Arzua

 

Every town has its church, graveyard and religious symbols.

We started the day in sunshine, but the radar told a different story, so we packed rain gear just in case.  Turned out to be a good thing! The trail led through old old forest with stands of eucalyptus.  The air was fragrant with eucalyptus and mint.  Not so many wildflowers, but lots of foxglove!  Not sure if this is the cheese makers statue we heard about, looks more like a pilgrim.  Photo op nevertheless!

We connected with several perigrinos we had met along the way including Rita and Ghermain.  It is so nice to sit in a little cafe with cafe con leche or fresh squeezed orange juice and connect and hear people’s stories!

It started to rain in earnest about noon, and we geared up with ponchos and raincoats, but it was sporadic and the gear is hot, so we probably donned and doffed our gear about 10 times. We had to cross a little stream over some slippery rocks.  Ron was carrying Lu’s phone, so we were especially careful he did not fall in!

 

There are raised sheds on all the farms, they are used for grain storage as well as hanging meat and cheese.  There were two Chinese girls trying to peer in and see what the sheds were used for.  I tried to explain, but we had no common language.  However, one of them pulled up Google translate on her phone.  I spoke English to the phone and Google translated it for them.  Amazing!  They were delighted and so was I, we parted with giggling and bows of thanks on their part, and a mutual Buen Camino!

Did I mention the rain?  We were pretty wet by the end of the day!

 

At one point, Dick and I stopped for a sock change,and somehow we got separated.  We went faster to try to catch the others, meanwhile they slowed down to let us catch up.  Unfortunately turned out we had passed them somehow.  It was a little anxious for a bit, as they were concerned something had happened to us.  Finally Dick and I stopped at a small cafe, had a beer,  connected to WiFi and we were found!  Moral of the story - a cold beer solves many problems!

We found our apartment, but had to walk back a bit to find dinner.  We found a seedy little bar with enormous and delicious veal burgers, and great French fries.  I thought I would come back from this trip a shadow of my former self, because we are expending a lot of calories each day.  Unfortunately the food is so good, I tend to take those calories right back in every night.  At least I hope it is balancing out!  Dick, on the other hand, can hardly hold his pants up.  We may have to find a hammer and a nail and create another notch in his belt!

We did have another washing machine fiasco, this time it involved a mop.  We apparently are not very smart!

Planning to sleep in a bit tomorrow as it will be a shorter day.  I really wanted to do 400 more  steps for a 

 50,000 step day and even did about 3 steps while brushing my teeth.  I was so tired it took me about 10 seconds to abandon that idea!