AAAARRGH!!! the camino "continues" with all of the "bad" elements and none of the good...

i thought i was finished.... but... well...i AM finished with the fun part, but.... im reliving the camino... minus the good stuff.... i arrived in my rental car back in pamplona at 430 am this morning after fighting through the messiness of what i considered poorly-marked (and sometimes incredibly expensive-tolled) spanish roads for hours.... when i arrived back at my own car, it wouldnt start. i had half expected this so i wasnt really surprised or worried...i thought it would just need a jump start...well, a jump start and a trip to the store for a new battery and a kind neighbor installing the battery later, we had to call a tow truck cuz it still wouldnt start...i spent the day sitting in the rental car outside the mechanics hoping they would be able to make time to fix it today....but by the end of the day he had replaced several parts and still couldnt find anything wrong..... so...im back in "camino living" but only the bad parts--i thought i was done with this stuff for now--sleeping in an albergue, worrying about the dog all night because shes outside and its freezing--although in this case worrying about her not only getting cold but deciding to eat the rental car if she gets lonely, wearing the same yuck clothes AGAIN, loading and unloading my backpack, etc etc ICK. i loved the camino but i dont want the camino without the good stuff ;p i really hope that my car is fix-able tomorrow or we might never get home! the ferry leaves on friday from northern france and we actually need to be there (or to a vet SOMEWHERE, if not there,) on THURSDAY!!.... ARGH. and if he cant fix it i dont know WHAT we will do as i need the car too much to junk it...nor can i get me, grainne, and all my stuff home without it! i think ill take any bad day of the camino over the current situation! argh. and the physical exhaustion over the current mental frustration anyday! so y'all please pray i can end up with a fixed car and get HOME!!! thanks ;) kaybee

i want to further update my blog and fill in the gaps but i guess it will have to wait till i get back to ireland....

grainne in the cathedral....

for my friends who understand the reference....yesterday, i felt like i was
"pulling a Margaret" hehehe (refers to a friend who has been know to do things like the following ;P ) anyway, we busted to get to the cathedral for the 12 o clock pilgrims mass in santiago, as a suitable ending.... on arrival at the side entrance, right before 12, i marched right through the door with grainne, entered the cathedral, and plunked down my backpack, my stick next to me, and me, right inside the door on the top of the steps, with grainne curling up and sleeping in my lap. now i know well that in spain they think dogs are outside animals but darn it we just walked from pamplona, and i felt like we were ENTITLED to sit in the cathedral for an hour while they said mass (never mind that i didnt understand a word of it as it was in spanish, hahahaha), and i was NOT abandoning my dog to sit outside and bark and be miserable and possibly get stolen after she had just trudged 3 or 400 miles as well. as far as i was concerned, we both had as much or more right to be in that cathedral as anyone else. plus there was noone to stop us and no sign saying no dogs. i got a lot of looks from people as we sat there but i was partly amused, partly aware i was callign attention to myself and partly didnt care cuz we had just walked a billion miles and we were entitled to be there. she was silent and curled up in my lap. i was enjoying not having to be anywhere do anythign and jsut being able to sit there. maybe we shoudl have gone somewhere less obvious but i was afraid to go much further than jsut inside the door, i figured i was being as "respectful" of their rules as possible by staying just inside the door. anyway, my peace and quiet only lasted about 1o minutes until we got kicked out by a security guard.....to whom i insisted we had just walked from pamplona we required to go to mass etc etc et c in my awful spanish. he made us leave. i was so pissed at the time and he ended up letting us stay in the entryway later with her covered with my sleeping bag, but now im more amused than pissed at the fact that i even so nonchalantly tried to pull this off. but why the heck not. i am SO sick of rules about animals in this country! must go, computer time up. but at least gro made it into the cathedral too. hahahah. take that, spain!!! hehehe. my dog was in your famous cathedral. ;p

how do you limp on both feet?...WHAT THE HECK HAPPENED TO KILOMETER MARKER 12???¿¿¿¿¿¿...and...I AM NOT SLEEPING IN A CEMETERY!!

arrived santiago yesterday. would like to fill in the gaps. but going to start with most recent and fill in gaps later. internet time is limited as gro is tied back up at albergue, probably barking, and im down at the cafeteria at monte do gozo using internet. so ill probably have to do this in stages..a.nd finish it in a week when i get back to ireland. yes, it will take me a WEEK to get back :)

