Day 20 - Cadzadilla de la Cueza to Sahagun

Last night we had supper with Margie, from New York.  Another typical perigrino meal but by the time supper rolls around, which is normally 7:30 or 8, all you want to do is eat and go to bed. Eating that late and then just going to bed does not make for a good nights sleep. The room was good but on the hot side, making sleeping even harder.  Lynn noticed it poured around 4am, but Russ slept through it.

Breakfast this morning was what we had been warned to expect, orange juice, bread, jam and coffee.  A far cry what we are used to.  They had some scrambled eggs on the bar, but after watching the flies walking over them, Russ decided that if they were offered , he would accept, but he wouldn't ask.  They didn't, and he didn't.  We again shared the table with Margie, who is with a travel service and she got yogurt. Lynn had asked for yogurt, but the guy asked the room number, and he said it wasn't included. After breakfast he wanted us to pay and Lynn told him we were with Tee Travel and breakfast was included, and he goes 'oh yes, of course'. Lynn bets the yogurt was included. grrrr

Breakfast started on a sour note, with the pitter patter of rain, but by the time we had put our packs on, it had stopped. On the way out, a group of Germans hassled Russ on his inappropriate hiking attire, short sleeve shirt, shorts, and no rain coat.  They all had rain gear and cold weather clothes on. Russ commented that he was a tough Canadian, which got approving chuckles.  The attire proved a good choice as it didn't rain again all day and as usual got hot in a hurry.

Today was a much nicer walk than previous days on the mesa as there were hills, trees and many towns. This breaks up the walk and makes it seem much shorter. At least, it provides milestones along the way and you feel like you are making progress.

We stopped at Moratinos for a coffee con leche.  The albergue had only been opened for two years and was lovely. Lynn commented to the fellow working in the restaurant that they had all of the favorite foods of North Americans: granola, yogurt, fruit, and peanut butter. It's the first time we've seen peanut butter in a restaurant along the Camino in Spain, and the fellow said it was very difficult to get. Entering the town we noticed some doors in the side of the hill, across the road, and were told they were bodegas, now not used, but they used to be used for wine storage.

Also, two neighbours had combined their bodegas into a restaurant.  Unfortunately it didn't open unto 11am and we didn't want to wait around.

Further on in San Nicolas del Real Camino, we stopped to get some Gatorade (actually that was just an excuse to use the banjos, which always say 'for clients only').  The parish church, Iglesia de San Nicolas Obispo is built of clay brick.  It had a charm of it's own, and at one point, a white dove landed on a ledge near the bells.

On the way out of town, we noticed a number of bee hives stacked up in the street.  We can only assume they were either new or being cleaned prior to being placed in the field.

This was now a day in which we saw two things Brierly, in his guide, had mentioned and said 'will you see them?'

Just prior to entering our destination today, we passed by the Ermita de Virgen del Puente.  The building dates from the 12th century and relates to the story of a girl who went there and prayed to the Virgin Mary that she might have a son.  The girl bore a son who was Don Juan of Sahagun, the patron of the town.

Approaching Sahagun from a distance, the city looked huge and it was obvious this is a happening place.  When we actually entered the city, the streets were jammed with people and there were vendors selling all sorts of goods, fruits and vegetables in the streets around our hotel.  It was difficult to even find a place with an empty table to sit down and have lunch.  We had a perfectly acceptable, familiar to us North Americans, plate of sphagetti, the only down side being it seems every second person in Spain smokes.

With all these market stalls set up everywhere we wondered about Siesta - it is Saturday. But everything shut down very quickly shortly after 2pm (slightly later than usual). We are concerned about tomorrow, being a Sunday, and there isn't much where we are going so we headed to the mercado before going to our room for daily shower et al. We thought it would be open all day until 9pm. Good thing we went when we did, it closed for the day at 3.

Summary - a rather short day that was more interesting than the last few and which allowed us to look around at the street market and the shops before they closed for the day. We are now more than half way to Santiago.

