Day 14: Livin' on a Prayer | Murray Morrison

We’re half-way there hence the title.  We might just do this thing.

We tried something new out this morning by trying to wake up at 5:30 this morning instead of our normal 6. Actually, we have tried to do it before, but this was the first successful attempt. Walking in the cool of the morning is much more pleasant than the 2 pm afternoon Spanish sun. Today we got to experience both because we had a long day ahead of us. We had a dilemma, as there was not a town between the 18 km and 35 km marks. That is the longest gap we have seen so far. Our feet told us not to do it today, but we still tried to make the long jump. On this long gap around 2 o clock, we met a Korean man who was wearing black pants and a dark long sleeve shirt. We asked him if he needed water, and he responded by trying to give us some out of his shot sized water bottle. We took a little break after slowly passing him and looked back, and our new friend was nowhere to be found. Alex thought he had passed out. We considered going back to find him, but the Camino whispered that he was ok, so we continued on. We arrived at our albergue around 3:30, which is a later arrival than usual. I start thinking about our Korean friend again hoping for the best at around 6 when at that moment I hear an Asian accent coming up the stairs. It was of course our friend. He gave us a thumbs up and that was the end of it.

Dinner was interesting tonight to say the least. We started off at a table with just us and a German man. Most people on the Camino speak a little English. This guy spoke as close to zero English as possible. We of course spoke as close to zero German as possible, so this set the stage for quite the dinner convo. I asked if he had been to America, and he said yes. Then I asked where, and he said “no.” After lots of German and English being spit across the table at ears that could hear but not understand, a young German guy sat down and played the role of translator. It was by far one of our favorite dinners.

Happy hump day.

Pictured below is Alex posing by a sign that is 2 km farther to Santiago than the one I'm next to. It seems we are going the wrong direction

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