Life's a Stitch

Ah, the Camino has many parallels to life, today's being plans are made for changing. What was to be a half rest day turned into 19 kms in the scorching sun.

We left Villamayor de Monjardin at the leisurely hour of 9:30, an hour later than usual, anticipating an easy day.

For some reason this stretch through wheat fields must have been longer than the 10k we were expecting. It takes us an hour to walk 3 miles at home, and 10k being 6 miles should have taken 2 hours instead of three plus.

Halfway through there was a snack stand set up with many shaded seats. My approach to the Camino is to remain positive, however, it was difficult to do so when the proprietor asked people to leave if they weren't spending money. Such Camino spirit. It bugged me to spend money there, but his freshly squeezed orange juice in the scorching sun got the better of me.

Finally arriving in Los Arcos, we checked into Austrian alburgue where we had reservations. It was not as romantic as it sounds. The 35e room was filthy and when I sat on the bed I was greeted by a bedbug.

We couldn't get out of there fast enough.

The town was fully booked and a very nice Robin Williams-esque hotel manager helped us find a room in the next town, two hours away. This one was only 10e more than the nightmare above.

Hopefully no more alburgue rooms for these pilgrims. This is the view from our window in Sansol:

The good part of this story is that we trimmed a couple of hours from tomorrow's very challenging looking day.