The Penultimate Push

We started late on purpose today, so that we could get into town after the supermarket opened. We all grabbed some pastries from their surprisingly good bakery section, and then headed out for our last full day on the Camino.


The walk today was packed. So many people had joined the Camino at Sarria that it felt like an entirely new trail. We dodged tour groups and packs of middle schoolers, passing by people just getting their walking legs and being passed by people wearing almost no packs at all. While I hold there's no "wrong" way to do a Camino, it was certainly interesting to see the differences between the groups. Many of them were shocked and impressed when we told them we'd walked from Saint Jean, even though for most of the trail that had been the default assumption. I couldn't help but remember how we'd reacted the same way to the people who'd started in Le Pui, and wonder if they'd felt the same about us at the time.


For lunch, we had a bit of a fun change. One of my friends' parents were meeting them in Santiago, and they drove out to meet us for lunch, so they could see a bit of what the Camino was like. We found a place a little bit off the beaten track, and all had a nice time talking about what the Camino was like with them. They hiked with us for a short while as we got going again, and then turned back to return to their car.


We got to our albergue without much more adventure, this time in a moderately sized town, and got settled in. I crashed again for a while, before my friends woke me up to say they were going to get dinner, so I joined them and we all headed to a place we'd been recommended. It was good, but at this point we were all a little tired of Spanish food, as there is not a terrible lot of variety, generally speaking. It's really a shame the route doesn't end in Basque country, because if there was ever a time I could have gone for a lot of different food on skewers, now was it.


After dinner we got ice cream (and nearly got hit by a car), then went to bed to prepare for the final push tomorrow.


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