Today provided a lot of the frustrations, disappointments, mishaps and screw ups that make walking a Camino a learning experience. It wasn’t all bad but I was in school all day learning patience, self care, acceptance and a dozen other classes.

One problem started last night when in the middle of dinner I suddenly felt like I was going to faint. That has happened a few times in my life but I didn’t appreciate getting a spell in a foreign country while walking a Camino. The feeling never fully went away all night so sleep was restless.  When I carried our bags downstairs this morning, I had another fainting scare.  I figured the overheated room and dehydration were the culprits so I drank a liter of water at breakfast and opened the window in our room. I needed to get out and walk and that seemed to work.  I didn’t feel 100% while walking but I was feeling a lot better than when I wasn’t walking.

Our day started bad for other reasons too. We walked 2km back to the bus station to catch a ride to Astràin so that we could walk back to Zariquiegue and rejoin the trail. From where we stopped yesterday. After waiting in the queue a further 30 minutes we were told that the bus was full with people who had booked tickets online. There would be no cash sales.  Crimminy jackets!

That disappointment lead to our happiest moment of the day though. We double checked to see if there was any taxi in the taxi queue to get us to Zariquiegue. On our other visits to the station there were never any but today there was. We hada lovely woman driver and the fare was only €24.  But… remember yesterday when I was surprised at how few pilgrims were walking then, well today there were a lot. In fact, there were probably 60 of them around the main intersect of Zariquiegue when our taxi dumped us out in the same place. How embarrassing!  Everyone was looking at us.  I smiled and said “don’t judge! We walked here yesterday. There was enough chuckling after that that told me that everyone was thing the same thing – what bold cheaters!

Another frustration When we arrived at our accommodation for the night.  There no vacancies in hotels in Puente la Reina tonight because of a local festival (the running of the bulls!) so yesterday on Booking.com, we found an albergue with private rooms just a little outside of town and away from the noise. We had booked it immediately. Unfortunately, that after a very tough day of walking, they failed to mention the very long and steep climb to get to the albergue. Everyone complained.

The guy who runs the albergue is a peach too. Since no sane person would walk down the hill to get dinner, everyone was a captive to his mother’s cooking.  It was not overly expensive or bad but he made sure that we were aware that there really wasn’t an alternative. My vanilla ice cream dessert turned out to be a stale petrol station ice cream cone.  Melanie”s flan dessert was served still in its supermarket, single-serving tin. Melanie also had a run-in with the manager earlier too.  After we booked online and paid for our bags to be transported tomorrow, Melanie went out to ask him for that transport company’s envelope that needed to be attached to the bags. The manager insisted that the company we use (Jacotrans) does not service his albergue, he didn’t have any of their envelopes, and that Melanie should use his friend’s company. Melanie didn’t back down though and he eventually gave her a dirty look and pulled two Jacotrans envelopes from his desk. Swine.

It’s late and I have to abbreviate this next issue but it took me two hours to register online to get into tomorrow’s hotel room.  They have no front desk staff and we needed to self-register before arrival. Their program was an awful mess forcing me to re-enter all our information dozens of times. 

Our “private room” is not what we expected.  It has four square meters of floor space with half of that space being dedicated to the bunk beds.  There is also a small bench, and three pegs on the wall for hanging clothes. 

Due to the hiccups today and having to hand wash our clothes, it is now well past bedtime and I’m falling asleep after every third word that I type so please forgive the errors and Peace y’all. Goodnight George,Leo and Stella.