Walked 22 km!
I accidentally slept in and didn't leave the hostel till 8:15. Then it took forever to get out of León and its suburbs. On the plus side there was plenty of opportunity to come a cross a shop where I could replace the cord to my kindle (it broke last night). €1.50 at a Chinese Bazar shop and it even works.
There are two ways to go after León by the road or the scenic route. I took the longer scenic route which doesn't really sound like me, does it? It was probably more hilly but I was getting tired of walking alongside the highway. The cool weather has ended and it is back to scorching heat and "Que calor!"
Mosaic and statue in Villar de Mazarife
The harder the walking day the better the company at the end. Marika from Australia is here. She left me in the dust two weeks ago but injury and a slow pace have here back here with me. Nice to see an old face. Martin, Peter and Alexandra from Germany are new to me. Gloria from Iyaly, Juan and Jorge from Spain have been with me the last few days. My ONE roommate tonight is Christina from France.
I stayed at the Albergue Casa de Jesús. It has a Viking ship and a cement pond. They say its a swimming pool but I beg to differ. I think they just made it out of cinder blocks and painted it with some kind of blue plasticky waterproof coating. Not at all up to code.
Shower, laundry then pool time! Jorge, Gloria and I had a nice few relaxing minutes in the pool. Then Jorge started trying to show off his swimming strokes. Mine are better and I showed him up!
Marika invited me to join a group of them for shared pasta dinner. They went to the store and had bought zucchini, onion, tomatoes, pasta and sauce. I ended up taking over most of the cooking when they realized there was no oil to sauté the veggies and they had no clue how to proceed. I really do enjoy cooking. The meal turned out tastyand everyone enjoyed it. It could have been better as the only spices at the albergue were salt, yellow food coloring (for paella I think) and cinnamon sticks. Marika, the three Germans and I were joined by another girl and a man from the Netherlands. There was plenty of food for every one and Martin from Germany hilariously ate four servings. There was also bread, wine, cheese and magdelanas (like muffins with a light lemon flavor) for dessert. There was plenty of food for every one and Martin from Germany hilariously ate four servings of pasta.
Jorge from Galicia Spain is an elementary school PE teacher and he led us all in stretching exercises that I was peer-pressured into joining. It was pretty easy stuff just to loosen our weary bodies. He gave commands in Spanish and I translated them into English for everyone else. Yup my Spanish is slowly improving.
We all sat around chatting till way past the smart time to be asleep.
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