Day 27 on Camino, Wednesday, Jul 1, O'Cebriero to Triacastella

Day 27 on Camino, Wednesday, Jul 1, O'Cebriero to Triacastella

Numbers: 13.31 miles per Garmin GPS. 35,514 steps and 79 floors per Fitbit. It was a large downhill day - about 1,800 feet - all in the last 4 miles or so, but there was enough uphill to give us about 80 floors. Didn't check thr GPS for elevation changes...another day.

We were met with a glorious sunrise, along with islands in the sky - wonderful clouds and fog, and temperatures probably 20 degrees cooler than the last few days. The views were as good or better than yesterday.

Dave's voice

Things to know if you travel on the cheap in Spain:

1. Hotel beds will be good, firm. We haven’t had a bad mattress yet. But, the European idea of a bed is a twin bed ala "I Love Lucy." Sometimes, to make a "doble," they push two twins together. True, the sheets are for two separate beds, but the coverlet is over both, as if it’s one bed. And forget about "queen" or "king" beds. Kings and queens are smaller people here.

2. Don’t be surprised if there are faucets above the bathroom door. Dunno why. Never had the cojones to twist’em.

3. Air conditioning. Okay, we’re staying at low end places. Good luck, though. The ancillary is that cheap Spanish hotels don’t have screens over the windows, so opening them means letting in all manner of wild life including (but usually only in Eastern Europe) vampires.

4. Showers on a stick. Some sick genius got the idea that people would prefer to hold a pulsing wand of hot water while attempting to soap themselves with one hand. While one cannot ignore the erotic potential here, when combined with leaky shower curtains or the Spanish half shower enclosure, this is a recipe for a lot of water on the floor.

5. Toilet paper made from recycled plastic bottles. Need I say more?

6. Shower "gel." This is either proof that the devil is alive or that P.T. Barnum was right when he said "There’s a sucker born every minute." Somehow, the public has been convinced that soap should be squeezable. Many wonderful things can be and should be squeezed. Soap should not.

7. Motion-detected hall and stair lighting. This is probably a good idea as it saves energy; however, not every system works all the time, sometimes leaving the guest in the dark on stairs or in an unfamiliar hallway. Some systems have on/off switches which are handy if you have enough light to find them. Not handy when you don’t now where they are/can’t find them.

8. "Included" breakfast service at 8:00 AM. Okay, you’re In a foreign country and probably won’t be there more than once or twice in your life…Why not sleep in and have a late breakfast to shorten your day and so hotel staff don’t have to get up early? What happened to the "Market" economy where businesses adapted to the will of the consumer? Here the consumer has adapted to the will of tradition. Businesses actually close in the middle of the day for no good reason. Granted, it’s hot then and a good nap makes some sense at almost any hour but, again, have customers demanded that grocery stores, banks, etc. close up shop in the middle of the day? Don’t think so.

9. Hospitality workers who do not learn the language of their customers. Granted, this is a smug American talking but, if you worked In a business where a significant number of your customers did not speak your native language, but did speak a specific other one, would it be good business to learn how to speak that other language? Thought so. When we first went to China a decade or so ago, our local guides really struggled with English; when we went a couple of years ago, virtually every hospitality industry worker spoke English well. Not to say that Americans shouldn’t learn foreign languages; tourists, however, pay to visit "foreign" lands and pump money into local economies. That gives them a certain leverage that businesses should appreciate.

10. French Fries are not food. Spanish cuisine is not so barren of tradition and innovation, that fries can substitute for almost anything. Having traipsed across a lot of Spanish farm land, I can say with certainty that the Spanish produce a lot of wheat, corn, rye, and oats. I’m pretty sure that Spanish citizens are eating these grains, rice, and who knows what else. They probably even eat fries for all I know, but I’ll bet no one is served more fries than a tourist.

Today’s hike took us from the cool air and morning fog of O Cebriero to the hazy middle temps of Triastella, or "Trickle-Esta" as we’ve taken to calling it, a town which once had three castles. All gone now, but the locals were so proud of their history that they stuck with the obsolete name. Take that, New Amsterdam!

Our hotel here is a "pension." How this differs from a hotel, an albergue, a refugio, a casa rural, a hostal, or a guest house is beyond me. I’m guessing our room and its twin beds once housed four students in bunk beds. Eh. Nice views of the bottom half of pedestrian’s walking by from our room, or, nice views into our room from the street. Both true.

Lunch was macaroni, tuna and tomato, which was noodles in a tomato sauce with tuna. The main course was salmon. Another large, tender piece of fish with the dreaded fries. You get bread, dessert, and a bottle of wine with it, so not much reason to squawk.

Tomorrow and the next day are light, mileage-wise, followed by two medium/long days followed by two easy ones taking us to the finish line in Santiago. Good.

A few pictures of the early morning:

From our room

On the road early:

Dave heads into the fog

Eerie peregrino statue

And, a few others from today:

Yes, for the gents

Typical things one sees on The Camino

 

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