Distance today - 22km
Distance total - 422.5km

Day 19 - Carrion de los Condes to Calzadilla de la Cueza

The hostal we stayed at had the best restaurant in town and a lot of people ate there, including Jack et al.

We sat with George, Jack, Martha and company after supper. Both of Jack's feet are really messed up as is one leg.  Jack met a doctor from Scotland, who bandaged him up, but we are both concerned he may not be able to go on much longer. He's very determined but people who are much more knowledgable about such things as us say he is doing some permanent damage that could even impact his employment as a fireman.

The hostal was certainly acceptable accomodation, the only problem being that we were above the restaurant and near the refridgeration unit, so even though it was cool outside, we couldn't open the window for the noise. We also have talked to people who stayed ate the monastery de San Zoila which is a national monument and has been restored as a private hotel, similar to the Paradors but not too expensive. I'm disappointed our agency didn't have us stay there, and plan to mention it in the follow-up survey they will undoubtedly want us to fill in.

This morning, we had breakfast with the couple Lee and Linda from Colorado, who had rented bikes in Burgos in an attempt to gain some ground so as to be able to complete the Camino in their alloted time.

We got off to an early enough start, considering we only had 18km to go.  It was cool and cloudy, but very threatening rain clouds were leading us.

We walked on paved roads for 5 km as we left the city.

We then continued on the Via Aquitana.  This 2000 year old Roman road was laid through an area of bog, thus requiring over 100,000 tons of rock to raise the level of the substrata.  There is, however, no rock in the area and it all had to be brought in.

This appears to be in direct contrast to this unfortunate farmer, whose field seems to be 80% rock.  We figure if he brought a rock picking machine in, his farm would drop 1 metre.

There really was little to see today.  The path did not pass through any towns, and the view was dominated by fields.  At one point, Russ pointed out a flock of sheep to the left of the trail.  We were so accustomed to not seeing any livestock, that Lynn didn t recognize them until she looked a second time.  Funny thing about that, we see farmers gathering bales of hay, but we haven't seen any cattle, dairy or otherwise.

We made it to the hotel just before lunch.  Their wifi was down so no update today for the blog,  We met Richard and Margie and we shared the lunch table together.  Richard was travelling on, but Margie, who is also using a travel service, was staying here. I commented on how it might be better to blast through the mesa quickly rather than this series of short days we are doing, and Margie said this is probably for the best, to let our bodies recover from the shock of doing all this walking, and because it will be a lot of long hard days once we get back into the mountains.

Summary - more of the mesa, flat and the same. We have now reached half way in our trek, whether we have reached half way in the journey is unclear.

Distance today - 18km
Distance total - 400.5km

Day 18 - Fromista to Carrion de los Condes

The hotel we stayed at in Fromista, the Dona Mayor, was off the Camino but easy enough to find.  We were the first to check in, and had the option of picking our room from a photo album.  We choose a room that had morning sun to hopefully be cooler in the hottest part of the day, and we were gone before the morning sun rose.  It had a funky 1960s colour scheme, green walls with what were almost music staffs and black circles, mushroom lights and 60s plastic bucket chairs.   A very charming room, with air conditioning.  The balcony was built with the idea that if a board can span 2 metres, let's go for three.  Very spongy.  But it provided a good location for a clothes line to hang laundry.

Actually we have been very lucky about getting balconies. If any, and sometimes it is only one, room has a balcony, we get it.

The dinner was the classiest we have had so far.  Lots of vegetables. We had a nice chat with a French perigrino, he in broken English, us in quasi-French. He had walked from Bordeaux, and came to dinner in his bedroom slippers.

Two very young sisters were managing the hotel. We never saw anyone else hovering in the background.

Breakfast was great, with freshly squeezed orange juice. As in Najera, she had this machine that takes oranges in the top and produces juice out the bottom.

