Hontanas

Last night we enjoyed a home cooked meal with six other pilgrims: a German girl, a Frenchman who lives in New Caledonia, a girl from Roumania, a girl from South Korea, a black man from New Guinee and his wife who is from Brazil. Talking about diversity! I slept very well. No bugs! This morning I took breakfast and Doug ate his muesli. At eight we were ready to go. It drizzled. Poncho on, umbrella up. It is quite a challenge to take pictures when you're covered with a poncho and you walk with poles. Anyway I took the effort to take a picture of a beautiful little chapel just outside the village. We had to cover 8 km to the next village. My foot is till sensitive but I could up the speed a little. When we reached the village it turned out that everything was closed. Two middle aged gentlemen from Italy joined us and they asked a local if anything was open. He directed us back to the beginning of the village. We knocked on the door and the owner opened up the restaurant for us. The coffee was delicious. When Doug heard that there was no food to be had for the next 12 km he decided to order the tortilla. The Italians offered him a glass of red wine. I left him with that and started out on my own as I'm much slower than Doug. After an hour he caught up with me. It was still drizzling although it was not as cold as yesterday. We plodded on..... About 5 km before our destiny the path turned into mud. Like things were not bad enough already. Both my feet hurt and now I had to log extra kilos of mud attached to my boots. It slowed the pace down considerably. Finally the village came into view just as the bell tolled two o'clock. This Albergue has a bar downstairs and beautiful dormer. It was the first time we didn't have to leave our boots on a shelf near the entrance. We felt bad to enter the clean bedroom with our very muddy boots. We went to bed right away again. Doug took a shower afterwards but I couldn't muster the energy to stand on my two hurting feet. We went down to the bar and had a glass of wine. At 7pm dinner was served in the dining room. Now the very end of my heel hurts, not the arch. Hopefully it feels better in the morning.