Rabanal del Camino-El Acebo 10 miles

Today was an ass-kicker. It was 10 cold, rocky, misty, windy, uphill, downhill, muddy, and more rocky miles.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved it. It was beautiful but I was very happy to see sweet little El Acebo finally emerge in the distance and positively thrilled when I realized that my cute hotel was the very first building we came upon into town.

And speaking of my hotel…oh my god it is so cute. I have the top floor attic room all to myself. My own bathroom with the hottest of showers, a huge bed and an amazing view. And I have two nights here! Fucking squee.

Today’s walk took us past the Cruz de Ferro (Iron Cross). It’s the highest point of the Camino Frances, at almost 5,000 ft elevation. The Camino tradition is to leave a rock at the base to symbolize leaving your burdens behind. As you can see from the photo, I’m standing on hundreds of years of left-behind burdens.

I texted Laura, who is two days behind me at this point that, “the trail was a bit of a bitch.” A lot of people were moaning and groaning about it before leaving this morning so I wasn’t sure what to expect. It wasn’t bad but only because I’ve hiked the Appalachian Trail’s gatdam roller coaster and still have some PTSD from it. 😁

That being said, there was so much mud that my shoes are a different color now and I nearly wiped out two or three times. Thank goodness for hiking poles.

When the clouds and mist and fog would break, the views were amazing. And even when they didn’t, there were adorable (and I’m sure deadly) mushrooms and gorgeous moss laden trees. It was all so stunning. At one point, I stopped and hollered, “I’m in fricking Spain!” It doesn’t get much better than that.Read more