Day 26: 25/05/09: León recovery & maintenance day

* Stayed at the Parador de San Marcos -- by far the most ornate and impressive building we´ve stayed in. Not sure how much the other patrons appreciate our dress code. Founded as a pilgrim hospital in the 12th century, then a monastery in the 15th, then a prison in the 17th, then an army barracks, it´s now one of the "poshest" hotels in Spain.

* Visited the León Cathederal, which has the reputation for having the most impressive stained glass windows in the world.

* Spent the morning doing shoe & knee maintenance. Pharmacy stock prices across Europe rose today after our insole & knee brace shopping spree.

* At a small local diner (couldn´t afford dinner at the Parador restaurant), the waitress mistakes "Baileys con leche" (Baileys with milk) for "Baileys con caliente leche" (Baileys with hot milk) -- accidentally creating a Baileys latté. Not bad at all!

Day 25: 24/05/09: Mansilla de las Mulas to León

* An Italian man complained this morning when Jean-Louis (our French friend) turned the lights on. With a shrug of his shoulders and a big smile, Jean-Louis pronounced "It´s 6 o´clock". Case closed. You just can´t argue with 6 o´clock.

* At the monastery albergue in León, there was separate accommodation for males, females & couples. Luckily, we got a double bunk... with only 17 other couples in the room.

*I could be wrong, but I think a nun was watching in through the men´s shower window for more than an "accidental" duration.

Day 24: 23/05/09: Bercianos del real Camino to Mansilla de las Mulas (26.3kms walked; 330kms to go)

• Someone graffitied a load of bread onto a wall we passed, and labelled it "pan" (bread). Both more creative and more surreal than graffiti in Melbourne.
• Rained all morning. Much preferred walking in the rain than the 30ish degree heat over the last day or two.
• Starting to realise how much weight we´ve lost in the last few weeks (I suppose walking 400+kms will do that to you). Mostly Hannah though -- my booty is still a full moon. Doing the belts up a little tighter every day. Was joking a week or two back that there should be a new TV show ¨The Biggest Loser: El Camino".

Day 23: 22/05/09: Terradillos de los Templarios to (somewhere)

I´m finding that in the mornings I tend to use my wide angle lens when taking photos. There´s the sunrise, the fields, the trail leading to the horizon, the snowy mountains in the distance, the... everything.

Then as the day progresses my feet feel bruised, my knees ache & fatigue sets in, I start looking down more often. That´s when I switch to the telephoto (zoom) lens, after I start noticing the myriad of flowers, the pollen that sits like snow along the track, the beetles, the... everything.

The landscape & mountains have always been there; the flowers & beetles have always been there. Sometimes you just need something difficult to force a change in perspective before you can fully appreciate the wonderful things that have been there all along.

Day 22: 21/05/09: Carrion de los Condes to Terradillos de los Templarios (27kms walked; 382kms to go)

I think this is about the halfway mark. It's hard to tell because there are so many different possible routes, and we haven't decided where we're going to end. It'll either be Santiago or Finisterra. Either way, we're still loving every day.

We're out on the Spanish meseta, which is basically flat wheat fields stretching out endlessly. Between the towns there are generally only isolated patches of trees (mostly off the road, so bugger-all shade for roasting pilgrims), and the roofs of the only buildings fell in centuries ago.

Our guide book had said that there were no shops for 40kms (2 days walk), so we'd bought & carriedbreakfast & lunch for two days -- hence the plastic bag full of pasta curry. Luckily the modern albergue for tonight's accommodation had a small shop, so we gladly disposed of the mashed, twice-cooked (once in the pot; once in the scorching sun) pasta, and had something fresher instead.

Today's walk was harder than normal. The towns here are further apart, so we walked 27kms again instead of the normal 20ish, carrying a lot more food/water. The longer the walk, the hotter the day gets, with all the obvious consequences.

Tomorrow is another long distance day, and we try to start much earlier on these days.

Generally we walk solo, but today we walked with Jean-Louis from France who's wife caught the bus due to bad blisters. Conversations can cover numerous topics during a 6 hour walk.

