Day 25 (to Santoibanez de Valiglesias): … I have walked 500 miles …

… (all right, kms) so far, as I leave yet another …  

[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”25″ gal_title=”2014-Day 25″]

… sleepy town behind me. Few pilgrims on the road that runs straight ahead. I keep hearing a sound that reminds me of someone using a hammer to hit nails in a piece a wood … it took me a while to figure out it was a sound of the hiking poles from German peregrinos behind me.

Moving on … and keep bumping  into few people that look like peregrinos … that are going in the opposite direction from the yellow arrows … strange.

I join Jan and Joana for a sandwich break in a bar featuring a parrot … that speaks “hola” almost good enough to be mixed up with another person.

Leaving the town, I bump into Ray and me we move on together talking about music. Next town Hospital de Obrigo is at the juncture of two Camino routes. At the courtyard of the bar we bump into Italian group … Federico, Desire and Giulia. The town has a spectacular medieval bridge that everyone pauses to use as a backdrop for photos.

At the next village Ray meets another American from his home state, Wisconsin. At around 13h we arrived at  Santoibanez de Valiglesias, our planned stop for today. The Italians are already there together with Joana, Jan and a new Australian Angela. While Giulia is engrossed in sociology book, I kid around with Federico since they originally planned to stop at Leon then changed their minds and went “just a little bit more” … see you in Santiago …  was my farewell greeting.

Australians join the Italian in continuing on, while Ray, Joana and me stick around, together with a German couple. New and very comfy albergue.
I use the free time to do some calculations, and realize I walked over 500 km so far. Now for my  uninitiated, pre-Camino mindset it sounded like quite a lot. But on the Camino I didn’t feel that  traversing all that distance was some kind of major accomplishment … I was simply focused on taking just one step at the time … interestingly, the km’s added up.

That was day no. 25.