On the Camino de Santiago - With our friend, the Semi(s)

Back in Madrid

Jen and I just arrived back in Madrid. Our Camino de Santiago experience has finally come to an end. It´s really kind of sad and I think we both feel a bit melancholy. We´ve been focused for days on getting to Santiago. I never really considered what it would feel like to actually get to Santiago and/or how we would feel after. Plus, it actually feels kind of strange not having to get up and ride a bike all day.

This morning we went to the pilgram´s mass. I´m not even religious and I thought it was a pretty moving experience. 3/4 of the church attendees were pilgrims all dirty and ragged and limping. The cathedral itself is really quite impressive. The mass itself of course I couldn´t understand because it was all in Spanish. Oh well. We saw our Equadorian friends and heard one of them sing Ava Maria (spelling?) which was absolutely beautiful. After mass we went off as good pilgrims do and bought magnets, mugs and a t-shirt for Baby Bob. Ha ha.

Just flew Ryan air into Madrid which was effortless and only 50 minutes long (love it). Tomorrow morning Jen and I are going to conquer the metro and find our way back to the aeropuerto to pick up Le Dora (who by the way, has never flown by herself this distance. I´m already proud even before we go get her). Saturday we say goodbye to Jenny Grace and Dora and I fly off to Roma. I can´t wait to park myself on a beach for a few days. Yahoo!

J

Day 11: Santiago

Ok, Jen and I just realized that we don't have ANY night photos...oh, that's because we're sleeping before it gets dark. She just took some nice photos of the sunset from the rooftop window of our absolutely darling hotel. The hotel staff was the nicest (maybe ever). There was a beautiful outside garden where we could take the laptop and internet and drink wine until our hearts were content...LOVED it.

Tonight is the Manchester vs. Barcelona soccer game. I can hear the chanting & singing over the BBC AND they're setting off fireworks. So much for my awesome sleep. They're going to be up all night!!

Tomorrow is the pilgrim's mass featuring our tenor friend from Equador. He'll be singing Ava Maria. Then off to Madrid on Ryan Air tomorrow afternoon. Btw - Le Dora is getting ready to get on the big bird for our Italian extravaganza! Woot woot

Wooo hooo - just rolled into Santiago!!! Sitting in the sun and drinking beer! 11 days of biking under our belts and we're completo.

Sculpture at Monte do Gozo . . . 4 km to go

Santiago . . . On our way

One last crappy detail about our day. I did a Skooby Doo fall on the slate/rock/dirt road and now have a base ball sized bruise on my butt, giant bruise on my quad and took skin off the other side of my thigh. Definitely a Kodsk moment with me on the ground with the bike in a stream of water crying. Awesome! At one
Point I thought, people get paid to do this on "reality" tv, and I'm calling this a vacation? I need my head examined!

Jen no longer had any breaks so once we finally found the carreterta (road) we couldn't ride anyway. Walked forever & pushed our bikes to a town (which is a joke. It's like calling the McClelland Dairy a town just because it has a tractor, 2 people and a house). Anyway, walked into this cafe absolutely freezing (because yes, it's still raining) and we found some awesome Spanish guys who were walking the camino. They said we looked the way they felt an hour ago. CAlled another taxi. 2 showed up. 1 for us plus Spanish guy with blistered feet and 1 for the bikes. The taxi took us to a bike shop where we dropped off Jen's bike and my shoes. After stopping at approximately 6 refugios, we ended up at a 3 star hotel which was also completo. Making a long, miserable, almost muerto story short...after waiting around for 2 hours (waiting for the bike repairs) there was a cancellation and they gave us a room. I'll fix this posting later because there are so many details I'm leaving out that made this day truly awful, it needs to be documented. I'm not tucked into bed and
calling this a day!!!

