Hello Everyone!!
We just made it to Lugo!! We made it over the mountains, not without trouble, and our minds are now fixed fully on the goal. Our next days will be San Roman de Retorta, Melide, Santa Irene... and SANTIAGO!!! Four more days of walking!! We will arrive on Saturday the 15th early afternoon.
From Tineo to O Cadavo Baleiro, we had to go over mountains... endless valleys and passes under a blazing sun. Some days were without food (from Pola de Allande to A Fonsagrada, there was nothing but path and mountains). In Oviedo I threw my shoes away, it was a sad moment. They had helped me walk 1350 kms, but by the end, my feet were basically coming out of them. So I bought new shoes and so far my feet are fine, a few new blisters, but nothing bad. In A Fonsagrada, James Hackman, a close friend, met us and has been walking with us, and will be to the end! It´s a great boost to have a new person walking along with us and lift our weary minds a bit. He lives and works in India, and flew all the way to Spain to visit Mathieu, my brother, and walk with us. Today is his second day... he´s in pain. I fell behind right at the beginning of the day, and never found Josh and James until the end in Lugo. They had gotten lost and I was trying to catch up with them; little did I know they were behind me. So I walked 31 kms in 6h. I did assume, after a while, that they were behind me, so I left a bag with food for them along the trail, with a note telling them when I had passed that point. They found it, fortunately... it would have been lost food. I didn´t want to wait for them, because I wasn´t 100 % sure they were behind me. Unfortunately, they got lost twice and prolonged their day with 4 extra kms... the camino... at one point they were heading straight north, and not west.
Everything is going well, the weather has been hot and dry, my stomach is back to normal and Josh hasn´t gotten sick. In Pola de Allande, I met a pilgrim waiting for a bus. He was going home because of a stomach flu. He was extremely sad and depressed and it made me realize THAT though we are very close, anything can happen still. We aren´t there until we get there!
As we approach Santiago, we feel the end of our pilgrimage, with everything after it sometimes weighing our minds down a bit. Josh knows that right after he gets back, he´ll be living a crazy life of quick decision making, millions of emails to write, many things to think about. I know my teaching life will pick up quickly and I´ll be sucked back into a rat race life. We are so tired of walking, yet, stopping implies so much... All of a sudden, we´ll be back home, where we have closets with a large variety of clothes to choose from in the morning, a bed to sleep in for more than 1 night, a normal life... we haven´t slept in the same place for the past 64 night.
We know we´ve changed, and it´s been a good thing for us to experience intense pain, with a set goal ahead of us. The joys and suprises along the way have made our pains so much worth going through. Life wouldn´t be a good one without pain, and a far away goal reached without pain would be dull. As I walked alone this morning through beautiful woods here in Galicia, I went through all the pains we went through since we left the forests of the Velay, in central France, and I was so glad for them. Had we not gone through challenges, we probably would have quit out of boredom or lost our way. At times, the pain was so intense we would walk faster, concentrate more so we wouldn´t get lost, and the place we´d be shooting for that day would be like reaching heaven. No, suffering and pain is very good, one of the best motivators out there... I remember Josh walking into Cahors, with feet that looked like raw chicken skin; he was walking so fast and so focused, in such a humamal way... such a difference with some of our past couple of days where we haven´t had much physical pain, and where it´s taken us 6 hours to walk 10 kms, where we´ve been way slower, much more lazy... and because of that, we´ve come to the pilgrim hostal dead last, and had to sleep on the ground, for lack of available beds. So yeah, it´s good to get our butts kicked along the way, in some way or another.
Anyway, our last update might be in Santiago... Josh just decided to quit, so I´ll be coming alone.
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