Lets begin with Friday, the 20th.... i forget where to i dont know where.... hmmm.. lemme look at my shirt i just got a shirt with all the places on it and im wearing it so i can wash all my other clothes....... um.... yeah ok ribadiso. ribadiso to ....well....you´ll see...
started off in ribadiso frustrated from the night before (see in later postfor previous day in post i havent written yet...) but motivated. I wanted to try to do 35-37 k. ok not that i WANTED to but i didnt want to stop at arca after 22 and then have to do 20 to santiago the next day. i was having major feets problems and would rather just trash it through one really long day then stumble into santiago from mounto de gozo the next and make it for the pilgrims mass than have two long days and/or be trying to do 20k to santiago in the morning and make it by noon which i knew we absolutely couldnt. so i decided to see how much mileage we could put on even though id only done 15 the 2 previous days and even the 15 felt like it was gonna kill me. my feet have been reaching their last... and i didnt know how many more days i could work through the pain. the walk from ribadiso was nice once we got through arzua. we went a km or so out of the way though getting lost which was frustrating because we were already on a sort of tight schedule. we went through alot of eucalyptus groves which were really pleasant, but my feet and tendons were really killing me. we were going quite a pace nonetheless but after retying my shoes 15 different ways, i realized i actually had one last weapon to break out for the last few days... ALEVE painkiller. 4 left. and i tried to use it only sporadically when absolutely necessary. now was the time. i ate the most dense stuff i could find in my bag for lunch so as to not have the aleve burn a hole on an empty stomach, had a nice lunch in a eucalyptus grove, and we kept on trucking. we passed the last albergue around 6 pm..the next being 14 k away... i was still hoping maybe we could make it, even if it meant making it in the dark, or at least make it to the churchyard at labacolla, which would leave us only about 8 k the following day. we kept busting through the kilometers, and i felt like the last few kilometers were just melting away easily.....except at that poin t i thought the km markers were a countdown to santiago, which now im not so sure they were.... i think they were to monte do gozo or something...anyway, the markers and my book didnt match but i decided to trust the markers at that point which i think ended up being shorter.... right at dusk, when we couldnt possibly go any further on treed paths, we were supposed to be arriving at km 12 marker and then crossing some stream, the highway, then following the path to labacolla. i could see the lights of santiago in the distance, and i was still trying to judge whetehr we could make it to MDG with my tiny flashlight in the dark. i SO wanted to get there that night.... WELL.... the markers ceased to exist. i was doing my best to follow instructions in the book, but apparently failed.... i went over a stream then through a tunnel under the highway, headed for some lights which i imagined to be san paio, where i thought i would set up my tent cuz i was wrecked and it was dark. i had toyed with taking the road routes but didnt think that would make an authentic pilgrimage and my book made it look like MDG wasnt on a road runnign through it anyway... so we trudged in the last glimmers of dusk down this dirt road after the scary tunnel to this "village" which turned out to not be a village anyway but a farmer with a bunch of tall lights for a garage for fixing tractors or something..... we hadnt been follwoing a yelllow arrow but i hadnt been able to find ANY yellow arrows or markers or anything at all after the camino path started alongside the roadside. so i was going with my best judgment--which ended up being wrong. so now i saw only this farm had no idea where i was it was dark i didnt want to go back the way i came and i couldnt even ask at the farm cuz there were big dogs barking at us. so when i saw a guy at the farm barn i started hollering hola hola and finally he came over but im still unconvinced that he properly showed me wehre we were on my map as we remained lost for about the next hour or so.... we went back the direction we came but he told us we had already passed san paio or at least i thought he did and told me stay in labacolla. he said go back through the tunnel and along the road but i didnt want to go back through the tunnel and couldnt see a road to follow on my map anyway so we ended up trudging down the scary dirt road down alongside the raised highway becasue i had seen a highway sign for labacolla. but we couldnt get onto the highway because of fencing. so i was hopin g we could at the exit. problem was that there were TWO highways on my map and there was no way for me to figure out which one i was following. we finally came to another tunnel and got to the other side of the highway but then it was still jsut highway and no helpful signs. at least it was higher up and lit though and not quite as scary but still no civilization in sightn. eventually i saw another tunnel goign off under the highway again and it was marked with shells...but it was dark, AND no yellow arrows (NOT LIKE YOU CAN SEE YELLOW ARROWS IN THE DARK ANYWAY, EVEN WITH A FLASHLIGHT)...so we kept walking and finally saw houses, flagged down a car, and learned we were in san paio and that that WAS the camino path with the shells. the lady told me to just follow the road to labacolla though and it woudl be lit. i told her that we just needed a church we would camp in the churchyard and she said yeah there was a church there. it was really late like probly 930. plus we had passed no supermarkets all day even though i expected to so all i had was the food on me. i was glad at that point i had dragged extra food around that day. still not enuff though but by the time we finished grainne wanted sleep not food anyway. anyway, we finally got to labacolla and crossed the camino path and headed for the church, thinking we were home free... except i didnt count on the churchyard being a graveyard...one of those with the box-crypt type graves that you see so often around this part of spain. and there was NO WAY i was sleeping there. i was totally creeped out. so we looked for a spot of grass not on the main road or camino path cuz that didnt feel totally safe, but for something still in the town. i finally found something half suitable though if a car had been a drunk driver he would have gone off the road into us as we were only a few feet from the edge but it was a quiet road and the best i could find. there were 2 small dogs accosting us froma distance barking barking barking. grainne curled up on the ground and went to sleep while i pulled up branch stumps to put down the tent. those darn dogs barked at us for a good hour from a distance even when i threw sticks at them. then they stopped being as loud for a little while as if they had been put inside, then got let out again a little later. then at 7 am on a saturday they were at it again ..... we had a not very restful night but at leasxt we were not walking. i hung my shell on the outside of my tent, hoping noone would bother us when they saw it. noone did. except the dogs. i meant to take picture of the road littered with all teh sticks i had thrown at them but forgot ;) anyway that night my feet were killing and i didnt know how i could even walk the next day but suprisingly i was able to. . ok i want to finish this post about our day of our arrival into santiago but i want to put something on the next post too and im almost out of tim e so will have to finish later..... a nice lady gave us breakfast the next day..d.etails later...and also the end of the path the last few km into monte do goza is VERY POORLY MARKED...

PICS: GALICIA today Sunday Feb 15th

in brief, these are galicia this morning. except i forgot i was supposed to upload backwards. so morning is at the bottom and top is later this afternoon pics are self explanatory i guess...except the one with the door. go figure:there was this building...and there was all this water running out in a waterfall under the door. like a stream had decided to make its way through the building or something. anyway looked funny.

pics of gro...

i realized that in most of the previous pics i had published of grainne, she looks bewildered. so i wanted to show she isnt...or at least not all of the time :) though i think she will be happy to be sleeping in one place when we get back to ireland, instead of a different place every night. but she will miss the exercise/adventure and attention

Sunday Feb 15th Tricastela to Sarria

very beautiful. we started off the morning in cold and fog, practically wading through streams of water running downhill on what is supposed to be the path. dont know if it was from melting snow up higher or if galicia is just wet or what.

villafranca de bierzo to vega and vega to o cebreiro to tricastela and tricastela to sarria.

original post is older, but edited April 17th to add pics and comments at bottom


wow, i am SO tired. almost too tired to blog this. but i have to stay up till 11 pm anyway cuz gro has to sleep in the entryway of this albergue so i need to make sure shes settled after they shut the door.

a few random comments. we did almost 35 k yesterday. we had to hitchhike the last 5 k or so into tricastela becasue it was getting dark. we were lucky to finally get a lift. the bigger problem was that yesterday was saturday, there had been no shops all day, except in the village friday night, and i was NOT lugging 2 days food up o cebreiro, so i was trying to get into tricastela to get us food before the shops closed cuz we had little stored food for dinner and nothing for today sunday when alllllllll shops are closed.... we got there and the shop was already closed anyway;thankfully it was open today unlike most shops so we sat outside it for an hour till it was open with gro in my lap, on one of those silver blankets, and a sleeping bag over both of us until the shop opened. it actually worked out better that we left later because it was so foggy this morning we couldnt have seen ANYTHING on the tricastela-sarria path. and the views turned out beautiful. it was foggy in the beginning but it was still beautiful.

the galicia region is BEAUTIFUL. its what ireland would look like if ireland had more trees, more mountains, and less rocks and sheep. but it is the same green, wet, foggy, fairy-tale-ish kind of place, or at least it was walking through the woods this morning. the woods were deserted enough that i felt safe enough to let gro off-leash for a few minutes to play fetch. she was delighted. she hasnt had a chance to be off-leash outside in over a month. so wrong, but so necessary given her propensity for trying to eat any dog that she can sense within a mile....

this post is discombobulated...seems like blog is getting less and less organized as i go, but seems like internet time is so sparse unless i have a rest day somewhere.

a few more (positive) comments i must make about Ave Fenix, the albergue i raved about in the last post: some albergues are in a rush to get you out the door and make u leave by 8am, even though its barely light. here, they encouraged me to relax, take my time, and one of the hospitaleras visiting from another place told me the best time to go was around 11 at this time of year because it wasnt so cold :) before i left we TRIED to paint a yellow arrow on grainnes grey raincoat cuz i thought that would be cool...but the yellow spraypaint didnt work and he only had orange besides that so her raincoat now looks like that of a construction man or something...lol.. i still want to get some yellow spraypaint or even better yellow ductape...anyway Jesus (HAY-SUS, not jesus), the man who runs the hostel, was delighted to search for paint and put the arrow on for me, and i also got a shell to put on my bag, so i started feeling more like i was part of the camino "in-crowd". lol. while i was waiting for the paint to dry, jesus and a bunch of the other hospitaleros had to leave. he came up and gave me this big hug, like a grandpa or something. i really liked that place. also, they have a community meal every evening, and that was really nice to eat with all the other people there. the others there were all hospitaleros and they were working on the place, renovating. we had a good laugh earlier in the day when they were painting the bedframes blue and one of the guys had totally blue hands and i tried to tell him he looked like a smurf...but he didnt speak english and me no spanish and it just didnt translate. he thought i was telling him he looked like a desert nomad with blue skin. then one of the women there suddenly realized what i was talking about and said whatever the name for the smurfs is in spanish, and they all busted out laughing cuz they DID in fact know who the smurfs were.