It seems that there may only have been three or four rooms rented.  The recession may still be having a effect. This hotel would have been very much more expensive than the lodging at the multitudinous alberques in town.

Breakfast was early so we were on the trail by 7:30.  A walk around the 11th century Iglesia de San Martin with it's 300 external corbels, each carved with a different human, animal or mystical motif.  We can't attest to the number, but there were a lot and each one was different.  A lot of stone masons spent a lot of time producing these objects. This church is one of the finest examples of pure Romanesque in Spain and Fromista is famous for it.

The trip out of the town was a surprise as it did not include a climb.  The temperature was quite pleasant for t-shirt and shorts even that early, but the forecast called for heat, and the sky had that going to rain later look.

The one thing we are really noticing is that there are a lot more perigrinos on the Way than we had seen previously.  As we get closer to Santiago, we expect more perigrinos will join the walk.

At Poblacion de Campos, there was an option to carry on along the highway or veer right and follow the rio Ucieza.  We chose the latter (the old Roman road) which was slightly longer but we were met with water on the right and trees, providing welcome shade for most of that section of the Way.  Off in the distance you could see other perigrinos slogging along beside the highway in the full sun.

We walked along kilometres of precast concrete aquaducts.  These carried water, by gravity, from uphill to where the farmer needed water to irrigate his field.  If they had to pass a road, there would be cistern on each side of the road, with a connecting underground pipe.  These have, in large part, fallen into disuse as the farmers now irrigate their crops with sprinklers rather than opening and closing earthen dikes to control the flow into trenches.  It is very obvious to us that where there is water, there are happy plants, where not, they are struggling.

This section of the Camino really is somewhat monotonous, freeing up the mind for contemplation. Lynn got thinking of how a lot of people walk the camino to find themselves, and how most people like to disguise themselves in one manner or another to others. For example, the fellow we met on the train who is dressed up like a Jesuit priest and is even wearing a collar. This is an extreme example and he has crossed the line from merely wearing a mask, metaphorically speaking, to actually attempting to deceive others into thinking he is something he isn't. If we really want to find ourselves, not only do we need to dispense with the mask we wear in front of others, but the mask we hide behind ourselves.

The wanna be priest also provided another important lesson. Is religion going to continue to have relevance in our age of scientific knowledge? If it is, being a man of the cloth certainly doesn't entail performing dramas where you serve yourself mass (note-at least he didn't cross the line and serve mass to anyone other than his compatriot) and waste the time of a lot of bystanders too polite to walk away. Rather, it involves a life of servitude to God or others, being the hands and feet of Christ in the world. This brings us to the issue of focussing inward versus outward. There has to be a balance. He has gone too far on focussing inward. Perhaps many others have gone too far focussing outward?

And then we walked for 6km along the highway in the glaring heat.  The town seems just down the road but takes forever to get there.  Lynn found that stretch of the walk pretty boring, Russ just sucks it up and walks.  Both are realizing that in this heat, the first cafe con leche stop should also including picking up a Gatorade type drink. You sweat so much and drink a lot of water, so you lose a lot of salts.

Today we got to our destination well before siesta time, and lo and behold, there were people, lots of people, out shopping.  It's like something from a sci-fi movie, the residents close up their shop windows, close there shutters, and hide from the aliens in the afternoon.

Our room wasn't ready so we wandered around town, finished the lunch we bought yesterday, and bought some supplies. When we came back our suitcase wasn't here yet, so there was nothing to do but sleep until 3pm when registration opens. Going down at 3pm sharp, we noticed the couple from Colorado are staying the night here.  They stayed 3 nights in Burgos and then rented bikes to make up for the  time by biking, rather than walking, for the next three days.

The lightning and thunder started at 3:50, as per the forecast, and for the next 40 minutes it poured.  I would have hated to have been walking in it.  Your options would have been, get wet or get wet.

Summary - a cooler day than yesterday but still  too hot as the day wore on.  The scenery was much the same, farms and farms.  More perigrinos on the road as we carry on.

