Day 38: The Day I left Burgos

September 18: On my way out of Burgos, I walked passed the large cathedral near the center of town. I never went inside, but the exterior was more than impressive. So large, such intricate detail—it was a magnificent piece of work. Absolutely magnificent! I just took a few pictures and pushed on out of town, though.

The walk out of town was nothing short of terrible. Lots of traffic along busy roads. Going out of town didn’t have alternative paths to avoid all the ugly parts of city walks like the walk into town had, so I just pushed through as quickly as possible, taking photos of any interesting statues and art along the way.

I passed one supermarket along the way, but it hadn’t opened yet. My food supplies were running low, and I hadn’t found any supermarkets in the core of Burgos the day before. I still had some food, but it was running low and I had hoped to resupply on the walk out of town, so it was a little disappointing to have found a supermarket but then to learn it wasn’t open yet. I could have waited for it to open, and I would have waited had actually been completely out of food, but things weren’t quite so critical so I pushed passed without resupplying my food.

Which is why, when I finally got out of Burgos and into the small town of Tarjados, I stopped at a small store and bought a bacon and cheese sandwich—to help preserve what food I did still have in my pack for later in the day. The sandwich didn’t look like much, but it turned out to be quite good and very filling. As I looked around me, though, I realized that I didn’t recognize a single other hiker. It’s not unusual that I didn’t know any other hikers around me, but I usually at least recognized a few faces. Since I left Burgos, though, I hadn’t even recognized anyone! Where did all these hikers come from?

Two of them I eavesdropped on had been discussing their zero day in Burgos. They didn’t call it a “zero day”—the hikers out here haven’t had the corrupting influence of the Appalachian Trail or Pacific Crest Trail like I’ve had—but that’s what they were. A lot of people I did know had also been talking about taking a day off in Burgos. It seemed that all of these people I didn’t recognize had probably been a day ahead of me on the trail since Saint Jean and I caught up with them because I had not chosen to take a day off in Burgos.

After leaving Tarjados, the trail improved dramatically from the miserable road walk out of Burgos. It was an eventful walk on to Hornillos del Camino where I took another break and caught up with Vivian again—the first person I recognized all day! My guidebook breaks down the hike from Saint Jean to Santiago into “stages,” and Hornillos marks the end of the stage out of Burgos and where most people who left Burgos would likely quit for the day, but for the first time, lodging was severely limited and a large number of pilgrims decided to push on towards Hontanas another 11 kilometers or so further up the trail putting in a fairly long 30+ kilometer day. For those pilgrims, it was their longest day ever. For those wanting to avoid their longest day of hiking ever, many of them took rides into nearby towns with additional lodging and would get a ride back here in the morning. How inconvenient! And for me, completely out of the question since I was determined to avoid using modern transportation until my hike was done. Anyhow, walking a little over 30 kilometers wasn’t different for me, and I had every intention of camping out anyhow.


Out of town, the trail climbed up and entered the area known as the Meseta—a high plateau that other pilgrims had been bad-mouthing since Saint Jean. The section between Burgos and Leon was described variously as boring, ugly and miserable depending on who you asked. Several hikers I know intended to skip that section completely and ride a bus to Leon to pick up the rest of their hike. Those who didn’t have enough time off of work to hike the entire route would invariably choose to skip the Meseta section—the most boring, ugly section of the trail. If rumors are to be believed.

I positively LOVED it, though! The treeless plain seemed to stretch to eternity—so open, so grand, so remote. Without any obstacles to dull it, the wind blew across the land with the fury of a storm—but there was no storm. “If this is boring and ugly,” I thought, “I can’t wait to see what the rest of the trail has to offer!” Leaving town, alone, I turned on my iPod again and practically skipped my way up the trail, slashing the air with my trekking pole in sync with the music on my iPod.

At least until I caught up with Hilary and Brent. Hilary I hadn’t seen or heard of since I met per in Pamplona trying to bribe other pilgrims to talk with her by offering up a six-pack of beer, so it was fun to catch up and swap our trail stories. Brent I had seen several times along the route, but never for more than a few minutes at a time and I didn’t really know him as well despite having seen him more often. He was more one of those faces I recognized than someone I really knew.

