I won’t have much to say today but mostly because it was a long day.  We are staying in an albergue tonight and we are in a room with 10 beds, one toilet, one shower and a 4 foot high ceiling (or lower) for pilgrims sleeping closer to the side walls.  We were second and third in the queue to shower but fourth in the queue to wash our close.  We are now guarding them as they dry in the sun (hopefully before sunset).  It’s also happy in this tiny little mountainside hamlet.  Everyone staying in one of the seven buildings that are standing here either work in the building or is a pilgrim.  It’s a party atmosphere. Communal dinner is in two hours and that will likely last until bedtime.  

The walk today went very fast for the first 21km.  Walking out of Astorga in the hour before dawn was on well lit sidewalks. When we hit the end of civilization, the trail was a gravel path but very dark in the near-moonless night.  That”s where we met Francesca from Chile.  She could not find her torchlight so we shared ours.  We didn’t even charge her anything.  We ended up walking about 10km with her and everyone passing her knew her.  She was fun to chat with which makes the mileage go faster. At one point, I asked Melanie how many kilometers we had walked so far.  She is usually good at guessing but she said 6km. It was actually 12km.  

Francesca eventually started walking more her normal speed as we fell back a bit.  Then we met her Mexican friend, Andrea and walked with her some too.  All was fine until the 20km mark in the village of Rabanal del Camino from there, we sometimes climbed gradual inclines on concrete of packed gravel and sometimes fought our way up very steep, rocky paths that required very careful placement of our feet.  We dropped from 12-13 minutes per kilometer to 17-19 minutes per kilometer.  That last bit was quite brutal for us.  As I said before, this year, things mostly seem less steep, less difficult, less long than I have in my memory. This section was just as hard as it has been the last three times.

In our room, we have one very tall Danish man walking around in his underwear. There are still three beds left the last time I climbed to the attic but the other people seem normal so far.  

Quote of the day was overheard by Melanie.  A pilgrim who arrived a few hours after us was trying to check in to the albergue.  The hospilera was explaining all the house rules, options for dinner and breakfast etc. but she was going through those very fast in heavily accented English. The pilgrim got upset and asked the hostelera ro stop,and not in a very nice way.  The hospilera apologized and said that the pilgrim was one of the the last to arrive today and she had made the same speech twenty times today.  The pilgrim arrive “I’m one of the last to arrive?  That is why I am so upset.  So much today didn’t go right. First, my taxi was late….”.  Oh my!  There may possibly be a legitimate reason for a taxi ride today but I suspect she just wanted to sleep in and have an easy shortened day.

I’m trying now, after dinner, to finish up the blog. It was 8:56pm and an Aussie woman who has got on my nerves before decided that she wanted to sleep. She just turned off all the lights in the room and said it’s time to sleep.  That added some work for me as I fumbled around for charging cables, repacking clothes, etc.  FYI, at other albergues, normal lights out time is 10:00pm.   After I post this, I’ll try to fall asleep on my back.  That’s the only time I snore.

Peace y’all (and me too).

Goodnight Geo, Lella and Storge, you crazy mixed up kids