the day i left villafranca bierzo we took it easy and i was still feeling kind of tired. it took us the whole day to go 17 k or something.... that night i stayed at the albergue with a cool german guy who spoke english, which was cool, and also a swedish man who was just starting, and a spanish guy who insists on leaving the albergues before 8am... he goes out with his headlamp...apparently he likes to start early. the next day which was yesterday, we had to get up o cebreiro. i had been concerned about this climb cuz my book made it look impossible, and i had been worried about the weather getting up it, but the climb was BEAUTIFUL, and the weather too. weather was so warm you could go without a jacket and gro and i stopped partway up and took a nap. it was that warm. if a tshirt had made it into my bag i probly would have had it on but one didnt. so weird to be HOT IN THE SNOW!! i mean there was snow on the ground, and 2 feet on the edges of the road in some places, but we were very warm. it was very warm beautiful. the climb up wasnt like a climb up a mountainside cliff face either, it was first a steep climb through beaufiful old forest, then tracks through fields and stuff. at the top there was loads of snow in the village but it was warm. this guy started snapping pics of me as we emerged from teh path. also there was all sorts of irish music stuff going on and stuff up top. we had entered galicia and i guess galicia has alot of irish influence. plus it was saturday. it was busy up there. tourbuses and stuff. i stopped at the albergue to ask what other hostels were open past there, filled my waterbottle and set off. it was only 230, too early to stop for the day, beautiful weather, and plus we needed to get down to lower warmer altitude in case we had to sleep in my tent. PLUS i THOUGHT it was all downhill from there...it wasnt. we spent the next few hours trekking MORE UPWARDS along the road, and the worst part being that because we were in the shadow of the north side of the mountain, it was freezing and no sun reaching us cuz we were in the shadow of the mountain. we needed to rest as we hadnt really rested since our nappie nap part way up cebreiro, but everywhere was freezing. i kept thinking that around the next bend we would finally get out of the shadow, but it took AGES and i didnt want us to stop in the shade. when we finally got to sun, near paio de alto, we just sat down on the side of the road. gro was out cold for about 15 minutes then i had to start us busting @** again to try to hoof it to tricastela before dark. we had really taken our time and enjoyed the morning, but our enjoyable day turned into a long haul of just trying to get there in the evening. the views were gorgeous, but all i really cared about was getting the heck to tricastela, which took FOREVER. i had expected that the downhill was going to be really downhill down down steep, like coming down to ponferrada a few days earlier, where i was literally running down the path and we were covering tons of distance and getting lower altitude fast. here, the descent was SO gradual it felt like we were getting nowhere. so glad to finally get to tricastela, and so thankful that someone finally picked us up and that it was someone "ok." (A young couple). i have quite a bit of experience hitchhiking in ireland, but hitchhiking in a country where you dont speak the language feels quite a bit riskier. i was hoping that someone would finally pick us up because it was getting dark, there were so so few cars though, but finally someone did.

the changed weather has made ALL THE DIFFERENCE IN THE WORLD. seriously, i dont see how we could still be doing this if we were struggling through cold, rain and snow every day. that climb to cebreiro was beautiful in the nice weather but seeing the 2 ft of snow on the roadsides really made me think about how impossible it would have been 2 weeks ago when that snow was falling. the timing for us to go up it, which was in part determined by all the rest days we took, etc etc etc, in the end made it possible for us to get up and down it, which is really cool. but seriously, the weather makes SO much difference;it means we can sort of stroll and meander, rather than feeling under pressure to just get through it. it doesnt make everything perfect as i still feel quite wrecked and with hurting feet alot of the time, but the fact that you can stop for a rest or a nap and the sun is warm etc really does make all the difference. yes i still have hurting feet. i mailed more stuff to myself, bringing the total of stuff mailed to self to about 10 pounds out of my pack, but when im carrying food, the bag is still heavy, but manageable now to me. my feet keep hurting, but in different places each day so im not so worried about them. if it was the same spot all the time then i would be more worried. different spots i can handle. the awful trying day after sleeping outside ponferrada shelter, i bought some silicone insoles for my boots, as my boots dont seem to have as good shock absorption as desired...but unfortunately the insoles seem to be disintegrating from my wet boots....

hmmm. i feel like i am just talking stream of consiousness here but i feel like i should take advantage of internet time on the scattered occasions that i get it. my thoughts are so organized during the day about what i would write about if i was writing at those moments...but then when it gets to this time of night... scattered. going to try to upload some pics.

EDIT: ADDED LATER: the following pics and comments :)

Ok, these are my fav pics from this sections, so even though it puts them out of order in this post, as they shoudl be at the BOTTOM after arriving cebreiro, they are at the top :) these were at the top of cebreiro. sun was warm but still snow on the ground. some guy was taking photos with a big camera, "asked" (in another language, if i remember correctly) if he could take ours, then took some of us with mine. cebreiro was hopping like an irish pub up there on a saturday, but we didnt stick around for long. there were too many dogs around, and also we needed to get going. good thing we did because the rest of the day was tough, not interesting, cold, along the road, some of it not very scenic, and in the shade of the mountain where the snow never melted, and we still ended up having to hitch into tricastela because it was getting dark.













Luisa, one of the visiting hospitaleras at Ave Fenix. we expected to run into her later in our travels, and when i had realized i lost grainnes muzzle off my bag somewhere between Villafranca de Bierzo and Vega, I called her to see if she could keep an eye out for it as she was walking starting the next day... i dont know if she ever found it, but we never ran into her again,and had no way to get in touch with one another, though we ran into other people who had been walking with her. anyway, i guess she got stuck with a useless (and pricey...oops.) dog muzzle if she did find it... below is grainne with her flashy new "yellow" arrow on her jacket. hahaha. she remeinds me of a construction worker with the bright orange that was supposed to be yelllow... and my bag with the shell on it. I definitely felt more like i was part of the camino after I got myself a shell for my bag.





There were vegetable gardens on the edge of the river all on the edges of Villafranca. huge gardens (below)









We stopped for lunch under these big beautiful ?chestnut? trees only a few km outside of villafranca. it seemed like we had been walking FOREVER but we had only gone a few k. anyway the leaves were soft and the sun was warm. good nap. we took a LONG lunch. i didnt want to leave. was really tired and just wanted to keep eating and sleeping ;) i remember thinking how we still had AGES to go... anyway, the village we stopped at these trees for lunch near was the next village from villafranca, where we could have hiked to instead of stopping in villafranca. im so glad we stayed in villafranca, as the albergue was awesome and in this village there was no shop, no nothing. .anyway, at these trees i think this is where we left behind grainnes muzzle though, and it would have come in handy later, especially in santiago. by the time i realized it was missing though, i was NOT going back the 4 k or so to these trees to check... I think the path was fairly flat this day and alot of it was along the roadways. I didnt know if there would be a shop in the village where we were staying and i was afraid of getting stuck again without food, so i went hunting for a shop in one of the previous villages. took a detour to the gas station but they hadnt fruit, finally found a tiny shop where we paid four billion dollars for some oranges..but at least i felt better that i had some more food in case there was no shop.

