Day 21: 20/05/09: Boadilla to Carrion de los Condes (408.5kms to go)

We stopped a town early yesterday to stay in a fantastic albergue in Boadilla (recommended days ago by a hyper-energetic Irish woman), so we had to make up a little distance today, walking about 27kms instead of the normal 20ish. We'd semi-planned to rise a little earlier than the default 6am, but didn't expect to be awaken in the way we were.

In addition to the usual chorus of snoring, there'd been a booming baritone voice sleep talking several times during the night. People were telling him to be quiet, so with all the noise other people assumed it was time to get up... until they realised it was still only 2am.

Then before 5:30am someone's alarm went off. It wasn't the usual buzz-buzz of a phone on vibrate, or even a quiet beep-beep. It was some sort of talking, nay, yelling, alarm clock that started scremaing in German something along the lines of "SCHNELL, SCHNELL! MOVE YOUR SLEEPY ASS! GET THE HELL OUT OF BED! SCHNELL, SCHNELL!". The guy who's alarm clock it was was the last one awake -- it screamed for over a minute before he switched it off. I don't know ecactly what it was yelling, but a German lady was quite distressed for a while.

For me, everything is fixed by the wonderful huuuuuuge mug of coffee and marmalade & toast provided by the albergue's hospitaleros.

We cook a dinner of pasta & veggies in a curry sauce. It's the first pasta curry I've ever had. In fact, it's possibly the first pasta curry anyone has ever had. Anyway, there's plenty of leftovers for tomorrow's lunch. Except we don't have and container to put it in, or plates to eat it from. So we pour it into a pastic bag and put it into my backpack. (not sure why it was my backpack.)

So tomorrow's lunch is cold pasta curry eaten with plastic forks from a plastic bag. I'm not sure whether this will be a highlight or a low point. I suppose it depends on whether the plastic bags burst in my backpack before lunch.

We've double-bagged it. What could possibly go wrong?

Day 20: Castrojeriz to Boadilla (20kms walked)

• Breakfast with Anne, the art teacher from Belgium who's constant enthusiasm rubs off on everyone.
• Finding out that the 'Ultreia' we've seen graffitied everywhere actually means 'callous', and comes from the ancient pilgrims that used to walk the Camino barefoot. The word was used in chants and songs to encourage eachother to continue walking. I think it's the ancient form of 'No pain; no gain'.
• I'm a little worried that my hiking shoes have worn through most of the grip underneath. Probably not coincidentally, this is the same part I've been feeling bruised everyday. I really don't want to have to break in a few pair of hiking shoes during the Camino. Will have to see how they go.
• Arriving in Boadilla, we were met on the outskirts of town by an old Spanish gentleman, abiyt 90 years old and not even 5 foot tall, wearing his military medals alongside badges for all around the world, with a cheeky glint in his eye. After a warm greeting he asked Hannah for two things:
• to write in his autograph/visitor's book
• for a kiss on the cheek
• We met him later in the albergue, where he argued loudly and jestfully with the young male host (hospitalero) about who's "amiga" Hannah was. I think the old guy won.

Day 19: Hornillos del Camino to Castrojeriz (20.5kms walked)

I'll upload photos later; no words for today :)

Day 18: Burgos to Hornillos del Camino

I´m not sure why, but I threw up a few times overnight... for the first time in years. We had a healthy home made dinner last night -- just a salad. Staying at a hotel (we do that on rest days ´cos the albergues only allow you one night´s accommodation in each town), our only cooking tool was a pocket knife (not even plates or cutlery) so a salad was our only real option.

I was a little concerned about being sick, because we found out yesterday that a Canadian we´d been travelling with has spent the last few days in hospital with gastro and a fever of 40ºC. Eeeek.

I´ve got a cast-iron stomach, so by morning I was fine and we headed to Hornillos del Camino, 19kms away. This town is barely a blip on the map, and according to the guide book only has a single albergue with 32 beds (compared to 100+ in most towns). We started later this morning, so we knew there was the possibility of missing out on a bed tonight.

About 5 minutes from the destination´s albergue, a tourist bus pulled up a few hundred meters in front of us, and out jumped about 15 fresh people with backpacks and walking poles... all headed towards the albergue.

