The Meseta

The meseta, ah the meseta, think about San Diego August and September weather with a little Santa Ana wind thrown in for good measure and you have the meseta. I´m in the Spanish farming area, nothing but fields as far as the eye can see, wheat and barley to be exact and not a tree for shade or sombra as we say on the Camino. I will be in this area for the next week or so, so it will be up early to get as many kilometers behind before the sun kicks in. We are averaging about 25 km a day, today we did 30 and tomorrow we will do a pinch over 29. The one good thing is there are no hills, but at this point when we see a hill it´s not like it was a week or so ago, then it was a bit of dread, now it´s just OK, it´s not that big. The temperature can be so different from day to day, 3 days ago in the tiny tiny village of San Juan de Ortega it got so cold in the evening, jackets were broke out and blankets used on top of sleeping bags. Burgos was a bit of a culture shock after the tiny villages, big city with big city noise, the Spanish culture is partying all night long, when we were heading out of the last bigger city of Lognoño last Sunday morning, the locals were calling it a night but sang for us ¨Peregriño, Peregriño, it was quite a sight, this morning the locals talked to us in their best inebriated spanish, we don´t know what they were saying but it was funny. I went to a Pilgrims mass in San Juan and afterward they serve Garlic soup, they have been doing that for 100´s of years so it was quite the treat to see that. The village we´re in tonight is truly a one horse town, really, it was outside the bar when we walked into town! It looks like something out of one of the old spagetti westerns that Clint Eastwood did in the 70´s, any moment I expect that classic ¨The Good, the Bad and the Ugly¨music to kick in. The computer I´m using is like being back in the mid 90´s slow, slow and then slow.

Often time in the morning I walk along thinking how blessed I am to do this, I know I´ve mentioned that before, it´s something I don´t want to forget.

This was my first day back on the Camino after a dia de descanso (day of rest) in the city of Burgos, it was as large as Pamplona but didn´t have the ambiance of the Ciudad of Corrida de los Toros. I took a break there for a couple of reason, first I´ve put over 300 kilometers behind me or about 180-190 miles in 2 weeks, but more importantly some of the people I´ve been walking with had to go home and back to reality. We had a group of 7 for a while, 4 Germans, Judith who left us last Monday had to go back to Munich and start her new job with the German Railway System, Sylvia had to get back to her children, Roland had to leave last night for his home near Munich for school that starts again on Monday, Ruggero our Italian Naval Officer pushed on up the Camino due to time constraints, Petr our Czech engineer stayed in the last village so he could visit some ruins along the way he couldn´t catch today. So now it´s down to me and Isabella, my German walking partner, I couldn´t ask for a better one. It was kind of sad for the group to break up last night but the real world calls some of us back.

I would post some photos but this computer couldn´t handle it so I will have to do that down the Camino in a few days. Hope all of you are doing well and I think of you when I´m walking along my Camino.
Buen Camino.