La Casuca del Perdón

It was one of those memorable camino experiences, nothing you can plan for, something that just happens.

Miki, the hospitalero of this small Albergue, puts his heart and soul into it. Think Bodenaya on the Primitivo for a good comparison. He makes a mean paella, I think every day, and then a few hours later serves dinner. Way too much food, my favorites were the zucchini purée and the homemade french fries. Other things on offer were lentils, a Spanish tortilla, and a plate full of meat. Vino de la casa, and for the intrepid, homemade orujo de miel.

Miki has a story similar to Alex’s in Bodenaya. He was burned out with a boring job, and took over this albergue on a whim. Four years later, he can’t imagine doing anything else.

Miki’s friend Marta and her 14-year-old son Leo came over from their house, located a few valleys over from this one. They had snow up to their knees when they left to come visit Miki. I really enjoyed talking to both of them, very cool people. They live in a town with six residents. Marta teaches design online with Valencia’s distance learning university. Her son Leo gets picked up on Monday morning and taken to Potes, where he spends the week in high school and sleeps in the Hogar Escuela. He then comes home for the weekend. He was very engaged with all of us old folks, and and asked me a little questions about the United States.

The cheese maker Pedro, is quite a character. He had something to do with the filming of a Heidi movie, that was filmed in this area. I really didn’t follow all the details. But he is a showman with his cheeses. He came up to the albergue after lunch, and packed seven of us in his little van. He took us to the place where he makes the cheese, and we could eat cheese and drink more red wine. The cheese was terrific. One of the Spanish women who was having her suitcase transferred by Taxi every day, bought about 5 kg of it to bring back to Málaga. It was really quite exceptional.

After dinner, we all walked a couple of kilometers over to the farm where Pedro gets his sheep milk and cow milk for his cheeses. It was a small herd of about 20 cows, and we got there just as the Farmer was scooping out the poop from the barn.This is something he has to do at least twice a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. He was chatty and proud of both the cows and sheep.

It was after 11 before I went to bed, but breakfast was at 8:30, so I got plenty of sleep. The idea was that I would walk with the group for about a kilometer and then they would point me in the direction of a shortcut to the Camino. Everything worked fine except the shortcut, and I wound up coming all the way back into town and going out on my GPS tracks.

I don’t imagine I’ll be in touch with these guys much, but we had a great time together, a few heavier, conversations, and a lot of fun. And we do have each other‘s contact information, so you never know.

But Miki’s albergue really deserves a shout out. Without him this stage just wouldn’t have been so special.Læs mere