down into the goop I had just tried to avoid by climbing higher. Getting up was a bit difficult -- I think I sounded a lot like the wild boar I saw a couple of days ago and then heard ripping up the dirt and growth all around -- there´s a term of art for this -- snouting? routing? rooting? There were no arrows in this maze of paths and I just kept trying to stay on the "main path" but I was not ever sure.

Somehow, miraculously, not only did I manage to stay in one piece and avoid serious injury, but I also emerged into a clearing (after pushing my way through overgrowth so thick it was almost impassable) and saw a mojón (a camino marker). I was stunned, I had actually gone the right way! I was even more amazed when I ran into a resident a few hundred meters further on who told me that everyone gets lost in this stretch. All it needs is a can of paint and some arrows, and I wish I had the time to do it.

The walk changed dramatically after that -- 6 or 7 km in the continuous drizzle to a beautiful romanesque church in Diamondi, where there are two very sweet cow heads looking down over the doorway. Just as I arrived, the rain stopped, so I could take my poncho off and get out my camera. From there it was about 3 km down on Roman Road (I´ve walked on a lot of roman roads, and this one was particularly unfriendly), but the reward was going down towards the Minho River, with vineyards and small hamlets looking over everything. This is the stretch called Belesar´s elbows, presumably named after the shape of the downhill path.

Even the steep up afterwards was well worth it, it was beautiful and lush. A woman emerged from a house in a remote hamlet and told me to eat cherries, eat them here, they are going to rot. So I took her up on it, and it gave me the energy I needed to finish the rest of the walk into Chantada.

Well, here I am in the Pensión Gamallo (?). I have stayed in worst places before, I´m sure, it´s just that I can´t think of them. It´s pretty bad, but it´s just a night, and I had a great meal in the Mesón Lucas, so that kind of offsets the grungy pensión. And then tomorrow another 28 km up and down and up and down.....

Made it to Monforte de Lemos

Well, those who said this is a hard day are absolutely right. It´s 35 kms, but the kicker is that there are three ups and downs, which add to the fun. But it was fine. The owner of the hostal where I spent last night very nicely agreed to leave a thermos of boiling water outside my room when she went to bed. That meant that at 6 in the morning it was still very warm, just perfect for my envelope of nescafé and a few squirts of condensed milk in a tube.

I was on the road by 6:15, and checked in to my lodging for the evening at 3:15 or 3:30, so it was a very long day. I did rest, once after the second up and down, but there were flies everywhere so it was a quick stop. Then a few kms along, there was a bar in the town that´s 23 km from the starting point and 12 from the end. A perfect place to stop. I had a good café con leche, in a bar that is located on a street that is (still) named Avenida de José Antonio Primo de Rivera. Wow, he´s one of those early fascist Franco guys. But I didn´t stand on principle, and had a very nice rest with boots and socks off in an outdoor café.

The walk went through many rural Galicia spots, some incredibly beautiful hamlets, paths by several rivers (the Lor and the Saa), and those are the absolute best because there are green tunnels of native growth and you just walk along in an enchanted forest.

Luckily, the ascents went from worst to bad to not so bad, but even so, I was dragging by the time I got into the outskirts of Monforte de Lemos. This is a pretty big town, it even has a Spanish parador in it. On the way in, I was thinking, gee, Joe and I have a lot of points on the Parador system, I know because I got an email last December telling me they were expiring. Well, this is Spain, and maybe expiration is a fluid concept. So I schlepped up to the parador, which is in an old palacio and next to the remaining castle tower (another 35 or 40 hot minutes from my entry into Monforte near the train tracks). It was hot and sunny, but I made it. I explained my situation to the very nice woman at the reception. She called Madrid, to the mother lode of the Amigos de Paradores, and voilà, those expired points were reinstated and I was able to stay in the parador for free! It´s beautiful, furnished in a traditional way (unlike some of the newer paradores, which are done sleek and minimalist -- what is sleek and minimalist doing in a 14th century palace??).

But while some might enjoy the architecture, others the service, still others the food, the best part of a parador for anyone walking to Santiago is that it means having a big bathtub, lots of soap, and those huge body-size thick parador towels to wash and wring out clothes. In my exuberance for the luxury of today´s clothes-washing, I dropped my pants into the tub and only later realized that stuck in the pocket were my printed camino de invierno guide and all the many notes I had scribbled today on the way. Grrrrrr. Well, those pages are now laid out on the floor, hopefully drying, so that I can salvage something.

