a long overdue update...

All is well on the camino! I am in Villadangos del Paramo - blink and you´ll miss it! Much like many of the small towns along the way. It was a short 20km hike this morning from Leon and I am happy to give my feet a bit of a rest. The only part of my body that aches now is my feet. They feel really tired in the morning when I wake up but they keep moving me forward nonetheless!

I checked into the albergue at 11am and was the first pilgrim to arrive. I got to choose my bed - which is really rare on the camino! and I have no one waiting in line for the computer... it must be my lucky day!

I am feeling pretty lucky these days in fact. My walking parnter Susan left yesterday to return to the U.S.A and I was hoping to run into some familiar faces in Leon and find a companion for the next stretch. Earlier on the camino Milton and I stopped at the fuente del vino and ran into someone I know from Waterloo and I was hoping to catch up to her. I stumbled upon her on a terrace in Leon which was lucky since she didn´t stay at the official albergue.
My luck gets even better... I knew that the town of Astorga was famous for its chocolate production and it was the scheduled stop for Friday. I discovered yesterday that the chocolate festival starts today and will be in full swing for my arrival tomorrow! I will be needing the 26km walk tomorrow to pre-burn the calories I will consume in chocolate once I get to Astorga! I consider it a very important lesson in Spanish culture to sample all Spain has to offer in gastronomy, especially chocolate!

This brings me to an important thing I´ve learned about the camino... it is not going to help anyone lose weight! The food along the camino consists of a great deal of bread for starters. It is the easiest and cheapest thing to pack and to eat while walking. On top of that, Spanish cuisine involves the foloowing: a) lots of oil b) lots of cheese c) french fries and d) often all of the above! Most restaurants offer a set menu for around 10 euros and includes an entree, a main course, and a dessert, with endless wine and bread. The first course is often vegetables (salad or bean soup) followed by a meat course that is ALWAYS accompanied by french fries, and who can say no to dessert when it is included with the price of the meal?!

I have tried a few dishes that I would like to find the recipes for when I get home. In Logrono we had a fantastic meal and I ate these tiny little red peppers stuffed with some kind of ground meat and lots of cheese. they were covered in a crepe like batter and fried, and served with a roasted red pepper coulis - mmm! The other thing I have really enjoyed is a bean soup/stew with red peppers and chorizo sausage. It sounds simple but the secret is in the broth and I am yet to figure out the secret! This is one that I think you´ll really love Dad!

On top of all that delicious stuff there are pastry shops all over the place, and though I haven´t had an ice cream yet, it is some sort of national rule that everyone eat ice cream between 4 and 6pm everyday and parade up and down the main street or main square to see others and to be seen by others. I´m not appropraitely dressed for this event. The locals put on their most beautiful, colourful outfits and best shoes to eat their ice cream while i sit and watch and try to dust off my pants that i´ve been wearing for almost 3 weeks now!

I´m having great fun walking and learning about Spain - this really is the best way to do it!
Well I´m off for lunch and then a nice siesta and maybe some sun on teh patio .. what a pleasure it is to be a pilgrim!

I will be sure to eat lots of chocolate for everyone and report my findings after my Spanish chocolate degustation! ;)

Lots of love from the camino!

Quick update as I only have 5mins left on the net ...

I am lonley without my pilgrim partner :( but I have only 401km to go until I get to Santiago! :)

I am walking with an American French Prof who started around the same time as Milton and I, so I have good company!

All is well - no pain! and I´m feeling really great now with the distance each day. I´ll try to write a better blog entry next time I find internet access.

Hasta pronto...

Just a quick update since I haven´t done one in a while...

I had a minor set back a few days ago due to an overworked/ strained achilles tendon. After staying in Cezur Menor we walked 25+ kilometers to Cirauqui where we had a great stay at a little albergue in a small village on a hill.

The next morning we walked through Estrella where we stopped around 9am (after 2 hours of walking) because my achilles tendon was causing some pain. I pushed on a further 12 km to Villamayor where we called it quits for the day. The next morning I put my boot on which only made the pain worse, and the next town was 12km away with nothing in between, but I took some advil and walked on. In Los Arcos I called it quits. Milton walked on and I sat an waited for a bus that I discovered would not go to where Milton and I were supposed to meet. I walked back into the main square where I found some fellow pilgrims who helped me get a taxi. Milton was happy to see me - a few hours late - in Torres del Rio where we spent the night.

