I left the apartment in León at 6:28am. The streets of the town were quiet, but not vacant. Sally will take a bus today to San Martin del Camino, giving her another day of rest for a total of three in a row, a very wise move. We know a lot of people that are busted up- blisters, torn ligaments, sprains, etc. Sally reported about a dozen on the bus riding with her. Sally is being proactive by taking it easy to prevent the injury rather than trying to heal after the fact.
We didn’t walk this portion last time. The first 5 or 6 miles are walking the outskirts of León through industrial areas and such. Then the Way parallels the highway for the rest of the 10 miles with cars whizzing by. The Camino has been here for over a thousand years. When they built the highways they used the same route as the Camino as it was the best route, hence the highway and Way standing side by side.
Originally, Sally was thinking of taking the 8:20am bus but upon reflection decided hanging in León was better than in San Martin, so she caught the 11:30 am. I was walking along sometimes listening to Mitchner’s “Iberia”, sometimes “Cryptonomicon” and sometimes just listening to the sounds of the birds and traffic. I noticed that my walking arrival in San Martin was going to closely coincide with Sally’s bus arrival. As I approached this small blip of a town on the highway I started looking over my shoulder to see if her bus was approaching yet. As I approached the actual pullout for the bus stop so did her bus. 5 hours and 35 minutes of walking exactly matched her 25 minutes of bus riding. I watched her step off the bus as she announced to the entire bus “mi esposo”, pointing out the window at me.
We walked about 100 yards to a store and bought sodas and talked to a couple from Florida via Cuba, Henry and Emma. The owner of the store was sitting outside with us. Somehow the conversation got turned to back surgeries. Sally, Henry and the owner had all had back surgeries and they each were pulling up the backs of their shirts to display their scars.
We wandered a few houses down the street to our albergue. No one was there to check us in, but Sally and Becky’s packs had been delivered to the only double room, so we knew we were in the right place. We bothwanted to wash some clothes. We moved to the sink for that activity and we’re in the middle of washing when Bea caught up with us, the owner. We found out she is trained in repairing stained glass and spent last February and March repairing stained glass at Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria. Very Cool!!
I played with her dog, Toto, who likes to catch kicked soccer balls and relaxed in the grassy yard behind her house. Becky soon arrived. She took it slow and easy on her sore shin splints today.
We returned to the store when it opened and bought frozen rice, ham, shrimp and vegetable dinner to cook. Sally and Becky went to the bar for a beer. I stretched and did yoga, then started cooking dinner before they returned.
As we had planned it, those two were to have the private bedroom and I would sleep in the common room in a bunk. However, there were two people with bad coughs. Sally and I shared a twin bed for the night to avoid disease vectors.
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