I have 5 or 6 days walking left, I can´t believe it. I am so glad I took this route, it is really spectacular and un-visited. If anyone wants a guided tour, I will volunteer to walk you through it.

28 km to Quiroga

WOW, what a beautiful day from A Rúa to Quiroga. But first I want to remember something that happened yesterday afternoon. While I was sitting waiting for internet in the library in A Rúa, there were two young women using two of the machines (of 3). They had multiple tatoos, were laughing loudly, giving pink frosting doughnuts to their kids in strollers to shut them up, and were generally being annoying to me and another old man waiting to use the computers. I did not have a favorable impression. Well, after I finished my internet and went on my way, I didn´t give them another thought. Not at least for ten minutes, when I saw one of them running after me and calling, señora, señora. Turns out that one of them had seen my passport lying on the floor and had been running around looking for me. It had fallen out of my fanny pack somehow, and she had seen it on the library floor. I gave her a hug and asked if I could give her something, and she looked like she didn´t understand what I meant. And then it sort of hit me hard, wow, don´t judge those books by their covers. A good lesson.

Turns out that the hospitalera, Asunción, of the little albergue yesterday was a clairvoyant and an alternative medicine fan. Her 88 year old mom made us lunch, and then she took me up to a small hamlet way way up where there was a little romanesque church tucked away. She knew plenty of the people in the small town, so we talked with them and heard their gripes about the government, the church, and life in general (for example, how badly the neighbor is treating his cows), and then went to one look-out where Asunción told me how the mountain had opened up for her and a big bright pink lotus flower emerged, and it just went on from there. All I wanted to do was get back to town and sleep, but I couldn´t be rude, so I went along on her walk down memory lane where so many of these things happened. Finally, by 9:45 p.m. (WAY late for me), I was back in the albergue and ready to sleep -- except that first I had to tour her consult room, filled with tons of bottles of colored oils and extracts of things (this has a name that my trendy friends will know), as well as a table where she works on her clients and follows all sorts of star-laden paths to wellness. It must work for some people, because her clients come from a long way to be put on that table.

This morning I was up at 6 and out by 6:30 -- luckily I was able to make an instant coffee in their kitchen before leaving, so I didn´t get a caffeine headache. Wow, was today beautiful. The camino went up and down from river hamlet up to town up above (which is sometimes annoying but good for the elevation gain), and at all times I could either see or hear the river or one of its tributaries. The views were amazing, and every now and then I could snatch one without either the national highway or the train tracks in view. Both of them criss cross the river back and forth, seemingly at will, while I keep my feet firmly planted on the right side of the river. It was beautiful.

In one of the many little hamlets I passed through (all of which have huge numbers of houses falling down and abandoned), a little car with 3 people (grandma, husband and wife) stopped and rolled down their window. Are you a pilgrim? the mother asked. You´re the first pilgrim I´ve seen here on the Camino de Invierno, please hug the saint for me. Are you walking alone (most common question)? When I said yes, she said, no you´re wrong, God is walking with you. Hmm, that´s quite a thought. But I have to admit that at every point of the camino where I needed help today, help was there. It was in the form of a man tending his grapes, a guy whacking the weeds around the castle, someone driving by slowly who knew I was off the camino, or someone just out taking care of his sheep. Good karma maybe, but maybe something else.

The town of Quiroga is not much to look at, but its situation right on the Rio Sil is spectacular. A very nice Cuban woman who was working in a little shop gave me a very good recommendation on both hostal and restaurant. We both agreed that the two of us could handle the US-Cuba problems just fine outselves, we don´t need those politicians. So I´m in the Hostal Quiper, with a nice clean room and bath for 18€, and had a very good lunch of salad, chops, and cheese with membrillo for dessert.

Tomorrow is a question mark. I will either walk 23 km to Puebla de Brollón, or slog on to Monforte de Lemos for another 12. I would really like to do the latter, but it will depend on how I´m feeling. The weather is very very good, but is getting a little warmer, which is no fun for the pilgrim with backpack. For the life of me, I can´t figure out why thousands and thousands go on the Camino Francés and I´m all alone on the Camino de Invierno. Crazy.

Made it to A Rúa

I had a very short day today, only 14 kms (well, I admit you have to add a couple to that number because I got lost once or twice, once for a couple of kms, till some nice young couple with a baby came by in a car and straightened me out). I was able to start late, which meant I could even get a café con leche in a nearby bar before starting to walk. The next town is 28 km beyond where I am right now, and that´s more than I can handle. I´m in wine country (one of Spain´s many), there are vineyards and wineries everywhere.