Now, normally we´re not competitive at the end of the day. Everyone is tird and some people are walking with open raw blisters and wrecked knees. There´s no way we´re going to rush past people like that.

But, here was a huge group of tourists dropped off by a tourist bus, about to walk for 5 minutes compared to us walking for 6.5 hours in the freezing cold, after throwing up all night. Was I going to allow them to take the beds? No. Fucking. Way.

So:

• deep breath: check
• walking poles enabled: check
• determined look: check
• adrenaline boost: check
• stunned tourists eating our dust: check
• beds for us tonight: check

Now, let´s find an nice sunny field to thaw out in while I write this...

Day 17: Burgos rest day

This is a big city with a lot to explore. Good excuse for another rest day. Unlike most peope here, we have no deadline, so we´re lucky enough to be able to spend the time to see and do what we want.

Oh, it turns out that yesterday wasn´t Sunday... tomorrow is. No sure why everything was shut yesterday. We bought brekkie & lunch for tomorrow, ´cos nothing will be open tomorrow until evening... if at all.

I think I always suspected that siesta were only taken in the Mexican desert. I just assumed that towns & cities in Spain would have business hours similar to what we´re used to in Australia. They don´t. They open at whenever-O-clock in the morning. Then about 2pm, everything completely shuts down until about 5pm. The roller doors go down, the blinds are drawn, and the village turns into a ghost town. You don´t even really see people leave... they just disappear. So if you don´t have your Sunday lunch supplies before then, you´re going hungry!

Day 16: San Juan de Ortega to Burgos

More Cowbell.

This morning we walked through a field of cows with their calves. And to top it off, they all had cowbells. It was such a simple pleasure that we stood there watching them graze all around us for ages. I don´t have the words to describe it, but hopefully Hannah will at some point. (Post script: she´s said she will)

We´ve got a feeling it´s Sunday, because it was unusually difficult to get brekkie/coffee this morning. We´ve completely lost touch with the "real world", other than when we get 15 to 30 minutes of internet access every day days. On those occasions we read emails from family & friends, then type as much into the blog as possible before the time expires. There´s no time for catching up on world or even local events.

Burgos is the biggest city we´ve been through so far. Most towns take a few minutes to walk through, but it was 8kms of city traffic before we reached tonight´s albergue.

This afternoon we spent a few hours exploring the Burgos Cathederal: built, rebuilt and rebuilt between 1221 and the 1500s. For anyone coming to this part of Spain, it´s definitely worth spending the time to explore it.

We re-met Ben from Australia today. He´s the only person we´re still bumping into that we´ve known since day 1 on the Camino. It´s weird sharing several meals a day with a group of new friends, then having a rest day and knowning that you´ll probably never see any of them again... and then bumping into one of them hundreds of kilometers down the road.

Admittedly we´re doing this at a very relaxed pace because we have no end-date, so we´re re-meeting our grey-haired friends more often than our speedy young friends.

Day 16: Things That Go Bump In The Night

In San Juan de Ortega, we stayed in a room of 19 pilgrims, with an additional 40ish people in the rooms next to us. When you have that many strangers nearby, and you´re sleeping with your wallets, passposts, and in our case, several thousand dollars of photography equipment near by, you tend to sleep lightly.

Last night I´d been awake since 2:30am listening to Spanish language lessons on the iPod. There´s no English translation (they´re supposed to be used in conjunction with a book we left in Melbourne), so it´s not all that effective, but it´s one of those things you do at that time of the night.

Anyway, at about 3:30am I saw the door open a little and someone came into the room, closing the door behind them. It was pitch black so I silenced the iPod and tried to work out where they were. I couldn´t see exactly where, but I knew they´d stopped near the foot of our bed, near the bags, and they were just standing there.

I waited; they waited.

My sleeping bag was half unzipped and I had the height advantage of being on the top bunk. I lay there, coiled like Chuck Norris (Chuck Norris doesn´t sleep... he waits).

I waited; they waited.

In the end I shone the iPod in that direction and could see their silouette standing right at the foot of the bed next to our bags.

It took a few seconds in the dim light to recognise Hannah. She´d simply been to the loo and was waiting for here eyes to adjust before climbing over the bags back into bed.

