A Long Walk

Today once again followed the pattern, until it didn't. We started out early, with a stop about 45 minutes in at what I believe is the world's only free wine fountain. A monestery here used to offer drinks to pilgrims, and to keep the tradition alive a local winery now provides 100L of wine a day for pilgrims. Sadly, even though we arrived only 30m after the posted opening time, the wine was nearly gone. We did get a taste though, which was enough for me. Some of our friends who came through later said that it worked for them, so it's possible the refilling simply happened at 9:00 instead of 8:00, as posted.

(Photo credit to one of my companions at the wine fountain, as I forgot to take a photo of the whole thing!)

Then we kept walking. It wasn't too bad today, except that I was carefully monitoring my ankle. The brace I bought yesterday came in extremely handy, and I'm not sure how today would have gone without it.

We stopped for a break at a little cafe attached to a municipal pool, then continued on. We chose to walk through a forest, instead of along a road, and this resulted in us apparently missing a cool building with a natural pool in it, but we were sorely glad to have picked the forest by the end of the day, because from here on out there was no shade, no clouds, only sun.

As we walked, we debated how far to go. The standard segments would have had us do about 20km today, and then nearly 30km the following two days. We decided we would rather do hard-normal-hard than normal-hard-hard, and also liked the look of the albergues in the next town on, so we booked accomodations in Torres del Río.

We made it to Los Arcos, the classic stop for this stage, and sat down to have a snack. As we did, I happened to look at my map and spot a church, and notice it was closing in 20 minutes. I mentioned this to the other person who has been most enthusiastic about visiting churches, and we decided to try to make it there before it closed. I have rarely been so glad to get somewhere 10 minutes before closing.

This church was STUNNING. Almost literally. I walked in and nearly stopped in my tracks, hardly able to believe that such a magnificent church was in such a humble and otherwise not terrible remarkable town. We made the most of our 10 minutes in the church, wishing we could have had more time, then headed out to the plaza in front to refill our water and rest before continuing.

As we did, we started chatting with someone neither of us had seen on the trail before, who set out shortly before us. This part of the hike was the most grueling, going back out into the full exposure under the sun for another 7.5km, after just having done almost that much in the sun before the town. We met up on the road with our new acquaintance from the square, and the three of us talked as we trudged on, and after walking along a hot gravel road, an even hotter asphalt road, and applying lots and lots of sunscreen, we made it.

The afternoon involved seeing a fascinating church built on the plan of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, doing laundry, relaxing, and then grabbing dinner from our albergue. The dinner was delicious, I got the salmon option and it was legitimately some of the best cooked salmon I've had in ages. At the end of dinner, the restaurant brought out a cake to celebrate the birthday of one of the people who has been in our "walking cohort" since the beginning with his brother, though both of them are leaving tomorrow. We were all so excited to get a chance to celebrate him, and it was a lovely end to the dinner.

Now I'm off to bed, listening to the sounds of cats drifting in from the open window of our albergue. Time will tell if they will persist throughout thenight. Or be drowned out by snoring.