Though the Camino de Invierno was well marked until I got to the edge of Castilla & León, once I entered Galicia, things got a bit more spotty. I´ve gotten lost a few times, but was always able to backtrack and get things right again. I´m taking tons of notes so that I can help revise the English guide -- makes me feel like a girl scout again (oh wait, I don´t think I made it much past the Brownies stage).

This town has a private albergue here, something connected with a Casa Rural (rural tourism house). My first task upon arrival was to go to the town hall to get a stamp for my credencial, as well as to get some general information on internet, etc. As I was heading down the street from the town hall, I heard someone shout "Laura" -- turns out it is the president of the small Camino de Invierno Association here in town. I had been in contact with them for some suggestions and told them I would be arriving today. What a nice man, a very dedicated camino volunteer. He led me to the internet, told me he´d be back to walk me up to the albergue and to give me a written guidebook that his association has published. All help is greatly appreciated, because the arrows are not consistently well placed. But I´m never far from civilization, there are always people nearby, and it´s beautiful!

I am staying in a private albergue that is the home of Asunción and her 88 year old mother. The house has been in the family for 700 years, family lore has it, and there is about 3 feet of a column sticking up in the middle of a courtyard. Asunción says it is Roman, and that when they remodeled the house they dug down at least 10´and never found the bottom. They think it formed part of a temple because they have seen ruins of an altar nearby. There are also water channels running through the whole upper old town which have been confirmed by the "experts" as Roman, from the second century more or less. Amazing.

I ate lunch with Asunción and her mother, who had just gathered the season´s first potatoes and served a big plate of them with some local chicken. She told me that she goes to her garden plot every day and that when she touches the dirt she feels the strength of the earth coming up through her body. This afternoon she is going out with a sickle to cut down some weeds, says it keeps her young, and that when she stops doing it her body will just stop altogether.

So I had been thinking that maybe I would go to a few tasting rooms this afternoon to sample some of the local wine, but when Asunción offered to drive me to a jewel of a romanesque church nearby, there was no contest. And to top it off, a friend of hers has the key, so we will be able to go inside. And that will be the end of a very nice day.

I will probably not have access to computers over the weekend, since the libraries will be closed and I will not be in a town big enough to have private internet cafés. Hope to log in on Monday, and by then I should be less than 100 km from Santiago!

Day 2 on the Camino de Invierno

Well, I had my doubts. That last night in the beautiful, large (180 beds), efficient and comfortable (two bunk beds per room) albergue in Ponferrada, I sat around and said goodbye to a number of people I had met over the last few days walking. Some said, oh, don´t go on the Camino de Invierno, stay here on the Francés; others said, oh the Invierno is lonely and not well marked; etc. I was tempted, but then thinking about the fact that there were 180 people sleeping in this albergue, I just decided it was going to be too crazy and crowded to continue on.

So, after our 6 a.m. breakfast of coffee in an envelope plus evaporated milk in a tube, Paulette and I gave each other a big hug, and she went her way while I went mine. She was the last peregrina I´ve seen.

The marking was excellent. And though I had 28 kms with more than 850 meters of elevation gain, I did better than I thought -- I had been afraid that all those flat kms on the meseta would have gotten me out of shape, but I was fine. The first big ascent goes up to the Castle of Cornatel, built on a high rock at the top of a mountain in a spot you can´t really imagine building on. And since the Camino takes a valley route around and up, I got to see it from all sides. I didn´t go in though, since it was 10 when I got there and the doors open at 11.

The second big ascent was the one that took me up to my night´s destination, called Las Médulas. It´s an eerie and spectacular place at the same time. The Romans in the 2nd century had found gold in some nearby river, so they knew there was gold in the mountains. They dug hundreds of kms of tunnels through the mountain here, and channels to take water from the river to the tunnels, then they turned on the water and it exploded the insides of the mountains. So what is left standing are the supports, totally desnuded, just sheer mountain-guts. Of course to see it all, I had to walk another 5-8 kms, but hey, it was without pack and without boots. A walk in the park!

Today´s walk was a bit shorter (25 km) and less strenuous, but just like the past two days in that cherry trees and chestnut trees are everywhere. An old lady in a little hamlet told me which cherry trees I should eat from, since they were on abandoned property, so I carefully followed her advice and filled my pockets. I had my fill of both the dark red and the yellow-light red variety, and they were both delicious. I am now walking alongside the Sil River, which expands and contracts dramatically over the course of the walk. Sometimes it´s wide and lazy, other times it´s in a narrow rock-filled course, just crashing around with lots of white water. There is a fair amount of industry on the banks, but there are plenty of beautiful secluded spots as well.