kwwalking from villafranca, we then spent the night in vega. these pics above and below are of the moon, when we were leaving vega the next morning to go up o cebreiro. The night in vega was OK, i didnt sleep well though, like most places. at least i had a bed, but it was chilly. showers were a bit on the chilly side :( --the kind where its "borderline"...ie. you keep staying in, HOPING its gonna get just that little bit warmer, but it doesnt, so it leaves you borderline shivering the whole time. hate those. the company was good though, especially after many nights as the only pilgrim in an albergue. because there was a shop in that village after all i ended up making way more food than me and grainne could eat, and so shared with a german guy who was just arriving in very late. he offered some of his wine that he had gotten in cacabellos (sp?). cacabellos is well known for its wine, and apparently if pilgrims go to a certain place, they give you a free small bottle, but you have to know where to go. apparently he had known where to go :) . Also, at least the albergue was open in vega...when we first arrived, everything was locked up except the bathrooms. i could see the dorm rooms but not get to them, and i think i tried the phone number and it didnt work. so i was just about to set off to try to ask at the bars where to get a key, when it occurred to me to go upstairs. sure enough the upstairs dorms were fortunately open.
Anyway, back to the pics. it was lovely seeing the moon as we were headed out in the morning.

below is the path near la faba. i feel like i posted alot of these pics in another post already, and that someone even commented on one of them (the dog shadow one..)..but they are nowhere to be found anymroe so i dont know what happened to that blog posts. .... anyway, the hike from vega all the way up was AMAZINg. alot of it was through woods, and i really appreciated being on our own and having it to ourselves. nice weather too, and paths overlaid by leaves crunching under your feet. further along, after passing through almost all the other villages, i could look back and see the view, which is like the picture below right. we stopped to nap again somewhere along that path. LOTS OF NAPS FOR ME ON THIS CAMINO!! ;P i think i first took a nap the day i left leon. it was a long, straight, 12k with nothing out there, and i was so tired and bored and the sun was out a bit so it wasnt totally freezingt--though you had to watch out for wet ground, uch. anyway, i just lay down on the side of the path. that was the beginning of my "chronic napping on the camino", lol. later on i found myself napping frequently because i was wrecked and tired and the sun looked so nice to sleep in... but then we would end up getting places so late because i had stopped to nap, but i just wasnt sleeping well in ANY of the albergues basically, so i would wake up tired every morning and sometimes feel like i got more rest during a nap than i had all night long at the albergues!!


These two pics here I think were from the top of cebreiro, looking out over the valley/path we had just come from.


oops here it is i found it elsewhere :)

every so often we hit a jackpot....

last night we hit a jackpot for a place to stay. we deserved it, as far as im concerned, after having to sleep out on the stone in the tent the previous night in front of the albergue in ponferrada...i asked if we could please sleep in the covered but unheated entryway and they even refused me that. apparently i was lucky to be able to even sleep inside the gates...they were going to send me to the ghetto field behind the albergue,hmmm...lets see, the albergue grounds are gated and have BARS on the windows but somehow they didnt think it would be unsafe for me to go sleep by myself in an abandoned field on the edge of the city??? anyway but some of the hospitaleros talked them nto letting me put the tent by the doorway, at least with a roof, and i jury rigged it with rocks secureing it since again, as learned previously, YOU CANT PEG A TENT INTO STONE... so at least we were under a roofish thing. and it wasnt that cold. and a hospitalero got me some wood to put under my mat... but i slept HORRIBLY. we had done 27k up and down mountains the previous day and were exhausted and hurting. my body needed rest and didnt get it. yeah, im aware of alot of albergues not liking dogs, but this was seriously annoying. they had this huge building and we couldnt even sleep on the floor in the kitchen or whatever. and sorry but these places are supposed to be christian and jesus wouldnt have turned me and the pup away from sleeping inside to sleep on stones in the cold... so i had an awfulnight, knew i was going to, but my functioning the next day (yesterday) was way worse than i ever could have imagined. i was literally stumbling my way through ponferrada, couldnt focus my eyes on anything except the ground cuz it was too much energy--saw at least one woman on the street look at me with concern--, was pulling out all the stops--chocolate (caffeine), dates(sugar). oranges, bananas, olives, nuts, dried fruit...anything to get my body to function. nothing was working. i was so so tired and my feet hurt hurt hurt. i hated the fact that my body needed sleep and instead i was giving it caffeine..and even that wasnt working. i didnt know HOW i was going to make it the 23 k to the next open albergue, and obviously we couldnt stay in ponferrada and sleep on the sidewalk again... the ponferrada area is a beautiful town and i wish i could have enjoyed it more but i was just struggling to stay awake. the walk was supposed to be easy--fairly flat compared to the mountains of the day before, but it was so so hard for us/me. several km into it i found a bench outside a church and had a 20 mn nap. but it was cold and i was still tired. we were making VERY slow progress. the weather had turned beautiful, warm and sunny. but i was too wrecked to enjoy it. by the time we got to cacabelos, the big village nextdoor to the one we had to get to, i thought my feet were going to fall off. it was 5 pm, my tendons hurt
so bad i couldnt walk, and i stopped to sleep again on another bench. i set off again, after retying/readjusting my boots, and almost hitched a lift off this guy at a stopsign who looked at me. wish i had cuz it was a LONG 7k. we stumbled into the village around 8pm. i had this albergue flagged in my book anyway as they were supposed to allow dogs. and theywere the only ones open all year anyway. as i approached the albergue in the dark, there was this huge huge black mastiff looking dog outside the albergue barking at us and all i could think was OH NO. i grabbed my stick to put it between the soon-to-be-growling grainne and the other dog, and this man in a jeep started shoutnng at us in spanish. all i could make out was "no", and so standing there, bewildered, i thought he was saying no dogs at the albergue, etc... as i stood there, he got out of his jeep and then i understood he was trying to tell me not to hit the dog with my stick. i tried to explain that i wouldnt have hit her i was just trying to use it as a barrier, and he led me into th ehostel, which i have to say is my FAVORITE on the camino. grainne being her was no problem, and the hostel is all built of wood and stone, with a warm stove going. they asked me did i want dinner and i explained i was vegetarian and was that possible. i went to the town searching for a grocery store for food for grainne, and when we came back he told me the dinner was vegetarian and did i wan to eat with them. this is probably the best meal i had on the camino too... the man here had thrown together and baked potatoes, collards, and garlic, then gave us salad and bread etc (and plunked down a big plate of sausage on the table too for everyone else, that he declared was NOT VEGETARIAN. lol. the food was really good and simple and he told me how he grew it all himself and that it was "ecological" no supermercado. i was also really touched that he had made it vegetarian.

ok have to get off computer now cuz been using it way more than teh alloted time. anyway, stayed here another day, beds are so comfy, oom is warm, grainne is welcome, etc etc etc. best albergue on the camino in my vote. and i got to wash my clothes.

half way to the mountain tomorrow then over the top and down the next day. if weather stays good.

later edit: we sat in the sun for part of the day and i slept for the rest of it. the dormitory here is awesome its in the attic floor and the top bunks are in the wooden rafters practically. it has skylights in the shape of stars and it is so cosy. i went for a nap and slept on the top bunk..i really like sleeping practically IN the ceiling like that and i love napping during the day with the sun coming in the skylights. had dinner with everyone again and there is another hospitalera here from somewhere else that is continuing the camino tomorrow. she speaks english which is cool and i think we will walk part of the time together tomorrow or at least look out for one another tomorrow night. feet and legs still hurting but better. i think my legs hurt cuz i was literally running down the mountain yesterday... anyway i love that this hospitalera speaks english becasue i asked her to translate to the main hospitalero here how much i appreciate the welcome i received here etc. we had dinner mostly from his garden again. so good. i need to maybe go sew my backpack back together and go to bed.

