Walking the Camino

Photos: 5am start time- selfie with the moon; Boots lined up outside of the albergue; Ancient churches seen in every town we cross; skull and crossbones on the side of a church- no Moors in perpetuity; landscape at the top of a steep grade; another house built into the side of a hill; another cross in the middle of nowhere.
Communication on the Camino: a French woman mining a headache and vomiting lying on the bed across from me🤮; an Italian man, not able to speak the English conversation around the table, smiled and served each one of us paella and wine; in the cities, a honking car is a positive sign on the camino. It is usually followed by a waving hand, pointing the correct way, opposite of the direction we are traveling. We have never been more than a block off of our path before being redirected by the locals; finger shaking, then "no mijas" then pointing across the street; another Italian man with little English directing another Pilgrim with a question to Marjory and me, referring to us as "The Teachers; listening to two men arguing in Italian about whether DaVinci painted the Mona Lisa in France or Italy; listening to two German men discuss different types of beer, including one variety that is meat flavored, and that it should be served at room temperature; a young Brazilian woman aptly describing the hunched over limping gait seen by people after a long trek as the "Pilgrim walk"; our friends from Korea yelling across the street excitedly waving both hands with big smiles; a woman from the states yelling "Hey Peace Corps",noticing the patch on my pack. She had been stationed in Georgia before being evacuated. We all seem to find a way to communicate!Read more