Less than two weeks till I´m home, hard to believe! Tomorrow is a really short day for me, only 14 kms, but the next town after that is 28 more kms away, so I think I´ll pass on the 42 km option.

In Ponferrada, my last day on the Francés

Today´s walk was filled with beautiful views of surrounding green mountains, but unfortunately it was such a steep descent that we had to have our eyes on the ground for a lot of the time. We are entering into a much more mountainous part of Spain, and the fields are brilliant green and filled with lots of crops. We got to the albergue in Ponferrada by noon (it was a short 17 km day) and got checked into a girls-only room with two bunk beds. Wow, that is heaven!

My two closest friends of the last week on the Francés and I went out to a good-bye lunch. We went to a rather fancy (at least, fancy for peregrinos) restaurant in an old stone building, with balconies looking out over flower gardens and had a 14 euro lunch. That´s pretty pricey for pilgrims, but having the first course be a plate of grilled vegetables was alone worth the price. Then merluza (hake?) in a green sauce with even MORE vegetables (yes, we are vegetable-deprived on the Camino), and a cheese-cuajada cake for dessert. The wine that came with the meal was from the region, El Bierzo, and my friend from California was able to describe its legs and I don´t know what other features, but the bottom line was that she pronounced it very drinkable (I guess that´s high praise coming from someone from Sonoma). We are now going to spend an hour or so walking around the city´s absolutely fantastic templar castle.

Tomorrow I head out alone, I have a guidebook and will never be far from a town so I am not worried. I am hoping to meet back up with some of these guys when I reach Santiago, but I´m walking a longer route than they are so we may not overlap.

No more albergues for me, it will be pensiones and hotels from now on. I can´t say I´ll miss the snoring and the communal bathrooms, but I will miss these guys, that´s for sure. I am hoping I´ll have email access along the way, but if not, in 10 days or so I will arrive in Santiago!

In a lovely stone village

I have had a wonderful three days´walking, the terrain is changing, and the really lucky part of it all is that though there have been some incredible downpours, both days they have arrived about 20 minutes after I got into the albergue. Today´s stop is a small town called El Acebo, a one street village with nothing but camino-related businesses -- an albergue, a couple of restaurants, a small shop or two. The town is quite beautiful, all stone buildings with slate roofs.

I´ve stayed in some new towns, trying to mix it up a little so it´s not all the same old same old. From León, I walked to Hospital de Orbigo, a long slog, but when we arrived there was a medieval "fair" going on. Tons of crowds, lots of food, some parades, sack races, tug of war -- who knew those school yard games came to us from so many centuries ago.

I´ve met a huge number of Americans, certainly more Americans in the last 5 days than I have met on all of my Caminos put together. I have been walking with a woman from Santa Rosa, who is good friends with a good friend of my good friend Dana -- how´s that for a small world? And this part of the Camino is one that brings back so many memories of my caminos with Dana, so it all seems to fit together.

The meseta has officially ended and we are starting to see some elevation gain. It makes things more interesting, and there are some amazing vistas. Today was a mix of clouds and sun, and we walked through a favorite village of mine, Rabanal (where there are two new albergues, making it a grand total of four in a town of about 50 people)and after one terribly cloudy stretch, the sun opened up just as we arrived at the Iron Cross, one of the high points of the Camino Francés.

Tomorrow, I will arrive in Ponferrada, a short 20 km away. There is a very impressive and well-renovated Templar castle, and from there the next day I will say goodbye to my friends and hike on myself. Then in a short 10-12 days I will arrive in Santiago. It´s all going so fast. It will hard to say goodbye to my friends, it is nice to have people around, but I hope one or two may come with me on my adventure.

In Santa Catarina

I am now in a town that I walked through in 2000, and again several years later. It is about 10 km outside Astorga. When we walked through it before, it was a totally abandoned town, and now there are restaurants, albergues, and bars. There are several First Communion luncheons-dinners here in the albergue, so who knows when we will get a bite to eat. We are at the bottom of the food chain here, I think.

Today we left the meseta. I walked with two other peregrinos until Astorga, where we enjoyed the Gaudi palace, the castillo, and a nice long café con leche in the plaza, just watching peregrinos arrive. We had about a 28 km walk to this small town, and here we sit waiting for the rain to move to the east and leave us alone. The albergue is quite nice, there are showers with hot water and no bunk beds -- so everyone has a "bottom bunk", which is quite nice.

