Yesterday morning I woke up from probably the best night sleep I’ve had the whole camino, but was still sick. I lingered in bed until 7:30 and then made my way to the closest coffee shop, where most of my camino friends also happened to be. I was in one if those moods that “all I want is a coffee” and the one guy running the place kept making coffees and giving them to people that walked in after me. And then I found out that the whole rest of my group had made a …
Galicia
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So I need to eat my words, regarding not having anymore good experiences. I was walking along this morning and came upon what looked like a little house just on the side if the path except there was a cross at the peak of the roof, and I could feel good energy radiating out. There was a sign in the door, “Prayer here.” Just when I was walking past an Australian woman popped her head out and said “Have you seen this? Come in!”
We sat there in peace for a few minutes (I got …
Dragonte
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So, we decided to go the mountain route. I convinced my friend James who was considering it, and then learned that Heather, a girl from England who I have hung out with before but haven’t hiked with, was planning to do the same route with 2 more people she had convinced. So at 7:30 am as the sun was coming up, we set off. At first we walked up a steep mountain road to the town of Dragonte before turning off the asphalt. We climbed the first 900 meters in an hour! I’m a slow …
Bierzo
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The last two days have been skirting around those mountains that I love, a constant reminder on the horizon of what they gave me.
Yesterday I walked through Ponferrada and saw the most quintessential castle I have ever seen, complete with moat, archer turrets, and places to pour down boiling oil. It was built by the Knights Templar during the Crusades, completed in 1187. Ponferrada is another town that owes it’s settlement to the Camino, as it built up around a pilgrim hospital, church, and then the castle. It was raining off and on most …
Iron Cross
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“The geographical pilgrimage is the symbolic acting out an inner journey. The inner journey is the interpolation of the meanings and signs of the outer pilgrimage. One can have one without the other. It is best to have both.” – Thomas Merton
Disclaimer: This post is spiritual in nature.
Last night I stayed in another ‘donativo’ parish albergue. Like the other 3 I’ve been in we all cooked and ate dinner together (and unlike the first two this one had very comfortable beds). The hospitalero (the volunteer running the place) was such a character; he probably …