Honorable Mentions

I just wanted to follow up Jess´s entry with a little side note about some great pilgrims we met last night in Palas de Rei. The two men who were sleeping in the bunks beside Jess and I turned out to be some great people. The first is an older Austrian man named Rudy, who started walking the Camino from his front door in Austria, as is the tradition for European pilgrims. This means that he has been walking for about 3000km now.....which makes me slightly less proud of my 800km walk......only slightly. He recently won a long battle with cancer, and his way of saying ¨thank you¨ to the powers that be, is to walk this ridiculous distance. He is a hero! He had much to say, and we were even treated to a little traditional Austrian yodeling, which was awesome!

Note to self: learn how to yodel.

The other gentleman in the room was a guy who is from Galicia ( the Spanish province we are in, for those of you not paying attention ), and he is so proud of this area, that he whipped out tons of beautiful pictures he had taken and told us a lot about the culture and specialties of this province. His contribution to the evening´s entertainment, was that he was also a piper, and played us some traditional Galician tunes on his flute. It was quite a musical evening all around! He also walked with us today for a bit, and continued playing his flute while we walked.......it was really great, but made me feel a little like I was marching off to war.

All around, the people you meet along the way contribute a lot to the Camino, so I´m glad we got to meet those dudes and hear their stories, and figured there was a place for them on this blog!