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 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 6: Hannah´s epic [Boots of iPod] (+20% speed)

Once again, Hannah donned her iPod for a little while in the morning. When she gets into a songshe likes, there´s absolutely no catching her. She just leaves a dust trail like Speedy Gonzalez.

After trying to catch her for 20mins, I switched from the relatively mellowThe Decemberists (folk rock?) to Dethklök (parody speed death metal). There´s no music in the world that could have suited the scenery less, but I gained a bit of ground on her.

On paper, this day didn´t seem like a big one -- 22.4kms over a few mountains, but they were much smaller than the ones we´d done in the first few days. However, Hannah was fading in the last few kms, and I wasn´t too far behind her. I think it´s partly (or mostly) our pack weight. I´ve got 14kgs plus 2 litres water for a total of 16kgs. Some people have only 6 or 7 in total. While walking I mentally made a list of items that seemed essential earlier, but will now be posted back home.
* 10-24mm lens (600g)
* backpacksecurity mesh (600g)
* incompatible power adaptors (100g)
* 2nd thermal long sleeve top (200g)
* spare pillow slips / bag separators (30g)
* bathers (can use shorts instead (100g)

So, there´s probably over 2kgs I already know I can post back, even before I actually unpack my bag. Hannah can probably compile a similar list. It certainly won´t get us down to the 6 kg mark, but it´ll make the end of the long days easier.

However, I think a lot of our fatigue was brought on by the speed sprints induced by Dethklök and whatever Hannah was listening to (I know Whitest Boy Alive was in there somewhere, and a bit of Michael Jackson).

The villages we´re passing through are incredible. The age of these villages is completely, and literally, foreign to us. Many of the cathedrals and churches date from the 1600s, and many of the stone bridges we cross date from the 1100s and 1200s. It´s just incredible to me that so many of these are still in day-to-day use for the general population. They´re not really tourist attractions, they´re just there.

After checking in with the albergue, we laid in the sun by the river, next to a towering stone church. The lunch we´d carried with us (bread stick, a tomato, olives) was followed by a snooze on the grass. It doesn´t get much better than this. :)

We spend dinner with two Aussies from Adelaide, Peter and Erin, and spent the evening talking about travel, house renovations and volunteer work organisations (Erin´s field of expertise). I think this was the first night infinite wine wasn´t included, so we settled for a cerveza (beer) instead. :)

Don't come a-knocking...

...when this building's rocking.

Hannah & I, along with half of Melbourne, just felt an earthquake hit Melbourne. It only lasted 5~10 seconds and was enough to rock the entire building (and we're on the 2nd floor), but nowhere near enough to knock anything over.

Initial estimates put it at about a magnitude 4.7, originating 90kms south east of Melbourne.

It's no big deal. I suppose after a few weeks of the packing boxes ready to head away, we get a little excited about these things. 8-D

As a quick update:

• We're both resigning next Friday, as soon as our pay hits our bank accounts. I've been there for 11.5 years so it's A Big Move, but I'm really looking forwards to moving on to some new adventures, whatever they may be.
• We're moving house next Friday. Yep, the same day that we're resigning. It wasn't planned that way -- it's just coincidental that's when the lease expires.
• I'm planning on shaving my head next Friday/Saturday for the World's Greatest Shave (fundraising for the Leukaemia Foundation). We'll be moving house when the official public head shavings occur, so we'll have our own private shaving and upload the video to YouTube. :-)
• Next Friday is my nephew's birthday.
• Why the hell do all these things need to happen on the same day? And why does that day need to be Friday the 13th? ZOMFG! SRSLY!

We've stopped walking as much. We're still walking 5kms around Albert Park Lake most nights, but we're not doing the 15km hikes with backpacks in state parks anymore. It's partly because we need to focus on putting everything into storage for a year or two (we can only take what we can fit in a suitcase!) and finalising paperwork; and partly because bushfires have limited the places we can hike with the backpacks. We've clocked up over 650kms of walking in the last few months, so I think we're in a good position to relax a little while we concentrate on getting the last cores done before we go.

OK. Sleep time now. BAI!

Clothes Labelling

Much to Hannah's amusement/bafflement, I decided to label my clothes before we head off. My reasoning is that given we'll be washing & drying them along with a dozen other people with similar hiking clothes, it'll probably help avoid someone accidentally grabbing some of mine.

I've learned a good lesson in the process:

Never label your clothes at night while watching a movie after a glass or two of wine.

It leads to labelling your name on the outside of some of your clothes.

Wee and me

So. Let's get it out there straight away. Urination. This post is about urination. Not in general and not conceptually - me, very personally, and my urination. Look away if you'd like to. I'll try to make my next post low on squeamishness.

When it comes to wee, boys have a level of physical freedom that us girls have simply had to come to terms with. It's not that we want to be boys; it's just a natural yearning to be unencumbered, devil-may-care; to roam long and far in any earthly direction without having that little bean of an idea tucked away in the back of your mind. You know the one. It's thinking, "I'm going to have to go to the bathroom at some point...and that means my pants at my ankles and my bare bot a few centimeters from a melee of animals, rotting plants and dung.

A couple weeks ago I became reacquainted with a thing called the WhizBiz. I'd heard of this some years ago, pre-Camino, when it was being marketed as a solution to really long toilet queues at music festivals. It's a ladies' wee aid, a device that allows a woman to wee whilst standing. It looks kind of like a specially adapted funnel:


It's hydrophobic, meaning liquid does not like being on it. It's antibacterial, meaning it is not an inviting place for bacteria to stay and breed. It's good to give it a rinse after use, but it's not necessary after every use. Just give it a flick and pop it in a ziploc bag.

This morning, I took my first real wee standing up. It didn't run down my legs. The lily (the wide mouth) didn't overflow. It felt perfectly comfortable. And the thought of free peeing was deeply, inexplicably exhilirating.