I fell into walking with them and quickly discovered that, combined, they were two the funniest freakin’ people alive. They had me laughing for miles! You’d think they had to have rehearsed their little Abbot and Costello routine, but I’m pretty sure they didn’t. They were just darned funny, slinging jokes off each other, and I really enjoyed the hour or so I walked with them.

As we got closer to Hontanus, though, I veered off to set up camp. The severely strong winds I knew would be problematic, so at first I tried to set up camp behind some large piles of rocks. I nixed that idea when I saw all the toilet paper behind it, though. On these very exposed plains, it was obvious that the few places with rocks piled high were being used as toilets. I’d rather camp directly in the wind.

Then I tried setting up off the side of the trail, using the small berm on the edge of the road as protection from the wind. Maybe if I laid down, the wind would pass overhead. I tried it, and the berm did seem to dull the wind, but it was still there. And if I sat up, the berm did nothing at all so slow the wind down.

So I studied the horizon and saw a haystack way in the distance, near some wind turbines. It looked like it was probably a kilometer away, way off trail, but the haystack would definitely provide substantial wind protection, and being so far off the trail, I could be certain that pilgrims weren’t using the backside of it as a toilet. So I hoofed down to the haystack.

This haystack—or a strawstack as one of my blog readers kindly pointed out—wasn’t perfectly square like most of the ones I’d seen, and as a result, I could set up camp in a corner where the haystack could protect me from wind from two different directions. Wind-blown straw piled up around the stacks leaving a soft bed to sleep on. My only complaint was that I didn’t much like the smell of the straw, but it was a minor complaint. It was less annoying than camping in wind!

From my campsite, I continued to see pilgrims walking along the dirt road in the distance. It was rather surprising to see so many people hiking so late in the afternoon. Most pilgrims tended to stop by around 3:00 in the afternoon, and that was several hours earlier! I could only imagine that many of them had misjudged the lodging situation in Hornillos and reluctantly pushed on to the next town. 

Shortly before sunset, some ugly clouds started rolling in and spit out a few drops of rain. Nothing bad, but with a 30% chance of rain overnight (I checked the weather forecast while in Burgos), I decided to set up my tarp. Better safe than sorry!

I cooked dinner—after clearing my cooking area of the thick layer of straw—cleaned up, read my book, then fell asleep. The wind didn’t bother me any, but it certainly was loud and angry all night long, trying to figure out a way around the haystack where it could get at me. It didn’t, though. =)

A statue on the way out of Burgos.

FINALLY we’re out of Burgos and on more pleasant roads
to walk on! =)

Graffiti under a highway overpass.

A hearty little brunch: A bacon and cheese sandwich, donuts, and a Coke. =)

The small store where I stopped to eat. (You can see the bright orange
top of my backpack at the right-most table.) I didn’t even
recognize any of the faces of the other pilgrims coming out of Burgos!

The infamous Meseta! Okay, yeah, there aren’t any
towering mountains or anything, but I don’t care what anyone else says—
I still think it has its own stark beauty!

This lone tree, all by its lonesome, I kind of felt sorry for.
It should be with friends! =)

Heading into Hornillos. If you could see the original image,
blown up as large as possible, you’d probably count 30 or more
dots that are pilgrims walking along this road into town!

This tracker was grading the road, pushing pilgrims off the trail
as it went by.

Vivian (on the right) hangs out in Hornillos del Camino—one of the few
people I met today that I actually already knew.

Yes, I decided, that haystack would protect me from the wind.
That would be my home for the night! =)

Finally, a respite from the wind!

These clouds were rolling in fast, and they didn’t look so
friendly….

So before it got too dark, I went ahead and set up my tarp.
Better safe than sorry! =) The ground was so hard, I couldn’t
get the stakes in, so I weighed them down with nearby
rocks instead and drove them directly in the hay bales where I could.

Day 37: On to Burgos!

September 17: Early in the morning, I met up with Charles, the priest from New Zealand that I first met while eating dinner in Saint Jean. I hadn’t seen him every day since we left Saint Jean, but we had crossed paths most days. His feet were hurting him a bit, but I was more curious about his complaints about the “race” into town each day. Alburgues were filling up overnight and he was waking up early in the morning and walking as fast as he could to be certain to get a bed at an alburgue before it filled up—often as early as one or two o’clock in the afternoon. “It’s not fun,” he told me, “having to race to get a space.”

