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!!