The Meseta: A hot, dry Overview

Don't get me wrong--there were highlights to the semi-desert region known as the Meseta, where Lauren and I have spent the last 5 days. Looking at it in the rear view mirror is particularly nice. Here were some of the best bits:

-Sangria and tapas Fourth of July with our Virginia friends 

-going 3 meters underneath our albergue in Castrojeriz into a cool, narrow underground network of tunnels that have roman origins, were used for defense in the Middle Ages and has been refurbished as a wine cellar and clearly the hospitaleros favorite thing in the world. 

-Climbing up a terrible, fantastic mountain the next morning as the sun rose and spending all that morning under a miraculous cloud cover with a special pit stop at the foot washing albergue!!

(If you spend the night here they wash your feet in a special ceremony. Lauren and I only passed through for a photo op and a stamp but so cool! All in one big room.)

-the garden at the otherwise weird albergue in Boadilla where I ate way too much dinner and felt sick for an hour while a new, very nice German friend Christophe chatted with me by the pool.

-the astounding sunflower fields as we walked towards Sahagun!! 

-apparently discovering hobbiton...? Turns out it was in a random town in northern Spain all along!

Rococo sunrise:

There were very hard moments on the Meseta too, for me some of the hardest of the trip. Long stretches of nothing but dust, featureless landscape and heat. No shade. No water. Tired faces and aching feet. Literally fleeing the sun as the day goes on. Getting lost and subsequently attacked by Mosquitos the size of quarters (I'm serious!!!) leading to a 30 km day.

 Yesterday, after 17 km of emptiness, frustration and even despair, I burst into tears at our albergue. What was the point of this? Why were we there? Where was God in the awful, desert setting we'd been trudging through for hours, getting no where and feeling nothing but heat and discouragement? Lauren was such a great friend. I'm so lucky to have the walking companion I do. 

     But even in the midst of that, by God (but really though) we got up and walked a 25 km day today, and it was absolutely radiant. We walked through fields and fields of flowers and laughed and talked and felt great, passed through towns and the kilometers flew by us. We even had lunch with Danny! 

      And then we bussed to Leon from Sahagun, said goodbye to the Meseta and hello to another Spanish city, bustling and brilliant and alive. Everyday on Camino is different. You have to keep going. The bad days pass, the good days pass, and we try to walk (and yes, for the sake of well being, sometimes bus) them as best we can. God is in the dusty, no shade, no hope days and He is in the sunflower days and sometimes you just have to keep walking. Don't give up! Ultreia!