Camino Pilgrim

Second week on the Camino has passed. I covered 224km in the last 7 days. With this I am back on schedule to finish in under 5 weeks. First week was a bit weak, but this one made up for it.

Beginning of this week it was raining and the trails were barely passable, now just some mud and water in flat areas is left. The going has become so much faster when you do not need to spend half a day doing long distance jumps with a backpack.

Today I was walking through cattle farms most of the day. I must have passed more than a thousand cows without any fence in-between. Some horses too and two very friendly dogs. I even saw a young snake having a morning nap on the trail.

The highlight of the day was passing right through this Roman quad-arch building. Its the only standing building left here from a former Roman town. Its also engraved on all the Camino way markers here in Extremadura region. Its a little past the mid-point of Via de la Plata (Sevilla to Astorga). Mid point was Galisteo which I passed around 30km earlier.

After the Roman arch there were a lot of bigger water crossings. The water levels were so high that one of the crossings had its concrete blocks a little underwater. It was so hot that I went over them with shoes on. Shoes were anyways half wet from walking in these flooded grasslands all day.

I did not mind the mature part of today. It offered so much good shade on a hot day. I had to cover all this 38km without any places to stop or stay in-between. There are still some nearby hotels that pilgrims use and those hotels even offer a taxi service from the Roman arch. So I would say that the 33km of solitude from two days ago without any shade was much harder.

Last few kilometers today I was thinking of using the Camino road, but a flood crossing under highway bridges was torn apart by the water. I had to circle around and get on the highway. Then I decided to use the familiar N-630 all the way until the Camino trail right before Aldanueva del Camino where I am staying today.

There are mountains with snow on top of them just a handful of kilometers away from where I am staying. Its crazy to see snow when walking in a desert. I can see cactuses growing by the side of the road and snowy mountains at the same time.