Azofra to Grañón to Belorado

I´m here! I´m alive! I´m back!

Ha ha. Sorry no post yesterday...no internet where I was.

Azofra finished out beautifully. After posting, the boys made dinner. Skip is a chef and had a hankerin for some mashed potatoes, so he made a huge pot of them with tomatoes and garlic and God knows what else...added to the enormous skillet of tomato pasta the boys made...I volunteered dish duty in exchange for my dinner. I think we each had three plates´ worth and still had leftovers. This was the first night I actually got to see nighttime in Spain. It doesn´t get all-the-way dark till 11pm, and we´re always locked in by 10 or so, so we never see the stars. But the hospitalero here was pretty laid-back and we sat in the courtyard late and talked.

In the morning, we set out for Grañón. We got a bit of a late start because there was a full-blown TRAGEDY. Felix committed Camino Suicide last night. He had a blister on the side of the ball of his foot, and GOD only knows why, but he CUT AWAY THE TOP SKIN. We wanted to strangle him. He says he doesn´t know what he was thinking. Of course, he couldn´t walk today. When Skip and I were leaving, the boys were talking about staying behind for the day...?

NEVER wash all your socks at once, by the way. This rule is a subset of one of the primary rules of the Camino: never trust the dryers. Have I mentioned that before? Sidenote on washing: I have not yet had to wash anything by hand. Those who know me know that means I have NOT washed anything by hand. And even if you plan to use the machines, they usually have soap there for you to use. Don´t bring detergent...you don´t need it. But anyway, Skip decided he was in charge of laundry last night (we´re an old married couple...he drinks half my beers and I make him put sunscreen on his neck and we do our laundry together) and thought the dryer looked trustworthy. And today we had a tub full of wet clothes. I had two shirts and six socks hanging off my pack, with a pair of pants under the topcase. Luckily my stuff dries fast and I had held some socks and a shirt back. But if they´d all been wet, I would´ve been in bad shape. Lesson learned the easy way.

We´re running out of vineyards. Another day and we´ll be out of La Rioja. We stopped at a recreation area near this little stone house-type thing. I don´t remember what it´s called, but it´s basically a circular column of stones topped with a stone dome, so it looks like a little stone helmet in the middle of the plain. There was a sign that says it was for guarding crops...someone is inside it and makes sure no one bothers the fields, maybe?

On our stops, it´s funny how in tune Skip and I are. It happens all the time. We stop, rummage through our packs in silence till we figure out whatever we need to figure out...sometimes one or both of us is jotting down notes we want to remember for later, or taking pictures of scenery...then we´re both ready to go at the exact same time. No conversation, just zips and straps and packs on and we walk out. It happens during lunch breaks, too. Everyone seems to know when it´s time to go.

We´re in wheat fields now, and so the hills are golden, broken with dark green splotches of forest. Apparently, these hills were all forest, centuries ago, but Santo Domingo ordered them cut down and tilled into fields. Suddenly, in the midst of the wheat fields, off in the distance, I saw...a golf cart?? Yes. A golf course. In the middle of Spanish Nowhere. Strange sight.

Up at the top of a tall hill was a resting place, and there was Kasey Kahne. He´d beaten us there, somehow...but no Felix. Apparently he was going to take the bus. Good for him. They were talking about stopping in Santo Domingo de la Calzada, which is too close for us to stop...we want to go to Grañón and have heard it´s a church hostel, which we want to try. Hmm....

My iPod died after 30 min. Didn´t charge it. Damn.

We pulled into Santo Domingo de la Calzada around midday. The plan was to wait out the heat of the day till about 4pm, and then do the last hour and a half to Grañón. As we were coming into town, Kasey got far ahead, and we didn´t see him again when we got into the town proper. We saw Yasmeen, though, and she showed us around a bit. We climbed the belfry in the church in SD...it was beautiful. Lots of bells, all different sizes. The half-hour one rang while we were up there and scared the crap out of us. We did some poking around in the markets and hit a sidewalk cafe for lunch. Yasmeen joined us. We were there forever, writing postcards and catching up on journals.

Skip has a niece who´s 11 years old. He stole her teddy bear before he left, and has been taking pictures of it all the way from Australia to Pamplona. Teddy ran with the bulls. Unfortunately, Teddy stayed behind in Pamplona, but he´s been racking up bar tabs all over the Camino ever since! He´s a very friendly guy, but he´s kind of a lush and he´s out of money. So...see where this is going? Skip has been getting all kinds of people to write postcards back to his niece in Australia, some from Teddy, and some from people Teddy has met and talked into paying his bar tab, promising that Brianna would cover them. So I wrote one...Jocelyn wrote one in French...Yasmeen invited them both to Austria...he sent an envelope full of bar tabs to her...it´s pretty funny. I can´t wait till Eric is older and I can do the same thing.

My packstraps are really starting to stink. That should be fun in another two weeks.... Also getting sick of my clothes. And really resenting the pressure to be feminine under these kinds of conditions. Almost as much as I resent the gorgeous women we walk with.

There is a Hungarian couple who rival the French couple of a few days ago in sheer collective beauty. He is a buccanneer if I ever saw one. He is tall and lanky, with a long dark ponytail and a goatee. He wears these tan trousers that are about castaway length, mid-calf, and a white buttondown shirt that billows in the wind. He has a black hip pack that looks like a swordbelt. Black boots, sometimes sandals. Black broad-brimmed hat, pinned up at the sides...tall wooden walking stick...pack trimmed in red. I swear if he had a red bandana on his head, he´d be a full-blown pirate. He speaks very good English...I call him Hungary and he calls me America. SHE speaks almost no English. She is all slender limbs and a body no bigger than her pack, so when we walk behind her it looks like a walking backpack. She walks in hiking boots like models do in three inch heels and fashion shows. It´s bizarre. Like Maelle the French girl, she is effortlessly breathtaking, and I am jealous to the point of viciousness. Ha ha...I´m not really, but you know what I mean. How do they DO it?? And on the Camino!!!