Distance today - 20 km
Distance total - 382.5km

Day 17 - Castrojeriz to Fromists

We had supper last night with Richard from California. He is Camino friends with Jack et al and we know him well. He is a very interesting and well educated person and we had a wonderful conversation. He recommended some hikes in New Zealand we will have to follow up on.

This morning we got off to a late start, 8:30, as breakfast at the hotel wasn't until 8:00.  We ate with Richard again. It was an okay breakfast, mainly bread and cafe con leche, but there was yogurt, and Richard extracted bananas from a basket in the dining room he had noticed last night, a very important part of a pilgrims diet.

The problem with the late start was that we were missing the cool weather at the start of the day.  It was going to be a very hot day.

We didn't walk with Richard. He has an injury, problem where the foot/heel meet, now on both feet, so is rather hobbling along, but determined to persevere.

On the way out of town we met Pat and Ian from Burlington. They had already walked 11km from Hontanas this morning. We walked with them our first 11km to Itero de la Vega.

In the words of Gomer Pyle " surprise, surprise", the first thing you do is climb a hill.  A 12% slope that took you up 100 metres. Ian thinks this is the hill that made Jane Christmas  (author of 'What the psychic said to the pilgrim') quit the Camino (although she did come back and finish it). The climb was hard but the view back over the valley was incredible.

That brought us up onto the mesa again, think Saskatchewan.  Rolling hills, stubble where grain was, later corn and sunflowers, and some kind of leafy root crop we still can't identify.  But few trees.  The view, for a flatlander, was magnificent.

Lynn had a great chat with Pat. It turns out she was at first married to an alcoholic, and they had four children. I told her about my situation and said I had learned so far on the Camino that it was not going to be a matter of letting go so much as learning to live with grief. At first she disagreed, but as we talked we decided that living with a spouse that was an addict was much different than coping with a child that was a addict. At least 50% of marriages today end in divorce. At least partner decides they don't love their spouse any more and leaves them, forgets them, and moves on. So, if you find yourself married to an addict, you let go. But if your child is an addict, you can't just stop loving your child. As it says in 1 Corinthians 13 verse 7-8, 'love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perservers. Love never fails.' The parent of an addict needs to learn not to protect their child from the the full consequences of their addiction. And not to enable them. It's very hard. But most of all, you don't want to lose hope.

We have been using the Michelin guide for our walks and for some reason, today the distances to the various towns were wrong.  We can do about 5km per hour and to walk 2 hours and then be told you only did 6.6km, hmmm, there is a problem Huston.

We stopped at Itero de la Vega for our cafe con leche and commented on how we had only walked 6.6, and were quickly corrected and told, no, we had covered 11km.  Ahhh.

Lynn was having a major problem at the break, feeling weak and dizzy. At one point everything got blurry and I almost passed out. Ian and Pat left, and Richard arrived. We talked to him for a few minutes and left. I think I was primarily dehydrated. I'd been engrossed in conversation with Pat and hadn't been drinking enough water.

We then just walked, looking for things in the distance to walk toward, and avoiding the Spanish bicycle groups that would sneak up behind you with no warning.

Further up we crossed the rio Pisueurga, dividing Burgos from Palencia provinces.

In the distance we noticed one or two bodegas, or wine cellars, dug into the hills.  The guide books say there are several but we found them hard to spot.  Perhaps the perigrinos are taking a toll on the wine?

We tramped into Boadilla de Camino, where we intended to find a shady place to have lunch.  A danish couple we have talked to along the way called to us to share a shady spot along the side of an  albergue, the clincher for Russ being the mug of cold beer he held up.

Russ noticed that Lynn was shaking like a leaf cutting the tomato to put on our cheese baquette and pulled out an electrolyte tablet she put in her water and drank down. She was finding the going very tough, by now the temperature was 31C.  The electrolyte tablet picked her up after a bit.  We later concluded that this was why we were eating so much of the salted snacks, our bodies needed the salt that was being lost through sweating.

