Day 28 To Camponaraya
Day 28 Oct 6 Destination = Camponaraya / 225 km to go.
“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.”
- Helen Keller
The Wi-Fi router in my room was down last night therefore I could not properly update today’s journal which I will do hopefully finish tonight. For now some pictures and I’ll try to update tomorrow morning
A surreal start to the day and a gorgeous but very steep descent. Trekking poles required. This ‘way’ leads down to the town of Molinaseca. I really wish I had timed the week so I could have stayed there a night…. next time I’ll plan on a nite or a couple of rest days here… just fabulous town and vibe.
Stewart took this picture for me and I asked him “aren’t we the luckiest two people in the world to be doing this and experiencing this at this moment”. He said “ yup, all three of us” ( spiritually speaking is what I think he meant )
And yes, some are actually biking this terrain
Templar castle. I wanted to get my stamp here but as I walked in the woman said sorry closed till four! I couldn’t wait and decided to leave town consequently. I guess I will have to Google it when I get home and see what I missed, like, I think the holy grail is in there from the buzz I heard on the trail. Ran into a buddy at a corner bar and had more cafe, juice, coke, and croissant Napolitano !
Fabulous little town of Molinaseca! Breakfast with Stewart before he pushed on ahead of me wanting to walk alone. We had a great conversation about faith and his journey to become a Christian late in life. As I stated earlier, I wish the timing of my walk was such that I ended up here for the evening today. It is an inviting little town that had such a great vibe I know I could spend a couple of nights here. In the summer they have sluice gates that they can block off and flood what you see here and make it one giant (deep) freshwater swimming pool for everybody to cool off in - hence there are pool ladders on either side of this river! Pretty cool.
Quaint, with lots of shops and restaurants.
I’ll be back, God willing. (70th birthday present? !)
There is quite a bit of hiking through urban areas for obvious reasons of towns sprouting up over time on the ancient trail. Here is the Museum of Light and Power at a distribution station. Butt, what is up with the ‘art’?
This art installation, I didn’t quite understand in context.
Butt …. then I finally got it. 👻. I took a rest here, the left it all ‘behind’
I am finding not planning ahead of time where I’m going to stay for the night is working better for me. Even as I get closer to Santiago finding a room is not a problem. I think overall traffic is down still about 75% on Camino. This little gem ‘La Medina’ in ‘midtown Camponaraya’ on ‘Main Street’ was absolutely wonderful, the food was outstanding, and I slept in the outbuilding (totally redone) and had a very comfortable room! 38€. Even though the waiter totally screwed up my order it was still so good I didn’t complain I was thankful to have hot food and a lot of calories. Spent 90 minutes on hold with American Airlines trying to change my flight (to 3 days later than planned) unsuccessfully on this try. Long distance phone charge 32.00 ! Nice…. not….
Conversations: Today I walked for a little over an hour with a young lady named Sylvia originally from Poland. I recognized her (pretty bright red hair) from the parochial hostel (mixed dormitory) last night (where I met Stewart). She has pretty much been living out of a backpack for the last four years or so after living in London for ten years. On a recent trek a year or so ago she stopped counting mileage over 1000 km in southern Spain. She spent a lot of time hiking the Portugal coast. I asked her if she felt safe hiking alone so much. She said it’s really not a problem other than having her backpack stolen on a beach in Mayorca when she went down to the water 30m away. When she turned around again to go back to her backpack it was gone! She lost absolutely everything other than the clothes on her back! She was without money, without her backpack, without her passport, and everything else. Slowly week by week people gave her things. She has since replaced her passport with difficulty (fingerprints did the trick ) and is currently walking the Camino de Santiago living out of her backpack and sleeping in a tent. I was curious where she is funding her Camion so I asked her “do you have a budget for walking the Camino”? I suggested 20 or €30 a day? She laughed and said “try five euros”. As we walked she proceeded to pluck fruit from a variety of trees and simply eat as she walked ! We parted ways after she found what she thought was a good place to set up a tent off to the side of the road by 100 m under some trees somewhat hidden. She said her pack was in the neighborhood of close to 15 kg because of the tent. She is thinking of heading to the south coast of Spain for the winter and teaching English in an online course - which she said is pretty easy to do - says it will pay enough for her to travel again next summer. She did admit she gets lonely from time to time but is not ready to settle down to any specific ‘stationary’ life at this point. I encouraged her to write a book. She said I’m not the only one who commented such. Best wishes, Sylvia