I have met a nurse from Santa Rosa, which is pretty special, since danagrina lives in Santa Rosa. I´m hoping to hook those two up. The nurse, Paulette, told me that my toes look like they have gangrene, which gave me pause, but I am confident that´s not what they have,

Now we start the mountain walking. The day after tomorrow I will leave the Camino Francés and start on the camino del invierno, probably all alone but hopefully with someone else. This is a beautiful town and I am so happy and thankful to be here.

Rest day in León

I´m sort of getting used to this -- slog on for 37-40 kms on Day 1, and then take Day 2 to relax and enjoy! León is such a beautiful city, I´m always happy to spend time here. I had very little to accomplish today, other than wash a few pieces of clothing, so you could say I am enjoying the life of a lady of leisure.

This morning at breakfast, the room in the hotel was filled with eight English speaking pilgrims. A dad and two college aged kids from N. Carolina, two Canadian women (one of whom had walked her last step on the Camino and was limping terribly, the other who was off to buy a new backpack), an Austrian woman, a German young guy, and an American guy from Seattle. Yet another stark indication of how the traffic on the Camino Francés is increasing. We talked for a while, after I got up my courage to admit I had been eavesdropping and barged into the conversation. A couple of them are now considering the option of taking the Camino de Invierno with me, which would be nice. They too are tiring of the crowds and the rush for beds.


I spent a long time in the Cathedral during the late morning, as the strong sun burned through the stained glass window and made little jewel colored reflections all over the floor, it was amazing.

Then just wandering through the old town, I went to the covered market, where I went back to the same old fruit seller I remember from previous caminos. He started talking about how his business was declining, how people prefer to go get things wrapped in plastic in the supermarket, but how he wasn´t going to quit till he couldn´t make enough money to feed himself. He went on for some time about how it takes a professional to really know their fruits and vegetables -- the varieties, the regions, the soil, and in some cases, the growers themselves. He told me I would be very happy with every bite I took of the nectarines, apples, and cherries I bought from him. I left thinking he is a lucky man to be so proud of what he does every day from sun-up to sun-down.

So, I´m off for my last stroll in León, and am headed down to the parador, which is in the renaissance palace of San Marcos. It´s right at the tip of a long river walk, where in a while a large cross-section of León´s society will be linking arms and walking up and down along the tree-lined riverside promenade.

Weather so far has been fantastic, in fact for the last few days I´ve had to put socks on my hands till about 10:00 (WHY did I take out those little lambs wool gloves at the last minute?). But the forecast is calling for warming temperatures and rain. I´m hoping the rain keeps to its typical Castilla & León pattern of falling late in the afternoon after all peregrinos are inside washing clothes and napping.

Hard times in Spain

I know the crisis has hit all parts of the world, but here in Spain, it is quite visible. As you walk through the countryside, there are hundreds of unfinished houses, apartment buildings, commercial buildings, hotels, etc. The crisis just stopped everything in its tracks. Unemployment is unbelievably high (I have met many unemployed or "pre-retired" Spaniards), and the recent forecast is that it will take 15 years for Spain to recover the employment levels that it had before the crisis. That of course means that there is a lost generation of young people who will be part of the fall-out. In Spain, there is a slang term for them -- the "nini generation" (the "neither nor" generation) -- ni estudia, ni trabaja (they neither study nor work). You can see these kids in every major town or city you walk through, sitting on the stairs or in plazas, almost always smoking cigarettes (which, at 4 euros a pack, seem like they would be out of their price range). It´s depressing to think that these kids will probably never get a shot at a productive life. The lucky ones have parents or family who can support them. The rest depend on Spain´s safety net, which is much more generous than ours (how hard could that be?). But though they may have income and social security handouts, they don´t have the dignity that comes from work, and that is very sad.

When I arrived in Madrid on May 16, the 15 May movement (15-M) had just begun in Madrid. Thousands of unemployed occupied the Puerta del Sol and they all sent email messages and twitter or whatever else sends messages far and wide, and soon, people in all sorts of Spanish cities were occupying the main plaza, agitating for work and new government policies.

 As I have been walking, I´ve seen people camped out in Segovia, Valladolid, and now Leon, all very respectful, but all trying to make the point that people need work. There are posters every where, one that particularly caught my attention read: "We´re not anti-system, the system is anti-us." The human price tag of all of this will be very high, I´m sure.