 

But of course, everyone else also wants a bed, so they too wake up early and rush to get into town. “Then I sit around town all afternoon bored to tears.”

 

I had heard about the lack of beds in the alburgues, but hadn’t realized that it had turned into a race each day for many people. The lack of beds at all I thought was surprising since we were now well into September and past the peak hiking season when the trail is most crowded. If the rumors I’ve heard are correct, however, more people have actually been hiking the trail this September than in July and August—an unheard of event! One person even told me that the trail had more people this year than it did in the last Holy Year (when pilgrim numbers tend to soar). I’m not sure why this year is so different, but by all accounts, it’s been an unusually crowded trail this year.

 

“Well,” I told Charles, somewhat happily, “that’s not something I’ve had to worry about since I’ve been camping out. No racing for me!” Well, okay, I’m “racing” to get into Burgos this afternoon, but not because the beds are full. Rather, I wanted to get into town early enough to have time to sightsee and play the tourist. And I’m just one less person filling up all those beds in the alburgues. If more people would camp, the crowded conditions would be gone in a heartbeat!

 

I continued on ahead of Charles, then I decided to pull out my iPod to listen to. I’d been carrying an iPod Shuffle since I left Le Puy—the same one that Amanda bought for my birthday while I was hiking the PCT two years earlier—but I listened to it almost never the entire hike so far. When I arrived in France, I had forgotten that tiny, little, one-inch long cord that would connect from the iPod to the computer’s USB port so I wasn’t able to charge it. Which is an even bigger problem when you’ve arrived in France and the charge is already run down to practically nothing.

 

The missing cord had finally caught up with me in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, included in the mail drop my mom had sent, so I did have a fully functional iPod since arriving in Spain. But I practically never used it since I had more fun chatting with all the English-speaking people along the route. I was starting to regret that I even brought the thing since I never used it, but today, I decided it was time to use it. I planned to walk rather quickly to get into Burgos early in the day, not stopping to chat to people along the way. And a funny thing—when you have those iPod earbuds in your ear, people are less likely to talk to you and slow you down. =)

 

So I cranked up the music and positively skipped down the trail.

 

Despite my rush to get into Burgos, however, the journey comes first, and I’m always on the lookout for alternative paths that are more scenic, less crowded, and have less walking on pavement, and I was a little disappointed when I realized I had missed such a turn. I was in the midst of hikers—upon reaching the top of a hill with a nice viewpoint down towards Burgos, I counted over 50 people on the road ahead of me.

 

I knew an alternative path was coming up soon, but I missed the turn and was immensely saddened when I realized my error. I had to get away from the crowds of people! Another kilometer ahead, though, I saw another path along a dirt road. It didn’t appear to be marked on my maps, but I decided to take it anyhow since it looked like it paralleled the main path. As long as I could see the main path—and I’d recognize it easily even from a distance since that’s the one hundreds of pilgrims were following—I figured I couldn’t be too lost.

 

So I followed the dirt road, which had less road traffic and was unpaved, and absolutely no other pilgrims. This wonderful parallel path never seemed to wander more than a couple hundred feet from the main path and I sometimes waved when I noticed a pilgrim looking in my direction, swinging my trekking pole high in the air. At one point, my parallel path approached to within 30 feet of the main path—I thought it was about to merge again with the main path, but then it veered away away, a couple of hundred feet away.

 

I’m a little surprised that they hadn’t rerouted the main path to the route I followed since it was better in every conceivable way. No car traffic, no hard pavement to walk on. It was positively wonderful! Whose brilliant idea was it to move everyone to a busy, paved road?

 

Eventually, my parallel path did merge back into the main path again. But I wasn’t on it long before I had another alternative path to follow. My guidebook showed three distinctly different options headed into Burgos. The shortest followed busy roads through what appeared to be an industrial part of the town. Paved and crowded with cars, it looked absolutely miserable on the map. The second option, about a mile longer, veered off to the left by the airport following dirt roads through largely empty fields at first, then followed a less busy road into the city. And the last option, another 0.4 kilometers longer than option #2, followed footpath along a scenic river all the way into the city.

