Camino 2013

Charlie: As usual the yellow arrows tell you exactly where to go.

Charlie: As you may know, the standard locks used in the US, pin tumbler locks, are very easy to pick. Just Google “lock bumping” and watch the videos showing how easy it is.

When you stay in a different hotel every night you deal with a lot of locks. In Navarra, where we started, I noticed that almost all the locks were the more modern kind with drilled holes on each side of the key, still pickable, like all locks, but only by actual experts, not by someone who watches an Internet video. I was impressed.

Getting onto the Meseta things have changed. All the locks are the standard US kind. I guess this is a poorer area. The Northeast part of Spain is more industrialized and richer.

Wynette: We are in Frómista. We can see a beautiful Romanesque church, the Church of San Martin, from our hotel window.

Wynette: I liked this photo of Charlie and the tree.

Charlie: Most of the little towns we walk through seem practically empty. You walk around and don’t see any people and most of the buildings are shuttered. In the last few towns there were lots of buildings that were falling down.

We just got into the Meseta where they use, or used to use, adobe like in NM. The adobe buildings are almost all falling down. Not as durable as stone.

You get the feeling that these towns would go away altogether if they were not on the Camino. You only see pilgrims around and in the restaurants. And they are all having the pilgrims “menu” for 10 euros. I can’t see how they can keep going on that.

Castrojeriz was a sad town. The people seemed sad and defeated. Another pilgrim we meet on the road said the same thing even before we mentioned it.

I don’t know how much of this is due to the five years of recession and how much to just an emptying out of the rural areas. You see similar things in small towns in NM.

Charlie: No post, I just liked the title. 🙂  But as long as I am started.

The Camino had been more varied than I thought it would be. Every section brings something different. My idea of the Meseta was that it would be flat and dry. It is dryer than previous sections but very green in the spring. We just started seeing the fields being watered but right out of the rivers that go by them. It is still rolling hills just a little flatter.

Ah, so nice to put on the sandals at end of the daily walk.

Wynette: No, not talking about bakery items in title of this post.  Pies = feet. My original foot problem (pain in toes and ball of right foot) finally got better so we started walking longer days and that’s when the blisters started. So back to shorter days till we get those under control. Charlie hasn’t had any problems except his high maintenance wife, but we’ve encountered many other pilgrims with foot problems. I hate to admit it, but misery does love company. One young man told me about his blisters then said “it has been very humbling.” On a busy sidewalk in Burgos, I passed a 40-something couple on the street in sandals; the woman was walking very carefully. Even though they weren’t in backpacks, I blurted out “peregrinos, verdad? (pilgrims, right?)” Sure enough. The sandals and hobbling were dead giveaways. She said they’d just gone to the hospital because her blisters had gotten infected. (We ran into that couple twice over the next 4 days.)  Back before Burgos, when we decided to take a bus to Burgos to deal with the problem, we met another man who said he’d ignored his blisters for days, trying to stay up with some younger men he was hiking with, and suddenly he was crippled by them and was bussing to Burgos to recover. More and more, we see people taking a break with their shoes off, fiddling with their feet.

Wynette: We only walked about 7 miles today. Plan to walk 8 tomorrow, breaking one hard 15 mile day into two easy days. We are in pueblo of Itero de la Vega. (In Spanish, pueblo means town.) We are staying in a sunny, cheerful private room in an albergue, so lots of other pilgrims around. Our room is above a bar/restaurant with a big porch and patio where we ate a picnic lunch. Open window. People laughing and talking in different languages downstairs, birds singing in familiar ways. We are thrilled with today’s resting place. Daily hand-washing is done and drying.

Wynette: We were lucky to stay in a very nice but inexpensive hotel next to the Burgos cathedral. Here is a night time photo taken from our 3rd floor window.

It’s been fun to watch people from the window. Lots of people come to take a look. (Check out all the steps we have to go up to get to the first floor of our hotel.)

Yesterday as I was coming back from buying shoes I passed a wedding photo-shoot on the cathedral steps. I took this pic and Charlie caught the action on a video from our room.

Close up:

Wynette: We had heard we’d see storks on the Camino. I’ve spotted a few flying in the distance and today we spotted two in nests very near our hotel, right here in the city of Burgos. This isn’t a great photo but best I have. Picture makes it look far away but we were next to the building where this stork made her huge nest. Below is cropped version of the photo.