October 14 2019

My mamas birthday!!! Happy birthday mama! She’s been calling me on her way to work every day which is super cute. It’s Iike 8am CST which is 3ish for me and usually we’re done hiking by then.

Today was the day of luck and perhaps it was because of my mother’s birthday! 

We had breakfast at this cute cafe that offered smoothies. We hadn’t seen a place that offered that yet. Main breakfast is juice, coffee and some sort of bread baked good. 

So the smoothie was a nice change of pace.

Then we headed out.

The goal was around 13 miles but the towns were spread out like 7 miles then one at 8.25 and then one at 13.

Lucky Event #1 🍀

It started pouring… we got a bit of the rain but ducked in at mile 7 to a bar. Waited there for about 20min and then decided to make a break for it.
We also drafted behind these German guys on the way to the town at mile 7.

When we did- the rain stopped! Hallelujah! 

Lucky Event #2 🍀

I had booked a hostal at mile 8ish and didn’t realize it wasn’t in the 13 mile town. 

Booking.com has been a huge help and a hinderance. 

It’s very convenient researching and booking hostels through them but their customer service is shit and their response time is shit. 

So if you want to cancel a booking, the location itself can’t do it. The request goes through booking.com and they take forever to get back to you… and by the time they do, the cancellation window has passed 

This is what happened to me… so I called the place directly and they said only if another customer asked for my room, could I cancel without charge

Vale (aka Spanish for “okay”) 

We decide to eat lunch at this hostal at mile 8.

Right when I walk in, the host asks me if I speak English. I say yes. She asks me to talk to the man on the phone because she doesn’t understand him. So I answer the phone and the guy explains he wants a room. I tell the lady in Spanish. She says, we’re full. 

I tell her- well actually … I have a room and he can have mine because I want to walk more. She said okay but find out when he’s coming and tell him the price. So I do. Kapeesh kaposh we got ourselves a trade!

Serendipity!

After the prime fortune we set off again to our town.

We booked an Albergue called “my grandpas hostal”.

Boy is it adorable. Family run- Grace and I were the only ones for a while in our dorm area. We noticed a fire place so we asked and they kindly got us all this wood and lit it for us! 

Lucky Event #3 🍀

It had gotten even more windy and cold at that moment so we lucked out reaching our destination and bundled up with a glass of red, the fireplace and Touching the Void movie on YouTube.

Tomorrow Grace heads back to Burgos and I have a doozey of a week ahead of me:

12 miles/ 15 miles/ 21 miles/ 14 miles/ 21 miles getting me into León, the next big city, by Sunday.