* tee-hee *

Day 15: Beldorado to San Juan de Ortega (517kms to go)

We had originally decided to split today´s walk into two separate days, doing 2 x 12kms instead of 24kms in one walk. This was partly due to speaking to Ellen yesterday, and partly to give Hannah´s cough a rest before we tackle the larger days ahead.

We arived in Villafranca Montes de Oca, the halfway mark, by 10:15am with plenty of energy in reserve. Generally there are towns every few kilometers, but but the second part of today´s walk there were none at all until we reached the destination of San Juan de Ortega. If we started out there was no option to cut if short.

After an early lunch and a few minutes of foot massage, we decided to continue. This ended up being one of our favourite days so far. The landscape changed from the fields we´d grown accustomed to, to pine plantations in the mountains with numerour other plants & flowers competing for space. Huge black beetles constantly attempted to cross the path, and sometimes succeeded (foiled by previous pilgrims, not by us).

I spent a few kilometers talking to a Uniting Church minister from Canada that was retiring at the end of the year and was walking the Camino with one of his daughters while deciding what to do next. Before we started, I was expecting most people doing the Camino to be walking solo, but many people are walking in pairs (parent/child; siblings; partners;friends), and occasionally walk in groups of three or four. The main exception seem to be the cyclists that ride past in much larger groups... I´ve seen up to a dozen in a pack.

This was a slightly longer day, over several large mountains, so most people stayed in bed for an extended siesta during th afternoon. I made a valiant effort to braid Hannah´s hiar, assisted by tips from Martina from Sweeden. If I ende up switching careers, I´ve discovered that being a hair stylist isn´t my forté.

In the Too Much Information catgory: I took my first roadside Camino leak today, and Hannah regretted posting her WizzBizz (see older post) back home due to the weight of her backpack.

We had dinner with Tim from Victoria, Veronique from Quebec, and Jackie & Clementine from New Zealand. It turns out that Jackie & Clem had already heard about us from a Dutch guy! Apparently we´re known on the road as the Aussies that sold their house, quit their jobs & put all their stuff in longterm storage before doing the Camino then moving overseas... somewhere. It was bizarre hearing our own story through the grapevine, from people we´d only just met!!

Day 14: Santo Domingo to Beldorado (541kms to go)

Hannah´s points of interest for today:

• People generally leave in a cluster around 7:00am, then spread out during the day based on their pace.

She got distracted... no more points for today. X-)

My points:

• It´s common to see new houses built beside old houses, who´s roof & walls fell in hundreds of years ago. Some of the old houses may only have a single wall at the front, and are just stone rubble at the back, and have "for sale" signs ("Se Vende") on them. Definite renovator´s delights!
• Meeting Ellen, the Dutch lady, for the third time. We last saw her about a week ago and thought she´d left us far behind. She prefers a slower pace than many people are doing... 12kms per day instead of 20 to 30kms per day. We decide to follow her lead and break tomorrow´s walk of 24kms into two separate days.
• It´s common to see the branches from trees spliced into the branches of othe trees, generally along pathways and avenues. In the main plaza in Beldorado about 100 trees have been grafted together creating an elaborate maze structure overhead.

Day 13: 12-5-09: Nájera to Santo Domingo

*Leaving at sunrise: the almost full moon sitting low in front of us; the rising sun behind us casting impossibly long shadows.
*The smell of freshly cut pine.
*Silver and copper coloured millipedes crossing the path.
*Meeting Tim, from Victoria, that thinks he knows my Uncle Arthur and Auntie Margaret. Tim broke a toe twice in the month before the Camino, so is doing it tough.
*Feeling so refreshed after 2 days rest. It´s the cumulative effect that makes the body weary but a tiny but of R&R rejunevates us. We´re only 1/4 of the way through, so need to take this at a realistic pace.
*After resting for 2 dsays, we´re now travelling with a completely new group of pilgrims that have already travelled up to 200kms together.
*We arrive in Santo Domingo on the day of the Santo Domingo festival. It is the 900th anniversary (1109-2009) since he...well, I need to research that bit. From what I understand, he founded the church here, built a bridge and an albergue for the pilgrims, amongst other things. Although the festival was in full swing, we had more immediate concerns of food and laundry (hadn´t done laundry in over 100kms). The Plaza del Toro held a bullfight, but that didn´t hold any appeal. If only they´d hold bullfights that didn´t end in the bulls getting killed.
*While waiting for the laundry, we got a little restless and started taunting each other with "Blah blah blah blah blah BLAH BLAH". When someone came in laughing, we realised we´d been putting on a spectacular acoustics demonstration.
*Many people seem to be exaggerated cartoon characters of what they may normally be. Or maybe a walk of this duration attracts a certain type of person. But given that there are so many different personality types here, I don´t know what that type would be. NFI.

