Lots of languages. You get that on the Camino. And this French guy ^^ amazed everyone last night by singing a song from every nationality that was represented. The crowd swelled to more than twenty and he got everyone participating even as he shared his own exceptional skill. NZ, Spain, France, Ireland, Mexico, Romania, Israel, Greece, Australia, Germany, Korea, Croatia, Brazil, England… he had a song for them all. There are usually people going to bed by 8:30, but this group didn’t disband until well after 10. A precious evening of music and laughter.
Thinking about language gives me three things to write about today.
The first, a new word coined this morning by a girl, who speaks four or five languages.
I’m so glad there was no snorking last night!
Don’t you think snork sounds better than snore?
Secondly, Mr Brazil was showing us pictures sent to him today of someone’s arms covered with red welts. He stated the bed bunnies had been hungry. Judging by the size of the marks, the bed bugs may have been as big as bunnies.
Thirdly, when someone said they wished there was some shadow to walk in, their friend corrected them that they should be saying shade. Gave me something to think about as I walked.
I’d have taken shade or shadow, but there was neither.
I did not leave until the afternoon and so I knew it was going to be hot.
It seemed a good idea to follow the straight red line, but I found myself on the longer yellow dotted line, which was the official Camino path. It didn’t bother me to consider “cheating”, because I had already done it today. I had been sitting outside a supermarket (in the shade of a shadow) gathering up strength to step out into the sunlight and checking my map to see how best to get to the camino path. When I looked up I saw an elderly gentleman leading a pilgrim down the street opposite me – I decided he was probably directing him to the camino path and so I followed a few minutes later. At the end of the street was a multi-storey set of stairs….and right beside it was a lift. Did I take the stairs? You bet I didn’t!
There was a camino sign right across the street that pointed me to the river. Right down beside the river was a path and another was up the top in a park. I wanted to walk next to the water, but it was too hot to go looking for stairs to get down to it.
And soon enough the signs left the river and headed straight up here:
I think I said, “Oh no” out loud. Actually it was pretty short, but it would have been much nicer to climb in the cool of the morning!
Shadows that didn’t provide much shade:
My family has been commiserating about how cold it has been, but I keep telling them that it is great for walking. I find it is harder to be interested in what I am walking past when it is hot. But I tried…
It was soooo hot I went into a bar and asked if they had anything cold to drink. Beer…wine – red or white…ice cream….or Coca Cola were the options given. Coffee, too, but that wouldn’t have been cold.
I took note of this for Rob….if he’s going to get a puncture on his camino in September, he would do well to do it here:
A couple of kilometres before the final destination a tall dark Brazilian guy walked up behind me. He was clearly churning out 6km/hour, but kindly slowed to match my pace. We chatted a bit, but mostly just walked in silence. He saw a kite (the fabric kind, not the alive bird sort, although to confuse the story it was in the shape of a bird) on a pole acting as a scarecrow over a garden and he just pointed it out with his walking pole. I nodded. Sometimes there is no need for words. Especially when it is hot.
When we got to the accommodation, Mr Brazil (actually, Dr Brazil) found his words. He told the lady checking us in that he didn’t have a passport. She either didn’t understand or at least didn’t appreciate his joke!
When the four of us, who were checking in at the same time, were taken up to our very cosy room, he told us all he would have epileptic fits while sleeping, but not to worry. When we all played the age guessing game he couldn’t decide between being 23 and 48 years. While the other three ate dinner, I was trying to write this blogpost….I would get one sentence done and distractions in the form of those crazy room mates would…well…distract me.
I asked for permission to mention Dr Brazilian Physiotherapist (with a specialty in neurological disorders) on the blog and he assented on the condition that I pay 50 euros…but in the end his only condition was that it be a selfie.
Ms Taiwan, who is travelling with a hairdryer and shared her face masks with whoever wanted a spruce up this afternoon, wanted to know how he whitens his teeth – how can anyone get any writing done with all that nonsense going on?
I still haven’t told you why I did not leave until so late.
The day started with sketching the castle….
In the interests of getting this blogpost written tonight, I’ll just tell you that one of my kids likes to tell his friends I am an author, and now I will copy and paste the message I sent them this morning on our family chat:
Something else for Micki to skite to his mates about – I am drawing the Ponferrada castle and a man came up to me and asked to take a photo. He works in the castle for the council and wants to share people enjoying their castle! He then gave me the full interview! Who are you? Where are you from? Are you walking to Santiago?…when I told him it’s my sixth time, he said “Peregrina fatal”!!! Anything else you can tell me? Mama to eight children. So Micki, now you are famous too!
Next up was a walk through some pretty narrow streets….
….to a date at Churrería Alba….
…where I introduced my new DutchKiwi friends to chocolate con churros
It was the sort of chocolate that the churros stand up in
The reason for the date was twofold – we are actually friends now and friends do stuff together AND (here is a nice story…) the other night Mrs DutchKiwi had expected to be cold after our freezing night in the tipi and so I gave her my blanket as my sleeping bag was going to be sufficient for me. In the morning when she put the blanket back on my bed, she noticed my little plastic box of earplugs and so she picked them up and decided to try to meet up again. When she messaged me I suggested a churros meeting and it turned out to be very close to their accommodation. We compared notes of our plans for the next few days and both of us have made some little tweaks so that we will end up at the same places some nights – after so many weeks of meeting new people every day, it will be nice to see some familiar faces.
We then headed to the castle together – it didn’t open until 10, hence the late start. (And we took our time – no rushing at all. Lots of pretending to be Romeo and Juliet and Rapunzel, and working out why things were made the way they were – later in the evening I would meet another Kiwi bloke, who was underwhelmed at the castle, but he clearly had not spent his time there with us!)
There is one more thing to tell you about Mr DutchKiwi, but it is going to have to wait for another day….it is to do with identity and a therapy session…and has been a recurring theme on this camino, but I keep NOT writing about it…
PS when I finally got up to the room after writing this post, I tiptoed in thinking everyone would be asleep, but there were three screens lighting up the room….that did not stop Dr Brazil from hissing Ssssssssh……so I rattled my plastic bags extra loudly…..and now while the last pictures try to upload for the umpteenth time we are playing kill-the-mosquito.
SoloWalk2024 