 

A couple of pilgrims I had heard were discussing taking the bus into Burgos because the main path into town was rumored to be absolutely awful. Apparently, it’s common for hikers to take the bus these last few miles into town because it’s such a miserable walk. This sort of talk kind of irritated me. I can totally understand wanting to skip the sections of trail that are nothing more than miserable, noisy, unpleasant walks. But the part that really annoyed me was that they’re solution was just to take the bus past it even though there were two alternative options that got around that nasty little area. And come on, when you’ve already committed to walking over 700 kilometers from Saint Jean to Santiago (which is what most people were doing), what’s an extra kilometer or two of walking? It’s like they didn’t like walking, which makes it strange they’d even be on this trail in the first place. “Just take the alternative paths, you dumbass!” I wanted to shout at these people, but I bit my tongue and said nothing. Frankly, I should be glad they wanted to take the bus instead since it meant the trail would be less crowded. As much as I liked people around, I did like them in moderation. =)

 

Obviously, option #3 was the best of the bunch. Practically no road walking, no cars, and—if history was any guide—almost no other hikers would take it. The fools! And that’s the route I intended to follow.

 

I veered left at the first split and of the dozen or so hikers I could see from that vantage point, only three took the alternative path, far ahead of me. Everyone else committed to the slightly shorter but much more unpleasant direct road walk into town. The path by the airport was rather pleasant, except for an ugly barbwire fence that surrounded. It’s not a big airport—only one plane took off while I was walking past, and the trail was quiet again once it took off and left. I had to cross a busy road shortly past the airport, walking through a small suburb of Castanares, then I followed the alternative to the alternative path alongside the River Arlanzon.

 

At this point, the noise of the nearby roads polluted the atmosphere. BUT! I was still on pedestrian-only footpaths and the walk alongside the river was quite pretty, even if the noise of the city could still be heard in the background. I could only imagine the horrors everyone else was experiencing on the main roads into town!

 

I passed a couple of bridges, then crossed over one of them thinking I was in the right place that would lead to a few hotel options a few blocks away. However, I misread my map. The map in my guidebook was not very detailed and several bridges did not appear on it at all. Not realizing this, I cut off the alternative path and into town a couple of kilometers too soon. Even though I did quickly realize that I took the wrong path into town, I figured the hotels had to be close and continued further into town along the busy roads I had tried so hard to avoid in the first place. Now I wasn’t an any official path at all—I was on the Trail of Ryan. =)

 

I walked for about a kilometer before I finally hit a large intersection of two busy roads and could finally identify my correct location on the map and was severely disappointed when I realized that I was at least another kilometer or two away from the hotels I was going to try to get a room at. I had cut off the river path way too early! Drats. At this point, though, it would have been quicker just to keep going forward than trying to backtrack to the river path again, so that’s what I did.

 

I checked into the Carrales Hostel, not really a hostel, but that’s what it’s called. I checked my email and had one from Vivian who’d arrived in Burgos already. I thought she was well behind me at this point, but she skipped ahead on a bus from a couple of days back. I was glad she did so since it gave me an opportunity to meet up with her again. =)

 

We met up for dinner and she complained a lot about the “race” to the alburgues each day saying how stressful it was not knowing if there would be a bed available or not and that she was killing her feet with the race, and that she just wasn’t having fun because of it.

 

I didn’t really have any good suggestions for her for the problem, though. “If you carry a tarp and a sleeping bag, you can just sleep outside like I do,” I told her, but I knew she’d never do that. Nope, she was a princess she had told me earlier in the hike, and she liked being a princess. =) She wasn’t a camper. Vivian was also the second person today who complained bitterly about the daily race to the alburgues. The problem was apparently a lot worse than I had imagined, and I was glad that I wasn’t a part of it. The freedom that a tarp and a sleeping bag provided were worth every ounce. =)

 

Eventually, we split and went our own way. I found a small shop with some food idems and I needed to resupply my food. The selection was awful, but I picked up some corn flakes for breakfast—not especially filling for my breakfast needs, but it was still better nothing. I also tried to buy a bag of bread, but the lady took it away from me saying I couldn’t buy it. WTF? “But… but….” I stammered. Why was it on the shelf if it wasn’t for sale?

