What another long day! I feel like I have made the transition smoothly from the time change, but with all of the walking, I still feel myself wanting to go to bed at 6pm. Then I get a second wind and stay up til we all go to bed around 11. Today was a very interesting trek! Because we took a taxi to start the day, we didn't start walking until around 10, when everyone else usually takes off from their "Albergues" around 7 or 8. One of the cool parts about the Camino is meeting all of the people from around the world. Because we started later, we walked by ourselves and missed the big crowd. We eventually caught up, or people caught up with us later on the walk. Another cool thing is when you stop for the night and go to eat and run into people that you passed and they recognize you.
Anyways, today's walk was pretty hard again. We ended up walking around 13 miles. If we didn't take the taxi, it was supposed to be a 24 mile day! By around the 11th mile, I began to feel the creation of a little blister on my left pinky toe. So it would have been terrible if we had to have walked 12 more miles :/.
It is crazy to me about all the abandoned houses that we have come across on today's walk. I don't know if it has to do with a poor economy, but it seemed like nearly every cluster of houses had at least one with broken windows and it's surroundings overgrown. Today would have made the people on 'Flip this House' salivate!
Another trend is that every house also seems to have a few dogs. It has been mostly farmland so I understand that they are hunting dogs, but mostly all of them have been mean also. Except for one puppy Beagle that as soon as it saw us, Sarah and I, came running to the fence. Around the corner from where the dog was, there was a sign that said electric fence in Spanish. I thought that the fence had changed plus the puppy stood up and placed its paws on the fence without getting shocked. So I reached over the fence and started petting the dog when after 5 seconds I got a little shocked. I should have known better haha.
We didn't stop for lunch today, but instead stopped for a little snack at a "mercado." I ended up getting a strawberry yogurt drink (Gogurt in Spain) and a chocolate ice cream bar that was amazing. It was like a Crunch Bar coating, with chocolate ice cream in the middle, and a Charleston Chew core. So good.
Last night we stayed at an Albergue that had separate, private rooms for our group, but tonight we are staying at an Albergue that has two big floors of bunk beds that we are sharing with strangers.
Usually it is us asking if someone speaks English and we always hear back no, but today we were walking and was approached by an elderly lady who asked us if we spoke English in her British accent. She wanted to know what city we were in because she had her bag shipped ahead to Santa Irene. We thought we were further than we actually were and ended up suggesting that we had already passed Santa Irene. About five minutes after that, we entered Santa Irene, OOPS! Hopefully she figured it out!
Tomorrow is the final day for the group to be walking. It is another 13 miles into Santiago de Campostela. We are going to spend a day in Santiago and then spend the next day at the coast! I have a ton of respect for my group that have walked nearly 200 miles since May 8. I have only walked two days and 27 miles and I am super sore. I am very proud of my girlfriend for doing all of this. Her heel has been bugging her but she keeps on truckin'!
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