feb 8th...joyriding on the camino path..in an SUV

villar de mazarife to what was SUPPOSED to be hospital d'orbigo or santibanez but ended up being astorga....

in brief, becasue im short on internet time, ill explain this because it was so amusing.

we left villar de mazarife, intending to have a short day of it and stop in hospital d'orbigo. weather was better than it had been but still very cold but at least sunny. really hurting feet by time got to hospital orbigo. hospitalero there was really sweet but gro would have to sleep outside and i said she might bark so he said to go to santibanez. he said he didnt know about the dog there but that the hospitalero there was an italian guy and would feed me dinner since it was sunday and shops closed. so i set off for santibanez with hurting feet but not really a bit tired because the weather had turned nice and sunny and it was enough evening. i was though expecting a great meal and welcomng place to stay. santi was only about 4 k, but i was tired by the time we got there, despite the nice evening. i got there about 615. it gets dark around 715. the hospitalero was standing in the doorway and regretfully told me there was no way for me to stay there because the dog and he didnt have a problem wtih it but whoever in charge of teh albergue made the rules and h had to go by it. so so much for my dinner. and now our only option was ASTORGA, a further 10k....and we travel at a rate of 5 k an hour or so...so i was looking at 4 more hours of walking....mostly in the DARK, which i had sworn i wouldnt do again. i asked him which was shorter the path or the road and he said the path so i took it. about 10 minutes up the path i realized this was stupid becasue at least on the road there would be lights in the dark... i was hoping the path would cross the road again but i asked some people walking their dogs and they said it didnt. various people walking their dogs kept telling me i couldnt go to astorga it was too far cuz it was getting dark, but i kept explaining i really had no other choice. i didnt want to turn back and take the road cuz we had already come a bit of a distance. OF COURSE this couldnt be a flat treeless path but had to be one that went mostly through WOODS... ARGH. all i could think was how stupid i was for not taking the road. we did know that at least in astorga we would be welcome as a previous hospitalera had arranged for it to be ok for us to sleep there me and dog. i dont know how but somehow i at least felt energized to keep going. its amazing how you can suck it up and find more energy when you have to sometimes. anyway, along the path i saw a car on a parallel path. a big silver SUV actually, going up a mountain. i thought it was strange. then i saw it again later...i was thinking maybe it was going our way but then it disappeared. then i saw it again. this time i decided to try to flag it down. it seemed to hesitate a couple times, then off again, and then off on not the path i was going. i was like "dammit" and i was SO frustrated because i felt like i had just lost my only chance. there were gonna be no other cars out there and i still didnt know what this one was doing out there, thrashing through mud puddles, joyriding, "messing" basically, and i had no idea who was in it or if they were even safe. now i was further scared that they knew i was out there and noone else did.... i felt a little better that at least they had gone down the other path since i didnt know who they were. a little while on, as it was getting dark, i stopped to get my flashlight out of my pack and check the guidebook, and because i really had to pee and didnt want to deal with trying to in the dark. of course, at the moment i chose to pee, i saw the SUV rumbling towards me again, from the distance at least though. was i EVER relieved when it was a woman about my age driving, and her husband in the passenger seat. they didnt really speak english and me no spanish but somehow i communicated to them please was it possible to take me even a little way towards astorga if possible cuz it was getting dark we were very tired etc. they said no problem, loaded me in, and we proceeded to totally joyride down the path, branches scraping the sides of the car every inch, through rocks, deep mud puddles, etc. it was NOT a path meant for cars but they didnt care. they told me they were going to get gas, then to astorga. i mentioned to them how the car was getting scratched. the guy just laughed, they didnt care and thought it was fun, like thats what the car was meant for. i dont know what they were doing out there still...and we arrived at the gas station via the camino path. they said they had seen me wave them down earlier but werent going that way earlier or something. i told them they had a fun car. i was profusely grateful for this ride they gave me, dropping me off at the albergue in astorga. where we got to sleep inside in a hallway. we were SO lucky. or so "looked out for" or whatever.

This started out as an exhilirating fun adventure but right now it is really feeling like a drag.--Thing is, I REALLY dont want to stop right now because I want to force it back into becoming the fun adventure again like it was at the beginning, before I stop. But I cant see it turning back into fun without the weather changing...and it sounds like the weather is only getting worse...so good luck to me on this one... im so tired of being cold cold cold, and i think i have run out of the initial backup energy stores that our bodies generally keep. im definitely feeling better after a few days of rest, but it doesnt look like the weather is going to get any easier. This guy told me last night i shoudnt let my happiness depend on the weather....sure, point taken, but when you are racing through the days just to try to get somewhere warm and its so cold all the time and ice rain snow hail wind along with it a lot of times, its pretty hard to "not let your happiness depend on the weather" when youre absolutely freezing and all you can think about is how cold it is, how windy it is, and how far you still have to go that day, and how there may or may not be a warm albergue waiting--there may be a warm one or you might be looking at 24 more hours of cold. this situation sucks. i guess we got spoiled by the first week. it was sunny, still, and relatively warm. i was pushing to get through the miles if we had alot that day, but despite the awful blisters, etc, it felt manageable. i didnt feel like i had to bust ass all day and fight the wind and the weather, i could just sort of stroll along and soak up the sun that i hadnt seen in like a year, given two cloudy rainy summers in ireland and the winter in between in seattle.... so yeah, it just felt GOOD. i was tired at the end of the days but i felt like i was challenging my body in a way that it could handle. but NOW, now its so so hard to stay positive and i feel like i sound so negative when i talk to other pilgrims. but its just so darned cold. and one of the guys here said that the temperature here is like summer, compared to what it will be in the mountains. im not sure how we´re going to do the mountains.... basically though if we stop, we have had only a couple opportunities for stopping points along the way because there are only certain places that i can rent a car to drive back to pamplona. the next and last i think is ponferrada...if we go past there we have to go all the way to santiago... i was talking to someone here last night who said that several times he has almost quit along the way and i was realizing that this hasnt really even been in my head because its not an option for me and gro to just hop a bus or the train cuz gro´s not allowed on them. its also surprised me when this guy as well as some other people have said how they thought it was really brave of me to come by myself, with the dog, in the winter, etc and have made it even this far with the weather the way it is.... but i never had thought of it that way, i had just thought of it as an opportunity that presented itself when i really needed to clear my head after having finally finished my thesis defense, and that i took advantage of the opportunity, despite the fact that a friend and i had planned on going together sometime and she was unable to go now. it was just what i felt i needed so i came. after 5?7? 8? 9? years of academics and 3?4?5?6? years of strugging through my thesis, i really needed something physical, rather than mental, to sort of clear my head. it is true, your head does get clear in the sense that you have different worries out here, as previous camino-walkers know... its all about basics. not really basic survival in the sense that you are probably going to somehow in the end have it work out to get your basic needs met, but really it is about basics like "where am i going to sleep tonite?" is the albergue going to be open?is it going to have heat? is there going to be a shop? wheres the next village coming up? im so hungry. im so tired. whens there going to be a village with a shop in it? can i find anywhere in this village up ahead to get under-cover and out of the snow?---an overhang, a pavillion, a church entryway? (answer=probably not, most of the time....) or "shoot, is the next village gonna be big enough to have an atm? ;p it looks big enough in my guidebook but what if its not? what about my laundry...is there going to be a dryer at any of the next few albergues?cuz if not, i guess im wearing dirty clothes....better dirty clothes than wet clothes.... a huge problem in teh winter is that if you wash your stuff its usually not dry by the morning, --and if there no heaters then dont even ATTEMPT it or you will end up wearing wet clothes out in the cold the next day like what happened to one guy my first night...he washed all his clothes cuz there was a dryer and a fire there...then it turned out that the dryer was broken so he ended up with wet clothes the next day. ouch. .... actually i guess alot of these mind-occupying questions are alot more prevalent in the winter than in the spring/summer/fall, but they are def what occupies my mind frequently now when the weather has been so yuck. i seem to be always 1. looking for food (seems like i am SO hungry all the time but i think i got well supplied with good stuff in this village...spent another hour cracking walnuts tonite but only a handful ended up in the bag, the rest in my tummy... ), 2. hoping the next village will come up soon, 3. wishing it would freaking warm up, 4. wishing it was warm enough to take a nap on the side of the path...one day i just did anyway. i also think these things are probably more preoccupying when you are travelling alone like i am. there really arent many others out here. we might share the albergues with a person or two, but the first day was the only day we have really walked with anyone. solitude is good of course but NOT ALL THE TIME!! i was hoping my friend who i had originally made camino plans with--and who's idea it was to go originally anyway but then wasnt able to go now was going to join us for the last few weeks but it doesnt look like thats going to happen now. :( in any case, i think my biggest problem right now is the weather. uch. well, off to go repack the bag again. i was so excited that i had about three pounds of stuff that i was going to mail to myself and "get rid of" for now... the hospitalero was going to weight it for me and then mail it... but they intended for me to mail a whole BOX of stuff to lighten my pack, and i jsut CANT. i need the stuff thats in there unfortunately. every time i go to get rid of stuff i find i am using it and need it. so anyway theyre not going to mai it for me becaues they said it wont make much difference in my bag. i think it will and at least it will give me a bit more space so my bag wont be so crammed, so i guess ill have to mail it in astorga. i wish we could go all the way to astorga tomorrow because it sounds like both the albergues open on the way are cold and unheated, but i dont think we can do 30 k in the cold and wind. gro is def ready to get going again though,she was bouncing all over and wanted to play yesterday and today. i wish i could get me someof that energy :)