Day 12: 11/05/2009: Nájera second rest day

Hannah´s cough became worse overnight, cementing our decision for a second rest day. We´ve been in close contact with people from so many different places over the past fortnight, and I´ve sure it´s just exposure to different strains of cough/cold germs that have brought this on -- similar to when young kids first go to primary school.

We got directions to the doctor ("el medico") from the hotel. After arriving at the building we thought we had to go to, we were redirected to another building labelled "Urgencias", which seemed overkill for a cough. It wasn´t the Mexican ´Flu!!

This was our first real test of Spanish vobab. The receptionist spoke zero English, and our Spanish is mainly limited to food, directions & accommodation. We don´t have the vocab to cover the Spanish Helathcare System yet. All we really understood was the doctor´s name (Prof Juan Jose Garcia Diaz), and the appointment time of 11:35am. There´s also the possibility that he said something along the lines of "this is not normal"... but we´re not sure.

While waiting for the appintment, Hannah wrote out a few phrases to tel the doc:

"Tengo dolor de la tos y el resfriado por cuatro diaz"
(I´ve had a cough and cold for four days)

"La tos, todo la tiempo"
(I cough, all the time)

"Tengo esta a la farmacia"
(I got these from the pharmacy)

Right now we´re sitting in the sun at a cafe on the bank of a river, watching the stream of pilgrims cross a stone bridge close by, almost always headed west.

We walked past a "clinica del pie" (clinic of feet AKA podiatrist) this morning which reminded me of a guy from Liverpool we met a few days ago. He´d been wearing an "I <3 PIES" tshirt until he realised it was drawing strange looks. In Spanish it roughly translates to "I <3 feet". A foot fetishist could find better hunting grounds than an 800km walk.

We haven´t yet decided whether we´ll do the 800kms to Santiago, or the extra 90kms to Finisterra, the western-most point of Spain. Finisterra means "The End of the Earth", as this is where the Romans thought the edge of the world was. I think it´s also where the ancient Celts thought Rag-na-roc lay just over the horizon. It´s an extra 3 days walking past Santiago. By the time we get to Santiago I think we´ll either never want to walk again, or 90kms will be so insignificant we´ll do it without a moment´s hesitation. I don´t think there´ll be any middle ground.

Post Doctor: the doc didn´t seem too concerned. He prescribed (in Spanish) a big dose of Ibuprofen 3 times daily for the next 3 days. No Mexican flu, thankfully. :) (we´ve barely seen any news since leaving London a fortnight ago, so that´s the only topical news story we know of). :)

Day 13: Nájera to Santo Domingo

• Leaving at sunrise: the almost full moon sitting low on in front of us; the rising sun behind us casting impossibly long shadows.
• The smell of freshly cut pine.
• Silver & copper millipedes crossing the path.
• Meeting Tim, the GP from Riddel´s Creek near Gisborne in Victoria, and finding out that he probably knows my Uncle Arthur & Auntie Margaret. BTW: Tim broke one of his toes twice last month, so is finding the Camino pretty tough at the moment.
• Feeling refreshed after 2 days rest. It´s the cumulative effect that makes the body weary, but a tiny bit of R&R rejouvenates us. We´re only a quarter of the way into this, so we need to take it at a realistic pace.
• After resting for 2 days, we´re now travelling with a completely new group of pilgrims that have already travelled for 200kms together. We seem like outsiders in a group of people that already barely know each other. But a communal dinner tonight fixed that to a large extent.
• We arrive at Santa Domingo on the day of the Santa Domingo Festival. It´s the 900th anniversary