 

And she pointed to an expiration date on the plastic bag. It had expired two days earlier. Frankly, I didn’t really care. Somehow, I didn’t think I’d die if I ate the bread—it looked perfectly fine—and even stale bread was better than no bread at all. But the woman ringing up my order didn’t seem to agree and felt that no bread was better than stale bread and refused to sell it to me. Then to add insult to injury, she also took away the bottle of Coke I was trying to buy.

 

WHAT? Surely that couldn’t be expired too! But she took it back to the refrigeration case and pulled out another one from the back. “It’s colder,” she told me as she replaced the one I had taken. Sheesh! At least she was going to let me buy a bottle of Coke. For a second, I was worried she wouldn’t let me do that either.

 

Then it was back to the hotel for the night.

 

One of the larger crosses along the trail.

 

For the first time in what seemed like eons, there were actually
clouds and it was overcast for most of the day. But this
particular cloud fascinated me, the way it pierced through the
other clouds. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a cloud quite like this one!

 

I blindly followed the paved road like everyone else did here, but
I’m pretty certain that the dirt road that continues straight and
up the hill was an alterative path I could have used.

 

I followed this alternative path instead—a huge improvement over the
busy, paved road that everyone else followed.

 

At this point, I had remerged with the main path again. But I absolutely
LOVE this photo. Something about that flower hypnotizes me. =)

 

A small restaurant along the trail that’s packed with pilgrims, and
they’ve lined their packs up against the wall.

 

Here’s the junction between the ugly walk into Burgos or the pleasant
one. The pleasant one is a kilometer longer. But see all those
dots on the road? Those are pilgrims so decided that they’d rather
take the miserable walk into town instead. Very few people took the
nicer (but one kilometer longer) option. I would, though!

 

Walking alongside the barbwire fence that surrounds the airport.

 

A church in Castanares.

 

A footbridge over the River Arlanzon.

 

So much better than that ugly road walk everyone else is doing. As
nice as this area looks, however, it does not escape all of the
city noise. It’s still a much more pleasant option walking into Burgos, though!

 

I took this photos from under a bridge crossing the River Arlanzon.

 

I accidentally found myself on THIS miserable roadwalk when I left
the riverwalk too early.

 

I have no idea what this art is supposed to represent, but
they’re awfully cute. =)

 

I would have expected to see this in Pamplona!

 

Colorful artwork in a roundabout.

Day 36: Funny Photos

September 16: It was a little chilly overnight, probably due to the cloud of clouds during the night and the fact that I wasn't under trees to help keep me warm. 

 

 

I ate breakfast, packed up camp, and headed out. That last part turned out to be somewhat problematic for me. The evening before, I had scrambled up a short but steep cliff to get to a perch where I camped, but looking down the slope, it looked positively dangerous to go down the way I came up. It’s a little strange how you can safely climb up a slope that’s not safe to descend. 

 

I followed the edge of the cliff, hoping it would reconnect to the dirt road below me, but I hit a dead end when I reached a thick tangle of brush.

 

It seemed safer to scramble up the small cliff than scrambling down a small cliff.

 

So I doubled down and climbed up the next cliff, and it was indeed an empty field that had been used for farming. I quickly found the exit from it to the adjacent dirt road and hoofed it back to the Camino.

 

The rest of the day was largely uneventful. I stopped a few times for hour-long breaks admiring the scenery. I kept my eyes open for interesting photo ops and I took a couple of fun ones. =)

 

In the last town I passed through for the day, San Juan de Oretega, neither of the two vending machines in town seemed to work. What’s up with that?

 

And I set up camp just beyond the town. I tried to find a place that was a little protected within some trees.

 While writing in my journal for the day, I added the day’s mileage to my running count and concluded that as of this campsite, I had hiked 1000.3 kilometers. Seemed like I should celebrate the accomplishment, but I didn’t. I just read my book for awhile before eventually drifting off to sleep.

 

 

It’s hard to believe, but this is the same sunflower when
I tried to pose with it for my own photo!!!! Darned
thing tried to eat my hand off!

 

It was a blustery day and all I could do not to have
the wind blow me away!

Yeah, okay, maybe it wasn’t so windy….

