Friday 23rd April 2010 (Hontanas to Boadilla del Camino – total walked to date 277.12km)

Hontanas has a population of 65. We stayed at the newly built Casa Rural El Descanso (Casa Rural accommodations are like no-frills hotels but generally very homely and clean). In fact I think we were their first customers. Dinner last night was rather good. Garlic soup and pork loin with fried eggs. Garlic soup must be THE soup in this region because everywhere we went, garlic soup was served. We enjoy it every time. Perhaps it’s because it reminds us of the thick fish maw soup we get at home. The owner is a lovely elderly lady who washed our clothes (at no charge) and today when I carelessly left my mobile phone in the room, she had it sent to me at Boadilla del Camino where we stopped for the night today. We had just arrived at the peak of a mountain, after trekking up steep inclines when I discovered I did not have my mobile phone with me. As you can imagine, all hell broke loose as I cannot do without it. I thought I had dropped it when we stopped for a cup of coffee in a cafe. Anyway, we did not have a lot of options then – go down the mountain and back to the cafe to look for it or just treat it as lost. Back tracking meant having to climb the mountain again, never mind having to walk down it too. I did think of calling the Casa Rural to find out if I had left my phone there but as my Spanish is so bad I wouldn’t be able to communicate with the landlady anyway. Remember God works in mysterious ways on the Camino? Just when Joy decided that she would go back to the cafe to look for it, our angel appeared – in the form of our fellow Polish pilgrim (someone we keep meeting up with enroute). He speaks Spanish so he was able to talk to the landlady. Lucky me!! The Spaniards are very warm and friendly people. Everyone that I have approached for help, have even gone out of their way to do so. And as we go on our journey, everyone whom we pass will greet us with either “Buenos Dias” or “Hola” or “Buen Camino”. Now, back to our walk. We left at 7.15am for our 31.7km journey. Mentally we were psyched for an easy walk, mainly flat we were told. Now I will not believe everything I read anymore. They conveniently forget to mention the gradual inclines along the flats. Coupled with several stretches of yet more very muddy tracks, our walk on the whole was tough. I have long abandoned the thought of trying to stay clean. Clean while walking on the Camino does not exist. Dung from cows, sheep, horses and I don’t know what or who else is a common sight. We avoid the fresh droppings but sometimes it is inevitable that you tread through the dried up traces. If you try to avoid everything, you would either need to be nimble footed like a ballerina or double your walking time to Santiago de Compostella. Walking through the villages, we cannot help but notice the tremendous amount of building and restoration that is going on. I wonder if it is because this year is the Holy Year and they are getting the villages all spruced up in anticipation of the surge in number of pilgrims over the summer, especially in July. The feast of St James is on 25th July, so whenever 25th July falls on a Sunday, that year is a Holy Year. I am rambling. Perhaps it is because it is 10.37pm now and I am really tired and sleepy. We get up at 5.30am every morning and we are out walking for 8 to 10 hours every day. Joy and I are trying to set out at 6.00am every morning so that we can end earlier and beat the hot afternoon sun. The sun really zaps our energy and reduces our walking speed to almost 2km/hr. So if we can cut an hour off in the afternoon then it’s an hour less being exposed. So, I must go to bed and it also means that I will give yesterday a miss but not before letting you know that we walked from Burgos to Hontanas and the total walked as at yesterday was 245.42km