What will 10E buy a feller for a night. Quite a place to stay, actually. Several stories high with roughly 100 per floor and eight sinks, eight showers, several toilets. All spotlessly clean. 2 bunk beds in a 3 walled room. Lights out at 10PM and on at 6AM. I have had a lot worse places for a lot more money!
We had a wonderful Pilgrim's fare for only 9E!
Trout!
Pasta!
Wine!
Yogurt.
6:00 AM - rise and shine
7:00AM - oh boy, can't wait to start walking.... 790 kilometers!!! Thanks for telling me!!
Funny, I have been trying to practice my Compound Effect principle,which says to break giant tasks into the tiniest of tasks. So I think. Okay I must think of only this day, and then just this hill, okay, and just the cow on the right, okay, and... 790!!! Back to square one!
Okay! One hay bale, two hay bales, three hay bales... 790 k!!!!! That's like 8 gazillion hay bales!! Thanks for that very important information! Sometimes in life, it's best to be ignorant.
What's different about this trail than say hiking up Kilimanjaro or the Chilkoot Pass, or any other trail I've been on, is that there is an inn/auberge/hostel/hotel at the end of the day. And it even gets better - there is a restaurant/bar every so many miles in between. What I would have given for a cold drink 1/2 way up Kili!! It makes me want to say, give me a few more of those k's...and a Heinekin !!!
Kinda neat to think that we're walking over the stream that Hemingway writes about in The Sun Also Rises, which is a wonderful book if you want to read about a bunch of drunks who can't put 2+2 together and figure out that alcohol is the root of the problems or at least exacerbates the problem.
Unfortunately, not all pilgrims make it to Santiago, or home for that matter. This is a shrine/memorial dedicated to a Japanese pilgrim who died along the way.
Just to end on a good note, this is a picture of the table I sat with for trout dinner on the first night. The girl to my right is Stephanie from the Black Forest, Germany, the guy to her right is Daniel from Holland, his father Carl is across the table and Harry also from Holland is to my left. Fun joking and talking them about the world.
There's no present. There's only the immediate future and the recent past - George Carlin
George Carlin