Maybe I just found a bunch of branches trimmed from a forest
laying in a heap on the side of the trail. And maybe I lifted one
of them above my head.  And maybe I edited the photo later 90 degrees
to the left to make it look like I was sideways instead of
standing straight up…. =)

 

Another wind farm. I tried to think of a good Don Quixote
photo op, but none of my ideas panned out. *shrug*

 

I don’t see praying mantises on the trail very often!
But it somehow seems appropriate for a mantis to pray on
a pilgrimage route. =)

 

Stacks of lumber along the trail.

 

I kind of admire these “little plants that think they can!”

 

In the heart of San Juan de Oretega.

Day 35: Off the Beaten Path

September 15: I took my time checking out of my hotel in the morning—no rush! But it put me behind the bulk of most hikers who stayed in the hostels and left before dark. 

 I stopped for a short snack break in Viloria de la Rioja where I swung on some swings. I flipped through my copy of Miam Miam Dodo—a French guidebook with simple maps and lists of lodging along the route. I became familiar with these guidebooks from my time on the French section of the trail and liked it so much, I picked up a version that covered the Spanish route I now followed. Nobody else on the trail had this book, though. Well, I bet anyone from France probably had them, but no other English-speaking people carried this French guidebook. Just me. =)

 

And while I was looking at the path ahead, I noticed it included an alternate route going out of town that was available but not listed in any other guidebooks, and I found it very appealing. The main path followed alongside a busy, noisy road and would have been crowded with large quantities of pilgrims. This alternate path stayed well away from busy roads and since it wasn’t even shown in the guidebooks everyone else carried, the chances of even seeing another pilgrim along the route were practically zero. In terms of distance, they looked about the same. The one catch—if you can call it that—was that the guidebook said that the route was unmarked. It’s a lot easier to get yourself lost along an unmarked route than a marked one. =) But that was a minor point—I had little doubt that even if I did get lost that I could find my bearings again. I really, really wanted to take this alternate route.

 

So I took the alternate path as I headed out of town. If any other pilgrims noticed my unexpected turn, they didn’t say anything or ask if I knew what I was doing. I followed a road towards San Pedro del Monte. Since the path was unmarked and I only had a very crude map to follow, it wasn’t clear exactly where the correct turnoff was located. But I had followed these maps for hundreds of miles and—to me, at least—I felt like the turnoff would be practically in town rather than just before it (despite that the map actually did show the turn before the town). I was familiar enough with these style of maps to “understand” what it was trying to tell me. 

 

Eventually I got into the town and there was another turnoff to the right which I thought might be the correct one, but looking ahead, I saw a dirt road far to the right of the town and I felt absolutely certain that that was the correct path. Except this intersection I now stood at didn’t seem to go to that road in the distance. I was torn. Continue straight, or turn?  

 

I decided to plow ahead and scout for whatever intersection would take us to that dirt road I saw in the distance. As I got deeper into the town, I got a sinking feeling that maybe that last turnoff was the correct one, but I finally got to what appeared to be the main town square where I hit another intersection. I was certain this turn would take me to that dirt road I hroad seen earlier—the road to Fresnena if my hunch was correct—but the intersection was in the direct center of town and my map didn’t show the intersection there at all. I was still torn about which of the two intersections was the correct one. The previous one better matched the location on my map, but this one seemed to have the road that led off in the correct direction. In my gut, I felt like this one was the right one

 I decided to ask for directions. I saw a woman coming out of a house  “Fresnena?” I asked, pointing up the road. (You don’t really need to know much Spanish to ask directions. It’s understanding the reply where knowing Spanish comes in handy!)

 

The woman said yes, that was the correct direction, then mumbled something about the path to Fresnena being “confusing.” That didn’t bode well…. She called inside the house and a young girl, perhaps 8 to 10 years old, came out seconds later, and her mom told her to guide us to Fresnena! I certainly didn’t expect a guide! And I was more than a little surprised that her mom would send her off with a  stranger that didn’t even speak Spanish very well. Foreigner, no less! I felt a little guilty about the fuss she was making over m,e. I just wanted to confirm that that road was the road to Fresnena, and she already told me it was. Why did I need a guide?

 

I waved goodbye to the mother , the young girl, and I headed down the trail. I tried asking the kid what her name was, and it sounded like the longest most complicated name I had every heard.

