Day 16 and 17 Castuera to Don Benito

Day 16                       Castuera to Campanario       24kms

Yes… I am beginning to understand why many people take a bus to Merida. This section of the camino has very little infrastructure and if you couldn’t speak Spanish it would be a nightmare. The walk is not a problem, the route was more or less marked, a few hiccups along the way, but we are getting used to that.  In fact, the walk was beautiful. We left before dawn, the air perfectly cool, the moonlight guiding us for the first hour till the sun rose at 7am . Pure bliss, the rolling hills. It reminded us a lot of the terrain we trained on in Tasmania. 

Castuera in the distance

That was all fine and dandy.

 So.. we get to the small village of Campanario and go to a bar to have a coffee. This is what we tend to do when we first arrive in a village.  Spencer walks in and asks for 2 coffees, right beside him is an older man chugging a glass of red wine.  The older man then turns to Spencer and starts to mumble something when suddenly he starts to heave. The astute bartender noticing the situation quickly takes out an ice bucket and intercepts a stream of vomit aimed in Spencer’s direction, just in the nick of time.

This was our first introduction to Campanario.

We then asked if there was a hostal or hotel in the village and there wasn’t, but there was an albergue. An albergue is similar to a youth hostel. So we asked directions, only to find out it was 2kms out of town, in the old train station. Rather than walk another 11kms to the next possible place we decided to check it out. So… we walked 2kms on an extremely hot highway only to find a deserted train station completely locked up. We were at a bit of a loss when we noticed a phone number on the gate, we thought…. why not call? So, we did. A woman answered and said she would be right down. She arrived and…. yes.. it was an albergue but nobody had been there in a while.

 There must be 30 beds the place . There were about 8 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms, and a huge living room. So, we picked a bedroom that had a huge balcony and air conditioning, helped her make the beds with new sheets and voila… here we are. I have to admit though…it still feels like an abandoned train station with a lot of beds. It’s kinda lonely way out here. 

But, there were trains that came during the day, even though it looked deserted, it was active.

view from the albergue patio

Day 17                                             Campanario to Don Benito          24kms      June 10th/12

Now the climate is perfect for walking. The days have cooled down a lot and it is just the right temperature to walk briskly in the morning and laze around in the afternoon.

We had a lovely incident this morning. We left again before dawn, walked at a quick pace for 3 ½ hours until we came to the little village of La Haba. Walking through we noticed the streets were decorated with hanging flags and flowers, all the local women were out sweeping and cleaning the pavement. Suddenly, like flies to a lollipop, all these women  gathered around us and started offering us Churros, chocolate, coffee and muffins.

It was La Haba’s saint day and they were preparing for the big festival that was going to take place in the evening. Every village has a patron saint and on the saint day, they take an image of the saint, usually a wooden carved one, mount it on a board and parade it around town. The whole village comes out to walk behind the saint around the plaza, then everyone celebrates late into the night. It creates a wonderful sense of belonging for the people of the town and Spanish people are always very proud of their “Pueblo” Many, many Spanish poems have been written about “Mi Pueblo”  Maybe this is something we need to do more of in North America or Australia??

During our course of walking we have walked through 3 provinces, Granada, Jaen, Cordoba and we are currently in Badajoz. Badajoz belongs to the big state of Extramedura.

This area is the bread basket of Spain, but we also passed a few granite mines.

 We are now only a few days out of Merida, there we will have another rest day. Yahoo!!! But....next 2 days are going to be a challenge as there will be some long distances and some asphalt walking.