From the heat. Or so we thought. It was so hot yesterday afternoon (100F degrees) that we decided we just couldnt take it any more and we resorted to extreme measures: The alarm was set for 5:07AM. those of you who know the reigning Queen of Blanket Street (moi) may not know her successor, Cecelia. And as Belinda the Good Witch would say "she's worse than the first one," Cecelia is only up that early when she decides to watch her 6 part Audrey Hepburn collection and never gets into bed to begin with.
We were in a lovely town at the foot of the mountains, Villafranca del Bierza. Yes, as in the wines. There are so many wine regions in such a small country, it is astonishing. As are the wines. Today's option was to walk 30K (18.64 miles) with the last 6.5 miles all up hill (2300 ft ascent) or walk 25K saving the hardest for tomorrow morning: 5K up and over the top and an "easy" finish. So here we lie listening to cowbells and roosters in a most quaint little village called La Faba. Mary and I arrived around 12:45pm, to be greeted by Sabine and Sylvan, two French peregrinos who started walking 64 days ago from Le Puy. Only the French could even conceive of taking off so much time from work. Oh wait, thats right, the ´French don´t really work do they?!
At 6pm the German hospitalero announces that they are going to have "a celebration" in the church- a prayer for peace. It was lovely. She passed around a candle for each peregrino to hold and pray and pass to the next one. Then we gathered around the altar to say the Pilgrims Prayer in each of our languages. Finally we joined hands and said the "Lords Prayer" in unison, yet each of us speaking in our own language- French, German, Swedish, Spanish, Italian and one American. Very Kumbayah, m´Lord, if I do say so myself. (All it was missing was some jeans and a pookah necklace.) But it was lovely. A bit of spirituality in the middle of a religious pilgimage- imagine that!
On that note, I have to add that I´ve been somewhat disappointed in the spiritual aspect of the Camino. Or the lack thereof. Others will rightly say that it comes from within, but it is a bit sad that 90% of the churches on the Camino have been closed. In the middle of a walk, its lovely to sit in a church to reflect and to refresh oneself. I walked with Buddhists who had the same lament. They were all closed. I spoke to some Spaniards who explained that if they kept the churches open, they would be vandalized and graffiti-adorned beyond recogition. Sad.
At any rate, It was a lovely night, and the right thing to do. We awoke at 5:40am and were out the door for the final 5K up to the top. Beautiful, despite the flies and the sweat! No sounds except those flies and sweat drops dropping! An occasionally bird would chirpk, and one could hear the echos of dogs yelping somewhere in the valley below. The sun took awhile to find us. We were up around 5000 feet afterall. But when it did - WOW! A gift.
At the top we got another gift! More incredible views and the chance to watch the running of the bulls live on the television at the top.
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