6 more, only 6km more to the hotel in Fromista.

Our vanity as being super fast was smashed today. We were being passed many times by both younger, fitter hikers and people our own age. One fellow that passed us said he and his buddies were trying to do 40km a day to do the mesa in 4 days. All we could say was, good luck.

We left Boadilla and within a km or so, we were walking parallel to the Canal de Castilla.  The canal runs for km, providing water for the farmers, and some trees planted alongside much appreciated shade for the perigrinos.

The canal was built in the 18 century and provided transportation of the farmers' produce as well as power to turn the corn mills.  There is a plan in place to restore the canal system with it's 50 locks, perhaps it will join the Rideau Canal as a World Heritage site?

Our hotel today is 400m off the Camino and Lynn figured it had to be really good to justify that. We were not disappointed. Air conditioning - and a very lovely modern hotel with an excellent dinner menu. Just what a heat stroked, dehydrated pilgrim needs.

Summary - a nice day hiking, more great views. The toll of the mesa is starting to be felt, very hot and little shade.  Tomorrow may be interesting as some forecasts are calling for rain.  Rain is needed as where there is no irrigation, the leaves on the trees are turning very brown.

Distance today - 27km
Distance total - 362.5km

Day 16 - Hornillos del Camino to Castrojeriz

Our thoughts and prayers today are with Carol and Jeannie as they prepare to start their lay ministry training. Best wishes and Godspeed.

On our walk out of Burgos yesterday we passed a large mercado (supermarket) with a bank compatible to our bank card right across the street. You need cash pretty exclusively in the small towns and we now have eight more days walking to the next big city, Leon. More importantly, although the Camino is all about letting go of vain things like make-up and fancy clothes, to Lynn that doesn't include being content with lots of grey roots! Hence the need for a large mercado. Last night's supper was perigrino ala Supermercado.  A lovely carrot soup to start, caesar salad with chicken and fresh bread as a main, and neopolitan with cream for dessert. All accompanied with dyeing hair in a marriott hotel room. The entire evening of dinner and entertainment (including all supplies) actually cost less than the peregrino special at the local alberque. We have truly learned how to live frugally now.

On that theme we have now formally dispensed with gathering lunch from the breakfast buffet. Instead we are supporting the local economy and buying lunch at the bar restaurant as we get to them or shopping in advance at the tiendas and mercados. Prices are very reasonable and the end result tastier.

Today started at 6am as we arranged for our cab driver to pick us up at 7:30 instead of the prearranged 9am to take us back to Hornillos.  It is discouraging to think what little distance you cover in one day of hiking, but as you drive past the places you hiked and see how  far it actually was, it is very encouraging.

The cab passed a Danish fellow we have met along the Way coming into Hornillos. We very defensively explained to him that we had walked there yesterday. He was satisfied with the explanation.

He said it was 5 degrees  C when we set out at 8am in our shorts and t-shirts. At that temperature Lynn's nose drips non stop and her hands were so cold she couldn't grip the kleenex. She had gloves but didn't want to take the time to stop and get them out of her backpack. By 9:15am we were already too hot.

Leaving the village we found ourselves in the middle of a completely uninhabited landscape, going up and down hills (mainly up) on a long and windy road. This is apparently one of the most typical landscapes of inland Spain - the paramo (bleak moorland). High flat land with barely any vegetation.

We could see a familiar row of wind turbines in the distance. This is where you become acquainted with the distortion of distance on the mesa. We walked and walked but the wind turbines never seemed to come any closer. Then all of a sudden we came to a steep descent down to the alberque at San Bol. The wind turbines very quickly fell out of sight. Then we ascended up a steep slope back to the plain again, and actually passed by the row of the wind turbines before reaching another steep descent to Hontanas, also almost hidden among the slopes of the paramo.

