Santiago is always beckoning us onward

Villamayor de Monjardin to Los Arcos: 12.2 km; about 21,000 steps

Last night one of the Iranian Brits was snoring away before anyone else was in bed; his snickering mates kept walking by to give him a poke. One of the French ladies has blisters all over her foot. The French gentleman crawled behind his bed to retrieve my dropped locker key from where it had bounced. The Danish special forces guy, who had walked 32 km in five hours (the same distance the British soccer blokes had taken all day to do, as they told us when they got in at six) and who had spent all afternoon lying in his bed playing with his phone, was gone before most of us got out of bed. The breakfast table surprisingly featured a bowl of oranges; we ate Maurice’s and took mine for the road. When we walked out the door at 8:45 the British lads were just having breakfast. “We thought we were always the last ones out,” we told them. They laughed and said no, it was always them.

We walked in a fine misty rain, me with my sandals on again. Soon I stopped at a fuente to look at my heel. The bandage was coming off, probably because I had smeared the area with antibiotic ointment first. Brazilian Lika was there and came to look at my foot with smiles of concern, if little command of the English language. She whipped out another Compeed patch and, after showing me one on her own heel, smilingly insisted on applying it for me. We said goodbye with thanks and I struggled on. The rain stopped but the air was chill as we walked among scraggly hills until, just around a bend, appeared a cafe movil, a food truck in the middle of nowhere. We bought tortillas and a cafe con leche for refreshment, then put our packs back on and hit the trail. It was a beautiful walk through fields of tan and green, past rectangular haystacks and medieval hostel ruins, alongside some grapevines, hills and mountains hemming us in on all sides in our little valley. If only I didn’t hurt….

We had emailed an albergue in Los Arcos but I really wanted a room for Maurice and me and my heel. We stopped in at a pension but it was completo. The owner insisted on calling around for us–a half dozen or so places–but nothing was available. So we asked where the albergue Casa dela Abuela was and he walked us right over to it. Josef the hospitalero had received our latest email and he signed us in (10 each for the beds, 3.50 each for breakfast and 50 cents each for laundry he that he would put in the machine–a deal). He showed us to our bunks, only six in our half of the divided room, spacious enough and very suitable. The bathroom had two toilets, three showers and three sinks for two floors (I guess about 24 people). We took a shower and a nap (which was hard with the Swedes shouting up and down to each other in the next bunk). I’m so tired. We ate our lunch bits, planned for tomorrow and putzed around not doing a thing. I did a little writing and fiddled with my heel. Finally we went out to look at the church, which was surprisingly nice in spite of its enormous golden retable; several of the big organ pipes had faces painted on them.

The attached cloister was lovely, especially the shadows of the tracery against the interior wall.

We had the pilgrim dinner at the Monaco Hotel, recommended by Josef. It was upstairs and you had to know about it because there was no sign outside. The hostess frowned when we said we didn’t have a reservation and wanted to chase us away but we just stood there; eventually she placed us at a large round table with four other pilgrims. Gazpacho was a first course choice for the third night in a row; this delicious version was chunky with croutons and a swirl of olive oil and balsamic vinegar. After dinner we ran into our three French roommates from the previous night. Back at Grandmother’s House Maurice checked and rechecked the bus schedule with Joseph. We were thinking I should take the bus to Viana (only a twenty-minute ride for what would be our day’s walk!) and meet him there. I would decide in the morning. We brought in our laundry from the balcony. By 10:15 we had slipped into the quiet of night; if there was any snoring I didn’t hear it.

Los Arcos