We spent forever in SD. Yasmeen said she´d send the boys if she found them. No luck. We finally left. I´d asked the girl behind the bar if I could charge my iPod, and after about an hour and a half, I found out I´d used the wrong converter...which fits the holes, but apparently doesn´t charge. GRRRR!! It was hotter than JEEZUS when we left.

Here´s our problem. All of Europe is on one time zone. I already said that it´s still half-light out at 10pm. So while waiting till 4pm usually cuts out the heat of the day in a normal US time zone, and might work in Eastern Europe...in Spain, we really decided to walk out of SD at around 2 or 3 in the afternoon, which is actually the HEIGHT of the heat. Sigh. Aussie nearly overheated before we reached Grañón. It was a long afternoon. Just wheat fields on one side and roads on the other. Miserable. Plus, we knew the boys had probably stayed behind in SD.

The albergue in Grañón advertised a pool. A KILOMETER AWAY. No thanks. It was an old Romanesque church where we stayed. Donations only. Leather sleeping mats on the floor, about 2¨ thick, not bad. I searched the boots area for the boys´ shoes...did not see the shoelaces I lent to Felix the other day when his broke. As they stamped us in, I was crushed. I missed them already. Even thought we´d lost Hank and Mimi and Jocelyn...however, we saw them moments later.

Skip and the Hungarian are like young bucks sharpening their antlers against trees, eyeing each other, trading barbs and jokes with daggers behind their smiles. The Hungarian has his wife and two other young women with him, and strides the Camino like a lord parading his wife and daughters before the gentry with a haughty and possessive swagger.

But the spirit of this place was just beautiful. There was a communal mass (which we skipped) and a communal dinner for THIRTY-FOUR PEOPLE. Tiny little kitchen, more people working in it than you´d believe. An Italian named Roderigo was making homemade potato chips as we all sat down...they were soooooooo good. Dinner was VATS of pasta with tuna, tomato, peas, and lots of oil. I think one of the things I´ll learn on this trip is how to savor food. I am an eat-to-live person, not a live-to-eat person. But everything is magnified on the Camino, especially the taste of really good food after a long, hard day. We had a blessing in three languages before we ate, bottles of red wine (which I passed up in favor of glass after glass of water...GOD even the water is divine...), breadbaskets...Mimi and Jocelyn had made a fruit salad for dessert. I jumped on the dish-drying team to earn my supper...Skip and the other guys were on table-assembly and breakdown duty. Everyone pitched in. The walls were lined with Camino artifacts and pictures. There was a beautiful white jug up on a shelf with wheat stalks in it. It really felt like the Camino.

As we were doing the dishes, the window outside had this strange yellow glow...there was a storm brewing and I´ve never seen clouds like this in all my life. I can´t even describe them. It looked like a helluva storm coming. But I don´t think it ever did rain. By that time, it was nearly 10 and we headed to bed. A few of us stole extra sleeping mats. =)

The church bells rang as we fell asleep. It was lovely.


Absolutely nothing remarkable about the walk today from Grañón to Belorado. Tiny little towns, populations in the 40s, no one about. Sunday...everything in Spain shuts down on Sunday. We walked in silence. Skip is hurting. His ankle is terribly swollen and tonight he found out his blisters are infected. He will probably take the bus tomorrow, and hates feeling like a wuss, but knows that if his ankle and blisters get worse, he´s out of the game. He´s right.

We stopped only 16km out from our start today...done by 12:30, and walked into an albergue the color of orange sherbet. It looked very commercial...bar and huge eating area, pool tables, TV lounge...surly young woman behind the bar...180 from last night´s peace and camaraderie. I didn´t like it, but we wanted to stop, so we got beds. I was trying to remember a message from John...¨under no circumstances should you stay at the first albergue in...?¨ Couldn´t remember. What the hell. We figured the Germans would be here soon...the other towns were so small. The American CCM group came not long after and said they´d seen the boys this morning. We asked them to watch for them and headed into town in search of a doctor or a pharmacy.

No luck. Found the square and some sort of motorbike exhibition...everyone in the town was there. The Americans came and said they saw our Germans but they went to another albergue. Skip put me on the hunt and went back to crash and nurse his ankle.

Ten minutes later I found the fourth albergue in the town, and it was open. It took me five minutes to try to explain to the guy that I was looking for two friends and could I see his list, please? THERE THEY WERE!! I did a lot more gesturing with bad Spanish and hustled upstairs. Felix tackled me when he saw me. =)

So here we are. I have five minutes left, then I´m waking up Skip and we´re moving. This albergue just has a bad feel to it. The other one is nice, is donation only, and is having a communal dinner, and is right off the town square. Felix says Al is there too.

So, better go. Sorry I was out yesterday. We´re now in step with our guidebooks, and will hit San Juan de Ortega tomorrow, and hopefully Burgos on Tuesday. The meseta, my possible train trip, is about two days later. We´ll see how that goes.

Carolyn - the scallop shell is the symbol of Saint James on the Camino. Google Camino de Santiago...there is a .uk site that is wonderful.

Not much else to report. Love you all.