Hontanas was a lovely town and very welcoming to peregrinos. We stopped for our daily cafe con leche and met some friendly and interesting peregrino's from England. They initially mistook us for Americans, and after several more minutes of conversation, one fellow said 'it must be a real curse to be constantly mistaken for Americans'. We laughed, but thinking about it it has never really bothered us - not that we don't make sure to point out we are Canadian. I think people tend to be jealous of the Americans. As George said, they're 'the police of the world'.

We have also figured out that one reason we are meeting so many people we've never seen before is because a lot of them started in Burgos. There are a lot more pilgrims on the Way now than when we first started. Plus, most people seem to know better than starting the Camino in August. Although, the weather has been very favorable so far.

The next landmark was the ruins of the covento de San Anton, where we met up with a tour bus of tourists. They looked at us  peregrinos as a novelty, almost with a look of disbelief, as if we were weirdos or something. One person even took Russ' picture.

From there we could see today's destination and we walked along a tree lined, busy, paved road to get there.

The hike was very pleasant, I know that is not what the books say, but being flat-landers, we found it much like the prairies.  Maybe it will get worse, but today we had definite distant objects we could focus on and look forward to reaching. The trails went past fields of harvested grain, through treed areas, actually very nice, with only gentle hills. There were still magnificent views all around.

Again we found that while the guide books fairly accurately show what is available in the towns, they do not give you the sense of how much the locals do their best to accomodate the peregrinos' needs.

Mind you, today the distance of 20km only included two towns, and only one of them had services for peregrino's passing through! This excludes the fact that there were several places you could fill your water bottle. Very important on 30 degree C days like today with no shade. Of course there is no escaping the fact that the Camino is big business in Spain.

Again today there were additional ruins to be seen, if one only walked 250 metres off the track.  No, sorry, 250m was just too far.  So many ruins, so many churches.

The view of Castrojeriz coming into town is dominated by the beautiful Colegiata de la Virgen del Manzano on your right and the ruins of a castle high on the hill over the town.

High fives, into town today in record time.  We barely even gave any thought to the condition of our feet and legs. I think we have reached the point of being physically fit for the Camino. Now to the hotel, which is right along the Camino, just follow the map.  Forty five minutes later we found ourselves on the Camino trail leading out of the town. Several inquiries of the locals later and we find the hotel.  The street number is not as indicated, the owner also runs a bar and he is there rather than in the hotel, the hotel is locked up and has no sign, and every street in town is marked as being the Camino.  They also seem to hate street signs in small towns (or, we don't know how to find them).

Summary - a nice day hiking, more great views. If this is what the mesa is all about, no problem.

Distance today - 20.5km
Distance total - 335.5k

Day 15 - Burgos to Hornillos del Camino

You think of things the next day after you post the blog.  While at the cathedral we noticed this rather odd looking statue way up near the ceiling.  He was dressed comically, with his hand on a bell rope.  We asked and were told he was 'The Flycatcher', installed in the 14th century.  Flycatcher?  So along with a hundred other people, we waited for the clock to strike twelve.  Sure enough, his hand moved to ring his bell, and his mouth opened and closed at every ring. A flycatcher! So there we were, one hundred people, gawking at this silly thing.

Last night's perigrino supper would likely rate as OK.  There was nothing special about the salad or fried haddock and fries.  But after the long day of walking, rather than hiking, I don't think either of us cared.

The morning started off much  later than usual as we only had 20km to hike, and we were being picked up by a cab outside a bar in Hornilla at 3pm and taken back to Burgos for the night.  Hornillos is small and has few facilities for pilgrims. In fact, Jack and company, who we met there, were in the overflow alberque dorm. This allowed us to sleep in, which didn't work out well, I guess we're used to getting up at 6:30. Never the less, we left around 9am today.

The walk out of the city was very lovely.  Past ancient churches, porticos, statues, and medieval briges. You know, the usual. Burgos has a lot of very recent bronze statues, many of woman, that are very interesting. We also passed the University, some affluent neighborhoods, and once in the country, a state prison. We understand they have no beds for peregrinos.

