Yesterday I left Mom/Helen and Dad/Wick in Najera in order to go to a town called Castildelgado, which the guidebook did not say much about, save that there was a hotel there. I imagined a small pueblo with a family-run hotel. After a looong day of walking, however, I stepped into a truck stop with a Holiday Inn-ish hotel and a diner-type resteraunt. The room I was given was smaller, room and bathroom combined, than my bedroom alone. The bathroom was especially amusing, since while sitting at the toilet, my knees were under the sink, and the half-bathtub was just too small for me to sit Indian-style in. The bed was comfortable, though, and the dinner in the resteraunt served pretty good "home-cooking" food. In the morning I had a croissant and a cafe-con-leche and was on my way.
While I ate dinner last night I figured out my necessary average daily kilometer-age in order to reach Santiago on foot alone. I then plotted a day-by-day route. Today I had quite a trek planned, especially since some pretty steep mountains were involved. This morning was quite cold, so I was forced to wear my fleece. The clouds threatened rain all day, though they never carried out their threat. The sunrise through the cloudbreaks was quite beautiful, especially because of the distant mountains that surround this area of Spain. Most of the day I had a broad range of songs goings through my head, sometimes coming out of my mouth. I did a bit of serious thinking on the less scenic paths, though even those were pretty, with pine forest on each side. I passed yet another German tour group this afternoon who, fresh from their bus, were hard to get past. (I passed the first one several days ago at the famous wine-spicket in the Irache monastery. They were all fairly elderly but kind, and treated me, a true peregrino, like a celebrity.)
Tonight I am staying in a municipal Albergue, which is attached to a resteraunt with internet. There´s a TV on which is tuned to the SciFi channel, which was showing a dubbed episode of Star Trek but is now showing some sort of low-budget futuristic superhero movie. The facilities here are clean, if not particularly good. My shower was a warm one rather than a hot one, and the clothes dryer doesn´t work. They do, however, have sinks with built-in ceramic washboards (I think that´s pretty cool.) I washed some underwear and my fleece, which smelled pretty bad. I´m excited about the early dinner, because it means means I can go to bed earlier tonight. Until next time...
In Him,
Hunter
Stubble Update: Mustache visible (at last!) Chin and neck well-covered. For some strange reason all the hair is a blonde-ish color rather than dark brown like my head-hair.
Just tilt your head to the right...