 

 

I saw a yellow arrow painted on a rock on the ground a little further on. I thought the route was unmarked, but look! A yellow arrow! . Maybe the Camino used to follow this route but was rerouted years ago to the current path alongside the highway? This arrow was just an old one that had never been removed (or repainted) for years and years.

 

My guide then pointed off, saying that that was the direction to keep going. I guess she wasn’t taking me all the way to Fresnena, but that was okay by me. She must have been sent with me to make sure I got past that one intersection that I had to admit I’d have gone astray. Once I was past that, I figured, it must be easy to navigate the rest of the way.

 I  waved goodbye to my guide and thanked her, and she turned back to go home. The rest of the route to Fresnera was fairly obvious and I didn’t get myself lost. From a distance,I was able to see Fresnera then just had to keep walking in that general direction. Before I reached town, though, I stopped for a break on the side of the road with a wonderful view and an ever so slight breeze. It was quite warm out, uncomfortably so, and no shade was available, but I liked the stop anyhow. It was so quiet and mellow compared to the hustle and bustle of the main path filled with other hikers.

 

Eventually, though, my break was over and I continued on into the town of Fresnera. My guidebook said there was a water fountain available, which was good because I was nearly out of water, and was majorly disappointed when I  found a water fountain that I  couldn’t figure out how to trigger to get water. No water…. The next town, several kilometers away, also had water (allegedly), so I wasn't in any imminent danger of dying of thirst, but it could be a very thirsty trek to the next town. I saw a woman at the edge of the plaza and asked her how to get water out of the fountain. She said something that I did not understand at all, then she said that she’d fill up my bottles with water. Awesome! I gladly gave her my bottle.

The woman returned with my water bottles, filled to the brim with that wonderful liquid known as water. Just a bunch of hydrogen and oxygen molecules, but so how important those molecules were! A man followed the woman out shortly afterwards—her husband, perhaps?—who knew a little English and explained that the water fountain was currently broken which is why I couldn’t get any water out of it. This was somewhat of a relief to me. For awhile, I thought I was just too stupid to figure out how the darned fountain worked. =)

 

I continued through town along the trail where a few minutes later, I found another water fountain—this time it was working. I didn’t have to impose on that woman at all—I just had to hike further into town! Oh, well. I drank all I could from my water bottle and topped it off at the new fountain.

Onward, out of town, I passed more haystacks

 

Onward and onward I walked, eventually hooking up with the main trail alongside the busy highway and packed with pilgrims. Actually, with my leisurely walk and long break, the bulk of the pilgrim pack was well ahead of me, but I had a few stragglers who must have been surprised when they saw me merging with the main trail at such an unexpected location.

 

At the edge of Belorado,I stopped at an alburgue for a few hours to rest and relax and chat with some other pilgrims, including the three who had camped out at the reservoir a few days earlier. 

 

I killed a few hours at the alburgue, drinking cold sodas and chatting with friends, waiting until closer to sunset to head out of town and set up camp. At around 6:00, I was ready to leave.

 

I  stopped in the main plaza, where there was a tourist office to get my credentials stamped.I also asked for directions to the grocery store while I was  there. A large group of South Koreans were sitting in the plaza, and when I walked passed, they all smiled and greeted me with “On-yahn a-say-oh”—and I greeted them in return. 

 I then headed out of town to find a place to camp. The trail followed a busy road for many kilometers out of the town, so I veered left on a dirt road away from the busy highway, hiking off trail a good 15 minutes to get away from the highway noise, climbing up a steep embankment, before finally finding a nice little place to camp. I could still hear the highway traffic far off in the distance, but it was no longer so loud as to disturb my sleep.

 

 

I’ve always been a kid at heart. =)

 

My guide through a tricky, unmarked alternative path….

 

Karolina holds up the massive haystack!

 

Karolina is very cooperative when I have suggested
poses with crazy stuff along the trail. =)

 

I loved all the flags lining the entryway to this alburgue in Belorado.

 

I spar with a mural in Belorado.

 

I was horrified to see this geocaching display in the visitor’s center
in Belorado. Where’s the letterboxing display? There is none!
(But they did have a stamp for my credential.)

 

 

The bridge out of Belorado.