The first thing we noticed when we left was that the morning was warmer than we had become used to and it wasn't foggy.  Probably because we left around the time the fog usually lifts and it warms up. The second was that we were passing perigrinos we hadn't seen before, probably because we had stayed the extra day in Burgos.  We are a bit sad now that we seem to be walking with the group of perigrinos that were a day behind us, so we don't know them, and our friends have gotten ahead of us. On the positive side it provides the opportunity to make new friends.

As Lynn mentioned before, we seem to be in the upper percentile when it comes to walking speed.  We aren't trying to get there in a hurry, we are just fast walkers, so we tend to get to the end either ahead of or five minutes after people who left two hours earlier.

We stopped at Tardajos for a cafe con leche and a pastry pick me up.  For those unaccustomed to coffee with steamed milk, it becomes addictive very quickly. We stopped at the first place we saw when we entered the city. It was more of a store than a restaurant bar and was the size of a broom closet. The cleanliness standards left a lot to be desired, with dirty dishes sort of mixed up with clean, flies everywhere, and  her filling up a bottle of tap water to pour into the expresso machine out of a sink full of dirty dishes. Oh well, the coffee con leche was good  and no one got sick. As soon as we left we saw a string of classier and cleaner looking restaurants further down the street. I think she does a great business being the first you see coming into town, and her lovely tent for tables very effectively hides the competition.

Further on, in Rabe de las Calzadas we felt like we were being watched.  Scanning the sky we spotted five vultures waiting for a perigrino to trip and become lunch.  We made sure we had our yogurt snack under the shade, and protection, of a tree.  The farmers in France are complaining that the work crews are so efficient at picking up road kill, that the vultures have resorted to carrying off small livestock.

We then entered the much dreaded mesa, mand contrary to expectation, climbed a hilll for about 7 km, with lovely, sweeping views of the valley below. Other than the hill, it was a typical prairie scene.  Kilometres of grain fields, no trees, just this endless path where every time you came to a curve you thought you were at the summit, but around the bend the slope of the climb increased.  We encountered several people who had just started the Camino at Burgos.  We are not sure whether that was to avoid the hill climbing of previous days, but the mesa is going to be mind numbing.

There is one benefit we can see to the mesa and that is the opportunity to look inward. The Way so far has been such spectacular scenery that all your a attention is drawn to looking outward.

According to Carl Jung
Your vision will become clear
Only when you look into your heart
Who looks outside dreams
Who looks inside awakens.

The trail went along what, for us prarie people, was typical prairie.  Rolling hills, recently combined grain fields, farmers out baling the straw. Lovely scenery for those used to it.

We got to Hornillos well ahead of schedule and had a well earned cerveza.  Jack, et all were there, and the discussion turned to where everyone was staying today, tomorrow and so on. The path is long and paths are starting to diverge as perigrinos start to travel at different speeds and stay at different places, and of course, that means losing touch with your new Camino friends. There was a bit of sadness all around.

The taxi ride back to Burgos may have been the best cab ride I have ever taken.  The young man had a good grasp of English, but it was accented with hand motions, gestures, Spanish and sound effects.  He couldn't just say it was "fast", he had to sound it out, while waving down the road.

Summary - a relatively easy day, but perhaps harder after our day off.

Distance today - 20km
Distance total - 315km

Day 14 - Burgos

Today was our day off in Burgos.

Although yesterday was neither long nor hard, the 12 days and 295 km we have walked so far have had a cumulative wearing down effect, and a rest was in order.

Last night we meet a perigrino from Montreal who was doing the Camino in the reverse direction (having done 1,600km on the Camino starting in France and going to Santiago last year).  We had a great chat over supper, knowing that we would not see him again as he was going in the opposite direction.  It sounds like he is quite the world traveller and we discussed places we had each been, comparing notes, and places he or we had been. He is going Israel next and we told him the places we had been there on our pilgrimage with Emmanuel in 2012. He is not planning on going through any check points (ie, going to any Palestinian territories). We said he really should go to Bethlehem.

