[Please listen here for the recorded version of what is transcripted, below.]
Good morning world, it's just becoming light out, leaving a small town of 30 people, where I slept in a municipal albergue.
There were only two other people staying there, both women from an island in northwestern Italy. It's a very calm, nice day. Yesterday, I took a partial rest day. I arrived by around one or two and then just rested for the rest of the day, in anticipation of this big mountain, the biggest that I'm going to be climbing today, and In anticipation of a long walk ahead, around 23 kilometers, and then this big mountain. So it'll be a big day, but I'm fortified. I just had a tostada with olive oil and tomato pulp, and I had a cafe con leche from the little machine in the albergue. And it's raining again. It's supposed to rain for the next two days, but right now, it's just a drizzle. So I can leave this message. (You hear my walking stick in the background). Our albergue owner, Demetrius, I believe is his name, works for the municipal government, and that's why he helps to run the albergue, but his real passion is racing horses. He said that people from Galicia are horse crazy, and we have started seeing a lot of horses. A lot of them are workhorses that are just being used to till and work the land. But then there's really high caliber racehorses, like the ones that he races. And he flies these horses all around the world. He flew them to Canada to race them to Toronto. He's flown them to Italy, to Switzerland, and anyway, he was telling us all about that lesson. He was going to a fiesta that was being put on in the neighboring town for children, that involves walking and music and all sorts of things. Really, really sweet and nice. He took really good care of us and slept really well in this albergue. We went back to the only restaurant in town last night, and I finally had the caldo asturiano, the soup from Asturias that I'd seen people eating at lunch, but that was not offered to me, haha. So I knew enough this time, because I'd eyed it, to ask for it. It has these huge white beans in it. I mean by huge, I mean like two inches long, like a cannellini bean, but much larger, denser, meaty, sort of texture, and then it was seasoned with ham hock, so just like little pieces in there, what seemed like a lightly tomato based broth. And then we're given chunks of bread on the side, and we all had. The three of us had this soup right before we went to bed. Was super, super warming, calming. Been raining all day, but the Albergue was nice and warm too. So we had this warm, hot soup and then went to bed, and I chased it with a chupito, a digestivo de hierbas. So it's a yellow version of orujo that’s seasoned with what they call mountain herbs. They say it's good for singers and good for your throat. But it was, it was delicious, and they serve it over a cube, a round cube, of ice that goes into the glass and then they pour it over. I'm not sure I need the ice for my chupito, but I slept deeply, slept well, and I'm ready for the day and I'll be in Santiago in three days. I Anticipate arriving on Monday. I'm excited for that. I'm excited that I get to start focusing on leaving Voice Memos as part of my blog. So if you're listening to this, I'd love your feedback and your thoughts, I'm now thinking of the recorded voice memo as the primary thing I'm sharing, and then the transcript that appears below it is sort of the secondary thing.
Because I like this idea of live vocal transmission in real time, because it allows you to hear the little birds that are singing to my right right now, and the water is dripping off of the corn leaves in the cornfield and I'm walking along, or the click of my stick, or my labored breathing as I go up this hill with my backpack on my back, covered in its own little plastic hairnet rain protection, among other themes, um, and it allows me to sing and to transmit songs and music, and that's kind of fun. So anyway, I think those are the main things. Yesterday was long and rainy and almost entirely uphill, but I'm learning new skills about walking and rain. We stuffed newspaper in our shoes, and they really dried out remarkably well once we took the insoles out, and sometimes just having a little bed to call your own and crash out on or write a blog post on, or whatever one is doing on one's phone. It’s all the privacy you need. It's pretty nice, and it's kind of remarkable how quickly we adjust to different senses of privacy and private space, depending on the circumstances and what is afforded to us. I still very much like my alone time in the morning, and I find it difficult before I start walking, to do a lot of interaction that's not even difficult. This is not the way I like to prefer to start my day, I like to do the internal work first and then externalize once I start walking, and there's some pretty gray black clouds above us, which portends rain for most of the day, which is also what the weather forecast says. And my destination is a town called Poulo in Gallego.
I'm going between the major stops, because I like that. Fewer people, more spaciousness, more time to spend with albergue owners, if they desire. I really, really like that. Yeah. So Abregondo is essentially the little province that I'm meeting right now. So that's it for now. I hope you have a wonderful day, and I'm going to keep on walking.
NB: written and recorded on an iphone while walking the Camino de Santiago. Thankmyou for your graciousness for any/all errors, which are mine alone.
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