Camino Diary Entry #14

Emails home from the Camino
Los Arcos to Logrono 29kms 8.5 hours
#14 We must have met at least 50 people by now and we all sing out and wave as we re-connect every day or so. We know at least 5 names of these new friends and other wise refer to them via some overly obvious characteristic. ‘Red Beard’ (real name Aaron) from Canada – has sat behind a computer for 15 years in a cubicle. He’s quit his job and headed for the Camino. Somewhere along the way he has had a personality bypass and Day 1 was nearly the end of him. We catch up/overtake/ bump into him every couple of days. He seems to have moments of complete vagueness and we need to point him in the right direction of the yellow arrows. Occasionally, he comes close to nearly animated!
We have again caught up with Barbara and Jordan. She is eternally grateful for the little bundle of New Zealand wool we gave her to replace the toilet paper she has been shoving into the toes of her shoes each morning. Tonight, we finally exchanged email addresses as we are now on a different routine to them. We are having a rest day tomorrow, and we are all worried we will not cross paths  again and have a real conversation!
Father son duo, Talbort and young Myles are from Dallas. They plod along doggedly. Myles is struggling with his feet, blisters in boots and his sandals are not much better. Sadly we are not carrying enough wool to be sharing it with every blister victim.
Anna (from UK) and new partner Remi (from France) have just hit their 40’s. They have no jobs and will keep walking until they run out of money – we joined them for a drink and a few tapas.
Ian from St Albans north of London introduced himself today. He apparantly has never had so much fun in the last 10 years as he has in the last 10 days! Ian has a theory that every one on the Camino has a story (I think we were a bit of a disappointment since we really did only came for the wine!) Ian says everyone is either just divorced, dealing with a death, has work issues, having a mid- life crisis, looking for a spiritual experience – or all of the above. (he was recently divorced!).
All in all, meeting up with these people makes the 29 kms of the day pass by more quickly!
We have graduated from acres of only barley, to grape vines and olive plantations too!
Luck stayed with us today in the form of cloud cover and with the chance to have breakfast at 7 am, Gwyneth gave me special dispensation to wake her at 6.00 am so we could get an earlier start!
I still have no idea why this process takes us 2 hours when we shower the night before, but then we are on holiday and time is irrelevant (unless you are faced with an 8.5 hour walk!) We took a couple more breaks today but there were only 2 towns to pass through so we needed to be thinking about the food and water intake!
We have stopped wondering which day we will really start to feel like we have gained a new level of fitness – now we are wondering which week this might kick in!