The next morning I pushed on with my sore heel but gave up in the first town after 8km of walking. Once again, while we had our first cafe con leche of the day, our pilgrim friends helped book a pension where they would meet up with me after my short bus ride and their 9km walk.
We had a fantastic stay in Logrono. Nice quiet rooms (no snoring of other pilgrims!), a great Spanish meal in the old quarter of town, a visit of a wine cellar (we are now in Rioja - the wine region), and of course tapas for dinner as it was Friday night and everyone is else. I also found time that afternoon to make it into a sports store where I purchased a pair of trekking sandals in which I feel no pain and have been able to walk 50km in so far.

Saturday was a 30km day from Logrono to Najera. It was a beautiful town on the river and all the locals were out enjoying the sunshine. There was a big soccer game on tv - Manchester vs Barcelona, and the whole town was out on a terrace to watch it projected on a big screen at a bar.

We stopped after only 20km today - feeling a bit tired from the 30km yesterday I think - and we are settled in at Santo Domingo de la Calzada for the night.

We are both feeling pretty good and have done a total of 215km so far (in 9 days), and I will continue in sandals while my heel recovers.

We are loving our routine: wake up and start walking between 6-7am, stop after the first hour or two for coffee in a small town, walk on until noon or 1pm (in the beautiful 25 degree weather) when we check in at our destination, shower and clean up, eat lunch, SIESTA!!! and then explore the quaint towns, have beer with fellow pilgrims, dinner and bed by 9pm (10pm is the latest we´ve been up!). A great routine and a great way to experience Spain!

Hope all is well back home. Í´m still looking for a spot to upload photos and I will write again soon!

We are making good progress, but I don´t think any body part below my hips is ever going to forgive me!

On day two we walked from Roncevalles to Larasoana - another 27km day. We have stories to tell about Larasoana, but with only 10 minutes for internet I´ll save the stories for when we get home.

Today we were to walk a short 18km from Larasoana to Pamplona, but when we got there and walked around a bit, we decided we had seen what we wanted to see in Pamplona, and that we would rather escape the busy city, and so we kept on walking.

We knew the next albergue was only 5 km from town and so that is where we are - Cezur Menor We got in at noon and have had a quiet afternoon - we really needed to rest. Our speed is slowing down - we walk like we are 90 years old once our boots come off!

Tomorrow we are hoping to get to Puenta La Reina, about 24km away I think. But we have said we will take it easy as we need to climb over a small mountain to get there, and we may be too tired to go the entire way.

All is well so far, and thankfully, we have no minor or major injuries to report! (just sore legs and tired feet after almost 80km in 3 days!)

We are off to enjoy the pilfrim´s menu for dinner! :)

We made it and survived the first day!!!

It was a long, more than 24 hour journey from the time Emma dropped us at the airport until the time we checked in at St Jean Pied de Port, but we made it! The train ride from Bayonne (near the airport) to St Jean was incredible. It was the little engine that could (a single car!) that chugged up the Pyrenees to the start of our trek. There was a river on one side and mountains all around. All is green and flowering and it was really exciting to be getting to our starting point.

We woke up this morning for breakfast at 7am (after a very sound sleep!), and took our first steps on the camino at 7:25am. We had 27km to travel and we weren´t sure we would make it at more than one point. It was only a 1200m climb, but a very long and winding one, and after 6 1/2 hours we made it to our destination at Roncevalles.

The view was incredible! We started out under cloudy skies, and suddenly at one point, around 11am it got very sunny. It took a few minutes to realize why, but when we looked behind us we could see we had climbed above the cloud level. We did take a few photos (thanks to the point and shoot camera Emma helped me sneak into my backpack - thank you dear partner in crime!), but I´ll probably have to wait until I´m home to post the pictures. We were really happy when the camino trailed off into a wooded area on the mountain - a great relief from the sun at just the moment we needed it. We checked into the refugio, which is much more comfortable and clean that we were expecting, and have already sat down for a glass of vino tino (red wine) at a bar that happend to have a computer - what luck!