all i can say is that this is def not the kind of weather i would be out in if given the choice. if i was in massachusetts, one would be hard-pressed to drag me off the couch away from the law and order/csi reruns to even get me to look out the window when it was this cold. if i was in ireland, you wouldnt get me out of my tiny room with the space heater blasting... and the dog probably wouldnt even be GETTING a walk in weather like this! and this is "summer" compared to the upcoming mountains? uh-oh.....

and to finish up for the evening... an equipment evaluation: most (sometimes unexpectedly) useful items:
windup flashlight.
eyeglass cleaning cloth that came attached to the inside pocket of my raincoat.
piece of rope. used to tie dog, jury-rig tent, thread through laundry to dry, etc.
most useless item in my pack: eyeliner, without question. ....although both my pens died, so in an emergency....
item i most wish i had but dont: some kind of facewarmer/neckwarmer....and truly waterproof gloves. mine are going back to REI when this trip is over cuz they are sposed to be but most definitely ARENT. REI also needs to temperature-rate their sleeping bags using "normal" people as testers. i dont know who they use but it must be the same people who walk around in shorts and tank tops in the winter. there is NO WAY that my sleeping bag is truly a 15 degree Farenheight bag. it doesnt feel warm even at like 40 degrees. :/


ALSO: i captioned my pics tonite. im not counting on having internet again for a while....looks like rough days ahead.

Leon to Villar de Mazarife...

I have found the camino to be very well marked, much to my surprise. leon, however, i found to be not so well marked and i kept wondering if i was on the right path. i dont really like traveling through the cities as i feel like it takes a long time, hours sometimes, and im under the impression that the innercity mileage/cross city mileage isnt included in the mileage in my book, so it feels like "getting no miles walked" time.... leon didnt take near as much time to pass through as burgos though. a lady on the street pointed out to me as i was passing the pilgrims church of santiago, dedicated to pilgrims, i think or something, and indicated that i should go there. i stuck my head in, and it was warm and dark and quiet inside, and i would have liked to have gone in for a while, but there was a lady who had just gone in, and i didnt think i could take the dog in, so we kept walking. the urban area of leon doesnt end very quickly, it turns into another area, then another, then another before you are finally out of the citified area. i met up with 2 guys as i was leaving leon, a german who had just started that day from leon, and a spanish guy. i was busy trying to follow arrows that didnt exist when i saw them coming, so i just waited for them and figured i would follow them. we saw some funny hobbit-hole houses on our way out of leon; i had previously seen some in moratinos, i think they must be quite dark inside though i guess they are supposed to be warmer because built into the earth?i thought those were only from lord of the rings i didnt know they actually existed and people living in them! 2 guys at the albergue i am at now told me they actually broke into one cuz they were curious. they said it was dark and dingy and rundown inside, but i guess noone was living in that one. the spanish guy i met on the way out of leon said they were actually once wine cellars. they look funny with tv antennaes sprouting out of the dirt on the hillsides, and the entrances below ground level. I told the german guy that he certainly didnt pick the prettiest part of the camino to start at... the path out of leon is dirty, litter-strewn, industrial, not pretty. again, A MILLION TIMES A DAY I HAVE TO KEEP REMINDING MYSELF THAT THE CAMINO PATH WAS NOT BUILT/DESIGNED/MADE FOR BEAUTY OR NECESSARILY FOR COMFORT; IT WAS NOT MADE AS A HIKING PATH FOR SIGHTSEEING. i think it was probably made for directness as much as possible, and there are some very beautiful sections of it, but when it runs along dirty busy roadsides or through dumps or yukky industrial areas or whatever, i have to keep reminding myself over and over that the purpose of this path was not for sightseeing or beauty.

