Before bed, Noni had felt so sick that she wasn't sure if she was going to be able to walk today. I told her we'd have a sleep in and she could see how she felt then. Let's not tell lies here: we all know this benefitted me more ;)
When we woke up, Noni decided to carry on, because she's just amazing at life. I told her that at any point she could decide to pack it in and take a bus instead, but she decided to go ahead anyway.
We bounced out of our hotel room and were ready to go when we suddenly got to the entrance and realised it was pouring with rain. Why had we already convinced ourselves we were walking?!
There were several helpful gentlemen who informed us that it was raining outside. Yes, thank you, Captain Obvious.
We put our ponchos on and were ready to go!
I was hanging out for a coffee and brekkie, and luckily the next town was only 6km away.
Only, it turns out that it wasn't. Our book LIED (not the first time, definitely not the last). This makes the Camino really difficult for me. I tend to walk from town to town, so I check the map each day and convince myself, "only 6km and you're there" at each town. The map, once again, lied to me and the first town was actually off the camino. Hell no, I'm not walking extra kilometres if I don't have to!
So my food deprivation in the pouring rain did not help me with my mood.
And so, we plodded along in the rain some more, now with extra mud to make it really fun. The landscape was particularly dreary and ugly, doing nothing for my mood. And the mud just meant that eachstep weighed a tonne.
We finally got to a town and I had lunch and perked up again. Poor Noni- she was actually sick, but I was inflicting my crappy mood on her.
Luckily, the last half of the walk was quite lovely, despite the dreary weather. It's amazing what a bit of food can do to your mood.
We finally arrived at our destination and were so proud of ourselves for not packing it in and giving up.
We headed into town and were about to start the search for accommodation when two Finnish ladies came up to us to let us know that EVERY BED IN TOWN WAS TAKEN.
Um, WHAT?!
It turns out that it was a long weekend in Spain and that's when the Spanish people do the Camino bit by bit, just doing a few days here and there along the way, until they've done the whole route in a few years and can get a compostela. Good for them, bad for us. All those big groups of day trippers that flew past us with their bum bags and nothing else had gotten to the accomodation first and there was nothing left for us!
Noni and I were stunned. There was no energy left in us (not to mention all the pain we were in!) to walk to the next town. It had taken everything we had just to get here.
The Finnish ladies had called for a cab to take them to the next town, and there was room for us if we would like to join them. Would we?!
Basically, Noni and I saw this as a gift from God, blessing us for walking all that was despite illness, angry tendons, and hanger, he most dangerous affliction of them all. It wasn't cheating: it was the hand of God giving us a 10km head start for the next day.
Heck, with a God like that, I could totally fake being religious for one night!
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