October 13th, 2013

So yesterday we spent the night  in Rabal Del Camino, a little mountain town that looked like a  place out of a fairy tale:  cobblestone streets, stone archways, walls, and houses, and sheep grazing off on the hillsides.  We stayed at the 5-euro alberge "La Senda",  where the dorm room, though the bunks were very close, felt more cozy than crowded, in part because we shared the half-full room with only four other English-speaking pilgrims, but mostly because Tom, in his usual way, got the conversation going and the conviviality cooking.  One middle -aged German woman said, "See?  This is what the Americans do, just introduce themselves and start talking.  A German would never do that.  Americans do it all the time!" I asked her whether this was a good thing or a bad thing.  "It´s a great thing,"  she replied.  "It makes everything so much easier!  We Germans have to start doing it, too!"  This was not the first time I´d heard that lament from German pilgrims, though, frankly, I´d always found the Germans as friendly as any other nationality.  I guess they just need some americans to get the ball rolling!  On the second floor of the albergue there was a wood-burning stove and wooden tables and chairs which some of us gathered around after dinner, also quite cozy.  For dinner Tom and I went  to the bar next door to the albergue where we had the 9 euro pilgrim meal, good as always.  Tom started with his usual favorite, the suna-topped salad while I had  the hot, mop-it-up-with-bread-delicious lentil soup.  Next Tom had the bacon and eggs with fires.  The bacon was more like ham, though, while what´s called ham here seems more like bacon.  Gastronomic differences, I guess. I had the fried calamari with fries.  I kept thinking the calimari tasted like something I´d had before but  I couldn´t remember what it was.  Then it occurred tio me that maybe it was calamari.  for dessert a nice brick of vanilla-chocolate-french vanilla ice cream.  This morning as everybody was leaving the albergue I noticed that one of our dorm mates, a little German girl who looked in her late teens or early twenties was fiddlin over much with her feet.  Finally she asked me if I knew how to drain a blister.  (Of course, I didn´t think you were supposed to drain blisters, but that seems to be the treatment for blisters around here.).  Very quickly there were severl pilgrms hovering over her trying to help, but it looked like a really bad, infected blister on her baby toe.  Then she showed Tom her other foot, where there was a monster blister that covered her whole heel.  He helped her tape it but Tom and I both agreed that she needed medical care.  But here she was in a tiny town that didn´t even have a pharmacy, let alone a doctor!  By now everyone else had left, and I had no idea what to do for her, though I couldn´t stand leaving here there alone, like leaving a child in need. But what could I do?  So I just stayed and talked to her for a while.  Her name was Clara and she hoped to be accepted into nursing school in April.  She´d just started the Camino a few days ago in Leon and was planning on walking all the way to Cordoba, over 1,000 km away, to visit her bother who lived there.   Like so many other pilgrims, young and old, her backpack weighed a ton and she´d been walking too far her first few days.  Finally I suggested that she take a taxi back to the big city of Astorga to get some medical treatment.  Tom suggested that she go to the town´s monastery to see if the monks might help her.  Then we left her and went next door for breakfast.  After breakfast we returned to the albergue to check on her but she was gone, we figured having taken one or the other pieces of our advice.  So we walked for about 5 km to the next little town where we stopped for a break and there was little Clara!  She´d toughed it out and continued on!  One more member of the Camino walking wounded.  But sometimes pilgrims´ wounds heal and they make it.  Sometimes not.  Which is probably why the numbers on the Camino have been steadily falling since the beginning, and it is a much quieter walk than it was weeks ago.  But this population fall is only temporary.  We´ve heard that now the numbers will start picking up and the Camino will get very crowded as we get closer to Santiago, as one only needs to walk 100 km to receive the Compostela, the certificate of completion, and many pilgrims jump on at the end.  We´ll  see.  And....I reached the top of the mountain!  The highest point of the Camino is the Cruz de ferro, the big cross at the top of a pile of stones where pilgrims toss on a stone  to represent their prayer, thought, or spiritual  goal for the Camino.  (Martin Sheen and his friends did this in "The Way").  It really wasn´t that hard getting up to the top because, though I didn´t realize it until we were at the top,  we´d actually been ascending for days.  Unfortunately, though, what goes up slowly sometimes comes down much more quickly and steeply, and this was the case with this mountain, where the descent to the other side was quite scary and, for me, treacherous.  Anyway, we decided to stop at a town about halfway down the mountian, Acebo, about 17 km from where we started this morning.  And that´s where we are now, happpily settled into our 5 euro albergue, El Meson de Acebo, and thinking about dinner.  May any mountains you may be facing today turn out to be totally doable!  Love, Patti 8)