If today was the only day we did on the hike we would be satisfied : we had breakfast with a man from Spain, a man from Sweden, and a woman from Hugary. We walked a few hundred meters with a man from Ottawa and his friend from Australia, and we have bunkbeds beside a woman from Hamilton and her nefew from New Brunswick! We saw sheep in green pastures, beautiful (wild?), brown horses with blonde manes on one of the mountain peaks and walked above the clouds - what more could we ask for?!

We did 27km today- 23 of which were uphill, and we feel fantastic! My hip flexors are a bit tired, but our feet are in great shape and out backpacks are causing no strain at all on our shoulders. The downhill part was almost the most difficult part of the day - we were exhausted by that point and our feet really started jamming/rubbing in our boots ( I even took a small break to put on some moleskin as a preventive measure --thanks Deb!). All is well on the camino and we are thinking of all of you back home who cheered us on and helped us get here - thanks for all the support!

More updates as soon as possible. Not sure what the plan is for tomorrow - as far as our bodies will take us I guess!

Love from the camino!
Hasta pronto.

Camino de Santiago de Compostela

My next adventure starts in just 5 days when I take on the 780 km camino frances route of the compostela pilgrimage. Milton will join me for the first 2 weeks of the hike. We fly to Biarritz, France via Paris on May 19th. After landing in the afternoon of May 20th, we will make our way to our starting point in St Jean Pied de Port. And on the morning of the 21st we start walking!

I'll do my best to check in and to post glimpses of my trek here on the blog. Thanks for all the well wishes of "buon camino" from family and friends, and thanks for following me here on the blog.

Here is my favourite website about the camino (and my greatest source of information):
http://www.caminodesantiago.me.uk/

I'll be using the camino frances suggested itinerary on this website as a guideline for my hike, but I can only go as far as my feet are willing to take me and I think the best plan is no expectations or strict schedule to adhere to. As much as I want to do this for the physical challenge, I also want to enjoy my time sipping sangria and eating tapas while taking in as much of the Spanish culture as I can! :)

Hasta pronto!

Surprise Mail ...

Dear Aunt Jean,

This is a special post just for you since you are our #1 blog reader.

We received a very nice surprise in the mail this evening. It seems to have taken it's time getting here - almost two months from the date it was post marked! But like you said in your card, the Christmas cake tastes better with age! I let Milton open it since he receives less mail than I do and boy did he go at that tape with lots of eagerness and anticipation! He tore right through all the wrapping and served himself a large slice of cake and then a second slice before I had even finished reading the card! No time for photos or anything which would have enhanced this blog entry ;)

He doesn't want to share with the Koreans - he doesn't think they will appreciate it enough. We will however have some of our friends visiting this weekend and I'm sure they will enjoy the Canadian treat with us. Thanks for thinking of us and for going to the trouble of sending it all the way to Korea. We hope you had a great Christmas and new year!

We celebrated Christmas again this year with our close friends here in Korea. As always when we get together, it was non stop laughs which help us forget how much we miss our families.

We played lots of silly games, like this one in which you must pick up the box with your teeth and not let your hands touch the ground. A real test of flexibility as the box gets smaller and smaller each round!

Me and two others were the winners - once the box was gone, we had to pick up an m&m from the floor - who knew I had such amazing hidden talents?! ; )

New Year's eve was celebrated among friends as well. We had a theme party at our apartment - beauty and the geek - can you guess who went as what?!

We even got some Korean friends to come out, which is extremely difficult to do when they know there will be only foreigners present. This is a teacher from Milton's school Song Ne and his wife, who have become very good friends of ours. They were quite in awe at what goes on at a foreigner's party - all the mingling, and people helping themselves/serving themselves while the hosts do the same. In Korea, there is one boss or head drinker who dictates what and when people eat and drink. Korean celebrations all take place seated around a table whereas at our party (like all western parties!) most people stood in the kitchen and moved from one conversation to another. It was really neat to share our party with them.

The holidays are over and we are now both teaching camps at school for the month of January - camp is the Korean word for summer school, but we are working away on our vacation plans for February - a trip to Laos and Thailand, can't wait!!! Hope you are all surviving the cold, snowy Canadian winter. You aren't alone --we've had more snow in Korea than I thought possible and it's still coming down!