finally, outside of virgen del camino, we were out of the industrial area. the path splits there and then joins up about 35 k later, i opted the villar de mazarife path. i didnt know it at teh time, but i guess the other path runs along the roadside so im glad i took this path. i was windy and cold, but at least the sun came out. i left the 2 guys in virgen del camino when they stopped for lunch. they didnt know what path they were taking but i guess they either must have taken the other one or stayed at another albergue cuz i havent seen them again. the landscape was more gentle hills etc then the past days from burgos to leon had been, and i much preferred this landscape to the flatness. there were also some trees, and i felt like there was more character and variety to the landscape. we arrived at chozo and i was glad to find we only had 4 k left. the last 4 k was really hard though as my feet really hurt and you were hiking against the strong wind in your face. nice the sun was out at least it wasnt raining, but the wind, aaarrrgh. and no trees to windbreak it either. when i got here i asked if we could stay an extra day to rest, then yesterday asked if there was any way we could stay tonite too. i was just SO SO rundown, i feel like we have been racing the weather all the time and just racing to get from one albergue to the next to get out of the cold--except sometimes you arrive and then you are just as cold cuz the albergue is unheated and then its so discouraging to know that you have to wait another 24 hrs until you get to the next albergue until you have the possibility of being warm anywhere but in your sleeping bag. so we have arrived here on i guess... thursday. its so easy to lose track of the days. we will leave tomorow. in the meantime we have had a kitchen and there are 2 shops in town. we werent able to stay in the actual part of the albergue being used now becasue of gro, so we have an unheated room in the old part, but at least it has beds, and blankets, and the kitchen and sitting room are heated and i can leave her in my room and go warm up in the other places. we have to take advantage of rest days when we can get them because often either the albergues are unheated so we wouldnt want to stay longer, or we are just getting by by the skin of our teeth staying there in the first place, sleeping in some back hallway or whatever, becasue of gro. it seems rare and difficult to find everything i need in one place--a heated albergue, with a kitchen, and a shop in that town, where i am able to stay with the dog. often you get one or two of these things but not all at once, partly because alot of albergues are closed. even without the dog, i would still be faced with many of the same circumstances. this village has 2 shops, and i was able to get some of what i feel like my body needs--dried fruit and some nuts...i spent 2 hours last night cracking walnuts out of their shells with a knife. might sound crazy but i am craving that kind of fuel. so now i have a small stash for the road.

the hospitalero here and other guys couldnt believe the weight of my pack. i have no idea how much it weighs but one of them says 30 kilo. i think thats exaggerating but he says its def more than 20. he says he wouldnt even last a day with that pack.... and that no wonder my feet hurt. i did a ruthless evaluation of the contents of my pack this mornign and found about maybe one and a half kilo worth of clothes to ship home and a few other things to get rid of. most things in plastic bottles got relegated to plastic bags, the maps from my book (jessica) are getting left behind here, and i tried to see anything else not being used....the bag of alfalfa seed thats supposed to be sprouted and mixed into gro's food for enzymes is getting dumped in the grass tomorrow morning, etc. i would like to ditch the tent but i cannot do so. everything else i think of mailing i keep using...hoodie sweatshirt is heavy but i have been wearing it nonstop for 3 days... etc. i ran out of the baking soda i was using as toothpaste and am not buying more cuz i dont want to accumulate anything else... ..im using the dr. bronners magic soap that is supposed to have a million uses.... i know other people who brush their teeth with it...but i do wish i had peppermint or orange or almond scent rather than LAVENDAR. ICK... people are warning me that there is snow in the mountains and it is really important to have your pack as light as poss for the mountains too... so hopefully i can get this stuff mailed back to pamplona or something. i dont know if we can actually make it to santiago...we are being warned about snow in the mountains and ive also been told that the dog will be a huge problem in the gallicia region... i.e. no dogs, no exceptions... so i dont know. id really like to go through til the end and we cannot rent a car anywhere between ponferrada and santiago...so i dunno.

Feeling much better today after 2 days of rest. yesterday i was still feeling like crap. i slept most of the day, had a headache, didnt feel like the sleep was restful, etc. today, much better. but ive also had a kitchen to use and feel like i have more nourishing food for a few days, so that has made alot of difference. also, ive had opportunity to regroup, and reorganize my pack, and not feel like we're on the run for a change so that makes alot of difference. still feet hurting though... ;the bone in my right leg feels like its going to go through my heel through the bottom of my foot... ive had this problem before, i think when i was doing bike courier work and was always carrying too much weight. i think its just from too much weight. im going to try to buy insoles next time we go through a town where i can get them and maybe that will help too. so, more rest today, santibanez tomorrow probably, and astorga the next day. a hospitalero told me his friend runs an albergue in hospital orbigo a ARRRRGH. i was working on this post and another peregrino just came and took me by the hand to go show me something, saying he was taking me TO EAT... he led me over to a bulldozer...that had a dead pig with its throat slit hanging upside down. he thought it was really funny that he took me there. i am so traumatized. im vegan because i hate animals getting killed. it totally kills me to see stuff like that. argh. ARGH..... which means that the reason the guy next door was pulling his bulldozer out this morning was to go do that and the ruckus ive been hearing outside was probably from/for killing the pig as well. or maybe they killed it before and its just been hanging there, but i dont think so. ARGH. ok i SO want to leave this village right now. ack. my warm fuzzy feelings about rest days here are quickly dissipating at the moment. argh. im glad i wasnt aware of what was happening as it as it was going on at least....except i think i can hear another pig squealing. gosh i hope they are done for the day. oh my god i wish i had earplugs right now to at least block out the potential screams, if there are any. makes me feel SO sick. there is a herd of sheep just brought in next door, i hope to god they dont start in on those too...so so cruel. so cruel. grab a living creature by its back leg with a chain and bulldozer, turn it upside down, and slit its throat. SO CRUEL. i just dont get how people can do this, and be so unaware and disregarding of the beauty of the life of the creature for itself, in its own being, as a being worthy of being allowed to live, and the worth of the life of that creature to that creature itself. Every creature in the world struggles and fights to preserve its life, perhaps as much as we do. Let it live.

ok ill try and get back to what i was just writing about. we might try to stop in hospital orbigo because a hospitalero told me that his friend ran an albergue there and that dogs were ok there and that it was open. but he also thought alot of others were open that havent been.

grainne is spending the day outside today, she seems to be content enuff if she is tied in the sun and if she doesnt see me. she has gotten alot better on this trip about being left alone in rooms and stuff, as long as my stuff is there and she knows i am "settled" there and coming back, then she feels safe to go sleep and i can go take a shower or whatever. so she is much better than she was at the beginning of our trip.

im just "resting" for the day. id like to work more on this blog, but the room the computers are in is open to the outside, and its below freezing, so my fingers are freezing. maybe i will try to add explanations of some of the pictures later. gonna go make some soup. i sprouted lentils last night (hahah hope remember rome when even nicole was making and eating sprouted lentil salad?) and i have a sprouting bag so i guess ihave to just be more resourceful about ways to get in the fresh stuff that i feel like my body is craving. so im gonna go put them in soup. i really wish i could get some untoasted unadulterated sunflower seeds to sprout with them though...

ok this relates to a previous post, but i keep thinking abuot how i meant to write it so ill just include it here: i wrote about my "worstest" night that we spent in the tool shed with the mice running around... the thing about that night that topped it all off was that not only were we in the middle of nowhere, in the cold and dark, not knowing the lay of the land or if there was anyone scary out to get us, and with literally nooone in the world knowing where i was, in the case that i just dropped off the face of the earth-- except maybe those workmen at the albergue in the previous village who had sent me there, but to top it all off, i thought at least i would call my mom and tell her the situation and the name of where i was , and ask her to call me the next morning to make sure i was ok, just so SOMEONEwould know where i was...to top it all off my phone got no service out there. so we were literally totally completely alone and could have dropped off teh face of the earth and noone would have known what had happened to us. so scary. and the next morning i foudn a tent out back up against the building that looked like someone might have been living in it. so who knows. but it was so scary.

ok going now. fingers frozen.dodgey keyboard to start with and frozxen fingers =no more posting now. oh yeah and today i have to remember to make sure we have enough food for tomorrow. its really troublesome with NOTHING being open on sundays. no shops, no nothing. i mean i think its great that everyone gets a day off, but its so hard when you want food and theres none to be found. i keep losing track of the days of the week but trying to keep track of saturday at least cuz last sunday we got caught with not enough to eat...first no shops then no open shops etc. at least we finally found somewhere with bread, but i have to be more prepared.

argh.im so mad at that guy. that was such a shock. and him making it sound like he was taking me somewhere to have food. and he KNEW i didnt eat meat. not that i had made a big deal of my not eating meat to make him feel defensive and want to scandalize me or whatever, so i just dont get why people insist on doing crap like that. i told him it was really cruel of him to show me that but i hate how people think its funny and dont think its a big deal.

rain...snow...kind strangers.... and rest.

hmmm. i was thinking i could upload some more pics but it seems like this computer is too old to recognize the zipdrive....

