So according to Gretchen Shearer my last blog post was slacking so to make to her for it, here's a blog post with more detail, although a little late.... which leads me to believe that people do more than just look at the pictures for this thing and they actually read it, so thanks! :)
The reason for the title of this blog post is because my Uncle Ted came to visit me and we decided it would be a good idea to hike El camino de Santiago... but for only three days. For those of you who don't know about the camino, much like myself prior to my uncle suggesting we hike it, basically it's a train that goes from southern France to Santiago, Spain. In all it totals about 800 kilometers if you hike the whole thing. Basically the idea is to make a pilgrimage and do the whole thing which if you do consistently, should take about a month but a lot of times people will take longer to do it, or maybe even shorter if you're riding a bike.. or walking fast... I don't really know because like I said, we did three days and not 30. Anyways... we caught a bus from Burgos to Santo Domingo de la Cruzada which is only about an hour drive. My thinking was: wow, it takes an hour to get here on a bus and it's going to take us three days to walk back, talk about kind of depressing haha but we were excited and up for the challenge, if you can call it that.
We first arrived in Santo Domingo and our goal was to get to Belorado, about 23 kilometers or so, not so bad. We get to Belorado around 4:30 or so looking for a place to sleep for the night considering we didn't make any reservations, we just figured we could show up somewhere since it's not a very populated place. The first place we got to was called an albergue which literally means shelter. What I didn't know is that they have these albergues all along the camino specifically for hikers, which is great because they're really cheap and it's just what we needed. We get to the place and we're about the pay for one night and the guys says no problem we have two beds available I just need to see your credentials. I, thinking that credentials were things like passports and identification cards, pulled out both and the guy asks again for credentials. I looked at my uncle and back at him and asked again what credentials were which I should not have done because he looked at me and says: have you not read ANYTHING about the camino?!!! So confused, I asked him what he was talking about and here in order to be considered a "pilgrim" you must have credentials... which we were unaware of because we just wanted to take a seemingly simple hike from one place to another. After reminding us that he has the right to refuse us, we simply said okay... and luckily found a much friendlier and nicer place to stay... despite the guy in the room who snored and farted in his sleep.. all night. But that's besides the point, we met some really interesting people and it was really fun.
The next day we ended up hiking about 17 miles or so and by the end of the day we were so tired and sore that we just passed out in Atapuerca, another small pueblo along the way. On the third day, we finally arrived back in Burgos in time for La noche blanca, a celebration of the city where there are events that go on all night... there was even a show of people hanging from a big structure in front of the cathedral... photos to come.
These past few weeks and the next three will be very hectic but only 2 weeks left and I'm officially done finals, finally. After my last final I will have about 10 days to relax before coming back to the good old United States... hopefully going to be spending some time at the beach with my friends before we all have to go our separate ways. It's been one heck of a time here in Spain, but I can't wait to see everyone back at home again.
Adios!!!
