One day away!

HURRAH!

I´m only 20.5km away from Santiago! We had a short day today after 2 grueling days of 27km each. Lots of ups and downs in the terrain, making for a difficult couple of days. I have only one problem blister that seems to re-appear every day. My biggest problem is very sore, very tired feet. The past couple of days I´ve had to take the hiking boots off and put on my Tevas for the last couple of hours of hiking. It´s helped a bit, but my feet are a constant source of agony......

All that said, the weather has cooperated and we had a full day of sunshine yesterday after 5 days of clouds and rain! We stayed at a beautiful albergue. It´s a remodeled historic pilgrim hospital. We reached it just after coming over a medieval bridge in a wooded area. It was set in a beautiful clearing, very quiet, lots of solitude. The best part was being able to soak our feet in the COLD river next to the bridge while the sun warmed the rest of us. After a nice HOT shower, I sat in a meadow and wrote in my journal for about an hour, soaking in more sun. I think that was my favorite place so far.

We got an early start today and made very good time. In fact, we passed the place we had planned on staying by just a bit. So we had to back track as the next spot was 10km away and my feet just didn´t have 10km more in them! We lucked out a found a beautiful new private albergue. Very nice! Much nicer than the municipal albergue we would have stayed in if we´d been paying attention!

It´s funny how messages/rumors fly on the Camino. About two days ago, we got word that there is going to be a huge pilgrim party in the square in front of the cathedral on Friday night. It should be loads of fun seeing all the folks we´ve shared the Camino with: The guys from Poland who seemed so pleased to have someone on the Camino who knows two words of Polish! (Hello and Thank you!). The gal from Dublin and her fellow pilgrim from Belgium (who has done the Camino multiple times and will be WALKING back to Antwerp! EESH!). The girl from Australia and her friend from Denmark who started the party rumor! The lady with her sweet dog, a Bichon Frisse (sp?). The lovely french couple who were so kind to me when I was so ill. We keep running into them and they always inquire about my health. The German who lives in Austria who we keep accusing of stalking us as we always seem to end up at the same albergue!

Several days ago in a wonderful mountain town called O´Cebreiro, we started seeing a group of people who had tiny little backpacks (the kind kids carry to school) and two vans. They seem to be on some sort of organized tour with van support..... Many of us REAL pilgrims kinda resent these people. The van support CATERS their meals! And gets to the albergues ahead of them, ensuring they have a place to stay. I think what annoys us the most is the tiny backbacks. Here we are, struggling up and down steep slopes with 22+ pounds on our back, hobbling into an albergue mid-afternoon (we call it the "pilgrim shuffle")..... and these people seem as though they are out for a casual stroll in the country-side! One of our fellow peregrinos dubbed them "Pretend-agrinos"!!!! BWAH HAH HAH HAH HAH!!!!! Bitter.... party of 300.... your table´s ready! Bitter! (I am seriously not alone in my contempt for the pretend-agrinos!)

Well, my time is about to run out on the internet machine, so I´ll post from Santiago! I am so excited to complete this amazing journey!

Dawn