The restaurant, which we chose because it offered a Peregrino special, was almost empty when we arrived at 8pm (the time they started to serve dinner), and by the time we had consumed our meals, it was standing room only.  Families and singles, mostly non-pilgrim's eating the same perigrino meal we had just finished.  He didn't even have a stamp to stamp our pilgrim passports. Perhaps it is the historical district's inexpensive eatery?

This morning we went down to a very nice breakfast with lots of variety and healthy options, but still no bacon and eggs (which Russ is interested in).  The only thing missing Lynn would have appreciated is granola.

Walking around Plaza Santa Maria outside the cathedral yesterday we never saw any indication of what time mass was, only signs about tours of the cathedral. On the way to breakfast we asked the hotel clerk 'do you know what time mass is at the cathedral this morning?' She said 'sorry, I don't understand, what is mass?' Taken back a bit Lynn said 'you know, Catolico misa' and then made like she was receiving and then eating a host. The clerk said, 'oh, but its Sunday, they probably aren't open today'. This is life in a secular society. Unbelievable.

We went over to the Cathedral to the ticket office and were told mass was at ten and waved off in the general direction. It turned out mass was held every hour of the day. We ended up in the wrong chapel, but figured that out quickly enough when mass actually started. It was in Spanish of course so totally undecipherable, but the chapel was magnificent and the 40 minutes passed quickly just admiring the alter and domes.

We have found along the Camino so far that paying your dues by attending mass grants you free access to tour the church. This was definitely not the case here but we did get in for half price with our pilgrim passport. We then spent 2 and a half hours touring the magnificient Catedral de Santa Maria.  This is one of the most beautiful of the cathedrals in Spain, and it isn't very long before you go into sensory overload.  You are led through the church by your (thankfully available in english) audio guide, with every turn revealing more amazing sights than those which you had just seen.  The cathedral was built in the 1200's but has been added to and revised ever since.

We also wanted to go to the museum of Evolution which the tourist office told us was open today until 8pm. We ran into Jack and Margie who had just been there and said it closed at 3.  It was now 1pm.

We wanted to hurry up and were tired of the usual cheese and ham baquette lunch. Instead, we had a donair served by a Spanish speaking Pakistani.  His family had come to Spain in 2005 to escape conditions back home.  The sandwich was delicious. Once again, the  comforting familiar.

Burgos is a beautiful city, with areas designed for walking.  Near the hotel there is a tree lined street, with shops, grass, trees, statues, fountains and benches.  People walking  or sitting, the kind of place that Sparks Street should be.

The afternoon was spent at the Museo de la Evolution Humana.  Fortunately it really was open until 8pm and we were there from 1:30 to 5pm. The museum narrates the history of human evolution using static and dynamic displays, and various audio/visual presentations.  The museum takes you through the last 7 million years of evolution, with an emphasize on the finds at the Sierra de Atapuerca (which we passed on the trail yesterday).  Actual fossils discovered at Atapuerca are on display, including those of the newly discovered "homo antecessor".  More info can be found at www.museoevolucionhumana.com

We could have gone back to Atapuerca by bus to view the dig site but the bus left at noon and returned at 5pm, the tour was in Spanish and the dig site is 500+ metres underground, a place where Lynn wouldn't go anyway. The museum was excellent. Having been on the dig in Bethsaida, we think we probably knew what we would see in Atupeurca.

After being on our feet from 10am to 5pm it was back to the hotel to rest from our rest day.We figure we could easily have walked the average daily Camino distance of 22km in that time. So much for our day of rest!

Summary - a very poor day of rest, actually doing as much walking as on a normal day.  Burgos is a lovely, vibrant city where one could spend much more time.  Tomorrow we start the mesa, which is supposed to be spiritually difficult.