The City of Frogs

I believe that Camino-wise we last filled you in about our wonderful stay in Boadilla, so I´ll back track a little and give you some of the highlights since then. We ended the next day in Carion de los Condes, and after a bit of wandering around and a beer or two, we found our albergue (hostel), and it was delightful! It was attached to the huge church in one of the town´s squares, and was run by nuns! They informed us that everyday at 6pm they have a sing-along where all the pilgrims go and share songs from their home country. We unfortunately missed this little ritual, because we were absolutely ravenous and had to go out in search of food, but I thought it was such a cute tradition, that it was worth mentioning.

This was also the night that Spain beat out Germany in the Eurocup Final (soccer, for those of you who are lost), we were expecting a lot of noise and partying to keep us up that night, but we were pretty exhausted so we still managed to get a good nights sleep. Small tidbit, this was also the day that it was 46 degrees in the sun.......so we found the nearest shady spot and parked ourselves for the afternoon.

The next day we knew we had a 17.5km stretch first thing in the morning with absolutely nothing, no towns, roads, cafes, or anything. Just flat fields. Yay. This may not sound like a horrible thing, but after you´ve walked for about 3 hours without having anything to look at besides the gravel path you are walking on, you start to go a little crazy. Needless to say, I was very happy to see buildings in the first town we eventually came upon. We stopped and had a coffee, and then decided to continue on another 6km to the town of Ledigos. Here we found very small, but clean hostel with a bar attached, and settled in for the evening.

From Ledigos we got up and travelled to Sahagun, which is where we spent our Canada Day ( see previous post! ) , and had a pretty laid back afternoon of wandering around the city and learning about the world from 2 Spanish guys we met there. Nothing scandalous, they were 45 year old teachers who liked to talk, so we sat and listened to their stories which were explained in a pretty hilarious Spanish-English-French mix. We had dinner and went to bed, and were pleasantly surprised by a relatively quiet night. Very few snorers, and the ones that did snore, did so intermittently, so it was great for sleeping!

Today we walked from Sahagun to El Burgo Ranero, which translates to the City of Frogs. So far, we have seen no frogs........but we have seen a cute puppy, a few hilarious old guys ( one referred to me as ¨the chubby one¨, which is totally not offensive coming from an 80 year old! ), and a nice church. We also enjoyed a beer and a yummy potatoe dish, along with cow intestines ( surprisingly good ) in a tasty sauce, so we´ll see what else this little town has to offer us later this afternoon!

One last thought, our hostel is built out of straw and mud piled up into walls, so cross your fingers that the Big Bad Wolf doesn´t pay us a visit.

Jess is very desperate for an English book to read, and has just found one at the hostel called ¨Mongoose Watch: A Family Observed¨, so I think I´d best go stop her so I don´t have to spend all day walking tomorrow learning everything I didn´t want to know about mongooses......( mongeese? )