September 2013
14.9 miles and 35,000 steps
I promised to give an update to last nights meal, good but nowhere near as good as the home cooked food from the night before. Galician Soup, Veal and Torta de Santiago. The Torta, you see everywhere. Almond flour, almonds, and powdered sugar. I am sure it is also an olive oil cake. Delicious and fast becoming my favorite food of the region.
My mother asked how many stamps I have collected and I realized I had not talked about that. Technically you collect two per day. We have been so focused on the finish line that we have only been collecting two a day, one in the morning and one at night where you stay. Yesterday, however, we stopped in a small town neither of us can remember and collected a stamp from a small ancient Roman church. The priest handed us blessing cards and shook our hands. Despite his age (waaaay older than me) his handshake almost broke my hand. We also picked up one at a fruit stand. This happens often on the Camino. People put out food, coffee, water and/or tea and have an honesty box. We bought nectarines to die for and the fruit stand had a stamp as well.
So on to day 4. It was a nice day in that we had no rain. Terribly humid, but no rain! – Yep, carried that damn poncho the whole way!
We spent more time going through very, very small hamlets today. I also felt we saw considerably more stonework along the way today.
First thing this morning we encountered a group of Japanese, stylishly dressed and walking with no packs. We still have not figured out if they were just visiting Spain and walking one day, or if they put on full makeup and walked in these gorgeous clothes for the entire trip. We met them again where we stopped for lunch, and while they were stamping their “passports” I noticed they had 3 or 4 pages worth. We only have 1-page worth. I haven’t figured out if they stopped at every place they could to collect stamps or if they really had walked farther than we thought. So of course, I started stopping and collecting stamps till Julie teased me so bad I had to stop :-).
We ran into our Irish friends again along the way and walked about a mile with them. We took a potty break in an Albergue where we parted ways and yep – we got a stamp :-).
We met some fellows from Gibraltar and walked with them for a while. The problem is, we were having so much fun laughing and talking about the world we walked a full kilometer past our hotel. Combination of our bad math – we try to calculate the kilometer marker that our next stop is at and the fact that we were using google maps and well we all know that isn’t the best.
We are now happily off of our feet and sitting in a hotel in Amenal, drinks, and computers in hand.
So – the disgusting olfactory sense of the day – my own feet when I took off my boots. UGH!
Blisters, believe it or not, I have even more, did not think that was even possible. Julie has been a wonderful nurse tending to the ones on the bottom of my feet, I could never reach those.
Tonight we sleep at the 14 Kilometer mark – We have been counting down from 115.
Saying for the day- Enjoy the camaraderie, but keep your eye on the road.