I have a promise of my own to keep. I meet a friend at the train station in Puebla de Sanabria at 3:14 in the morning on August 24th. I’m averaging 29.5 Kilometers (~18.5 miles) per day at the moment. My mind does the calculations every day. At this rate, with one or two strong walking days, I can make it all the way in for our train station rendezvous on foot--a real pilgrim effort. Today, a 39 kilometer effort in to Carcaboso (KM 383) has been a good day. Ruben, a 29 year old Spanish industrial arts teacher, has joined forces with Manuel and me. Afoot at 5 a.m., we walked first under stars through cool, pine needled forests. Later, nearing the old walled city of Galisteo, thanks to miles of irrigation canals, we began to walk between fresh green fields—tall, healthy corn growing in otherwise desert.
Here in Carcaboso, Alfredo, in Swedish national flag T-shirt, and his kindly, silver haired and grandmotherly wife, Irene, have welcomed us to clean, superbly comfortable, quiet and air conditioned rooms above the street and next to their “Bar Via de la Plata”. They’ve greeted us with bright eyes and boundless generosity—an ice cold liter bottle full of purified water for starters and a hardboiled egg appetizer for each of us. I wish you could have seen the gesture as Irene cracked mine and, smiling, pushed it over the bar towards me. She likes Pilgrims. Tonight is supposed to produce the peak of the Perseid meteor shower. This we’ve learned from Ruben’s I-Phone, which makes a surprisingly good Via de la Plata pre-dawn flashlight. I doubt if Bill Gates or the Apple Magicians intend this. Irene has dropped by to talk with us so … I’m off to socialize.