We are in villar de mazarife now....finally feeling better after a few days of rest, a heated albergue, access to a shop, and use of a kitchen... we got here a few days earlier than expected, due to closed albergues, bad weather conditions, and a really nice guy who gave us a ride from bercianos to el burgo ranero, then later from el burgo ranero--where the albergue was closed--to leon later that day. since the last time i posted, we stayed in the great warm place we were staying in last time i posted, with heat that was blasting all night...which was preparation/pre-"payback" for the next night which we spent in a FREEZING albergue with no heat, no kitchen, etc, and cold air seeping in under the door while it was raining outside.... by the time we got there i was pretty happy just to have a place to stay, as we had trudged from the previous albergue to sahagun--hungry i might add as there had been no shop in that town and no shops along the way--i have never been gladder to see a pack of cookies and a chocolate bar in my life than when we went through terradillos and, searching the town for a shop, i saw a sign at the albergue there that they had a small shop...cookies and chocolate definitely not ideal fuel, but provided enough energy to get us into sahagun... i was really dragging approaching sahagun. my feet were really starting to hurt--tendons in back of heels actually--, we needed good, warm food, i was tired etc etc etc bag was heavy... about a km from sahagun two women out for a walk on the path offered, then insisted, on carrying my bag to sahagun. it took the two of them, one strap each, to carry it :) it felt so much better for me to be walking with no weight for a little while! close to sahagun, they flagged down a delivery truck that was stopped somewhere, i dont know if they knew the driver or not but they got him to take my bag and drop it at the albergue...the albergue which, when we arrived, was CLOSED..... even though i had been told by a previous albergue that it was open, and my good old by-now-deemed-untrustworthy guidebook said it was open.... i called the numbers for the albergues in the book, asked if i could please please stay there, they said nope, it was closed for renovations. i handed the phone to the women who had carried my bag but they had no luck either. they left me in the hands of a city worker who was kind enough to try to figure out what to do with me... he drove me to the monastery that takes in pilgrims in the summer but they said no they were closed....then he drove me to calzada de coto, which is slightly off the camino path, but was the next "open" one. we retrieved the key from the nearby bar, and at least the village had a shop, but the albergue was FREEZING. at least there were blankets. but still, it was so cold that despite the fact there was hot water, i didnt bother with a shower because i was afraid it would make me colder in the end. i ate a quick dinner and then got into my sleeping bag as quickly as possible. actually, i ate dnner in my sleeping bag.... had a really cold night and couldnt wait to leave the next morning. it was misting the next morning, and cold, it seemed like it was going to clear off...it seems like its always a battle between the rising sun trying to push away the fog and mist and dark sky and snow, and you think the sun is maybe going to win....and then it doesnt... it started raining and wind came up, some hail, etc, and this part of the camino is pretty exposed, no trees to shelter you or break the wind. we were planning to stay in el burgo ranero. coming up to bercianos, when we still would have had quite a few miles to go, a man who had driven by previously in what looked like a contractors truck was now stopped, going the other direction, apparently surveying or something. as he got back in his truck, he asked did we want a ride to the village, and he spoke english. when he found we were going to el burgo to stay for the night, he drove us to el burgo, said it wasnt that far and it was cold and snowy and rainy.... when we got to el burgo, they were renovating and the workman said it was closed.... apparently the albergue at religios, which was supposed to be open, was also closed... the man told us that if i could find somewhere to hang out for the day, he lived in leon and would be going there at 7pm and would be happy to take us to leon where there would be an open albergue. that sounded good to me because it was freezing walking in the snow-rain-wind....but we needed to find somewhere to sit for 9 hrs.... i tried to find a sheltered doorway or pavillion or something but no luck. the best i could find was the overhang of the church. the church had a covered entryway, but it was locked. so annoying. we were maybe going to walk the 6 k to religios and the man pick us up there, just so we would be moving and doing something... but the weather just wasnt clearing. i ended up curling up with the dog, who was shivering, under the small overhang of the church, then decided if we were going to be there for 7 hours, i might as well make us warmer, so i pulled out a sleeping bag, a waterproof silver emergency cover, and proceeded to make us a little den. gro was still shivering shivering shivering though... i got my whole body covered by the blankets, and ducked down inside so i was this shimmering silver lump parked in front of the church gate. a little while later a lady said buenos dias...and invited me inside to warm up...but she didnt realize i had the dog i was trying to keep warm. she said i could come but not the dog. i said no, its ok ill stay, the dog is cold. i couldnt see leaving her out shivering in the rain when she was already cold, plus my lap was pretty warm from the dog and me breathing under the blankets... the lady brought me tea and cookies and told me if i needed to warm up or use the bathroom, to tie the dog and come in. i explained to her the best i could that a man was going to take us to leon that evening. a little while later the man called and said he actually had to go to leon that morning. so he picked us up and we got to sit in the nice warm car to leon. it was really nice that he spoke enough english to help us and he told me that his sister was a teacher and he learns from her but she says his english is rotten,but really it was quite fine. he dropped us near the albergue, and we werent to be allowed to sleep inside becasue of gro, but in the closed entryway, which was somehow somewhat heated, and was actually much warmer than the albergue from the previous night! the hospitalera there loved loved grainne. because we were going to sleep in the entryway where cars had to drive through though, there wasnt really anywhere for us to go for the day, we had arrived so early, like 1 pm...so we wandered around the city trying to get phone credit, and some healthy food--ie dried fruit, almonds, etc. we sat in the sun in the park for a while but it was freezing even in the sun. then had to wait till 430 for the shops to open back up. the only thing i was successful in getting was phone credit...i waited in the cold till 5 for the health food shop to open, only to be told that they didnt have things like almonds, raisins, dates, sunflower seeds etc, and that i had to go to a dried fruit shop.... on the way another supplement shop`offered to sell me sunflower seed butter...but had no idea where i could get the actual raw, untoasted seeds. argh. the dried fruit shop only had candy and trinkets in the window and was closed anyway... back at the albergue gro stayed quiet for a little while outside while i was able to warm up and eat cookies inside. we went to evening prayer with the sisters (benedictines) and there were 4 othere pilgrims at the albergue, 2 of whom i had met in pamplona, then in los arcos, and didnt think i would run into again cuz they were faster, but i guess my car ride to leon caught me up`. evening prayer reminded me of when i used to go sometimes at domincan house when i was at Catholic U. even though it was in a different language, the familiarlity of the ritual was a bit comforting. the albergue gave us breakfast the next morning, which was really nice, and they werent in any rush to get us out exactly at 8 am which also was nice.