Day 9: Sarria -

We're sorry-ia is was so hard to get to Sarria! To summarize, no brakes on the bike this am. Didn't get started until 9:40. 8km in, almost got tan over (no, I'm not kidding) by a semi. Apparently the freeway was closed & traffic was rerouted onto our tiny road. After I almost muerte, I burst into tears and we took a taxi up the hill. Oh, almost forgot about the POURING rain. Into the fog we went. Got dropped off, decided to take a "short cut" which took us down a 6" ft wide (no kidding) "road", which was dirt/mud with a stream running down the middle. 6km on foot later, I had no cleat (spelling) & could no longer clip in/ride with both feet...

Bikes loaded on a taxi!

We decided to load our bikes and ourselves in a taxi due to the main
autoroute being closed and all of the traffic being routed on to our
little two lane road. After one too many large trucks came within
inches of us, we stopped at the next town and the nice lady who spoke
French called us a cab. We are now riding in the cab, in the fog, in
the rain and we are having the taxi cab driver drop us off about 20 or
so km ahead. We are hoping at least out of the fog. We decided
maintaining our sanity, reducing the amount of tears and maintaining
our lives . . . This will be the best 70 euro we have ever spent!

Wow - what a crap-ass day (excuse my French). It started raining somewhere on the
Other side of the mountain and didn't stop all day. We were Both soaked to thebone. Only did 50ish kilometers and now have another GIANT hill ahead of us again tomorrow. Looks like Santiago Is only 220km away. 3 more days and we're home free or I suppose I should say homeward bound!

Medival Albergue

We stopped here to get a stamp. It was cool. They had a fire going to
warm your hands which we took part in. It was really cold! These
signs were in front of the albergue.

We stopped at the iron cross.

Everyone stops here to leave a rock as a tolken of your passing by
there and of your journey.

We went from fog to a little ice to rain and then we were off again!

Leaving Rabanal heading into the fog

Day 8: I'm going to toot my own horn...just climbed a 6km hill to the deserted town of Foncebadon. I didn't stop once as this thing winded and switch backed into the fog! I rolled in with no feeling in either hand and pins and needles on both feet from the ankles down. I think I was white knuckling (spelling?) it all the way up. Passed a couple French guys and I have no idea where Jemny Grace is. I've parked myself inside a vacant porch where there's nobody inside (it's dark) but I hear what slings like French music coming from somewhere...creepy!

Day 7: Rabanal

Made it 70km today into the foothills (or really a little past the foothills) into the mountains. Tomorrow we have quite a bit of climb...because I´m crazy, I´m kind of looking forward to it. The last couple or even few days have been flat and HOT. Because we´re in the mountains, it´s cool (rained again this afternoon) which I don´t really mind. The only disappointment is that I can´t further my AWESOME farmer´s tan. It´s OK though, I have another full 4 days to work it out.

We´re staying at a really cute albergue. As usual, we have bunk beds although to my surprise, we´re BOTH on the bottom bunk tonight (yahoo). No ro sham bo (spelling?) for who gets the bottom bunk. Unfortunately we haven´t seen any of our friends tonight. We seem to have lost Polish Dude and his mom as well as Chubby Smokers and the Dutch. Although, we DID ride into Astorga with Chubby Smokers but then lost them at lunch. There are 3 albergues in this town so perhaps some of our ¨friends¨are elsewhere.

I almost forgot...we have somehow ¨righted¨ourselves and we´re back on schedule...I repeat, we´re BACK on schedule. My crazy itinerary had us staying in Rabanal tonight and lookie, here we are!!! Tomorrow we have to stop somewhere before O´ceribal (I call it cerebral, probably almost a hemerage) before we´re allowed to quit. I apologize is my spelling is crap - the keyboard is Spanish AND I can´t find spell check. Oh well!

I miss my boyfriend. :(

J

Day 6 - Leon

I had a realization or perhaps it was more of an epiphany last night about the Chubby Smokers. As I lay in my bunk bed (bottom bunk) approximately 12¨ from the other bunk bed pushed up against mine, I noticed that one of the Chubby Smokers lay beside me. My big realization is that he´s NOT chubby! In fact, he´s quite skinny. I had to apologize mentally for mislabeling him.

We ran into the Chubby (or not so) Smokers again this morning as we rolled into Astorga. I have a feeling we´ll see them again in Rabanal.

Adios!