Friendly Friday

I've been waylaid by good friends of mine (and I spoke to Jana! Yay!) so this is a bare-bones post which I will fix up when I get home. Apologies! Below are pictures of some more amazingly wonderful people we met along the Camino- Cheryl and Carol (I heard from Cheryl in South Africa a few days ago-soooooo wonderful), the Viking Christian, Jacques and Abel on top of a mountain, Yumi our amazing friend who was traveling the world with that backpack, and Sinead and Patricia, who I'm convinced are strange re-incarnations of Jana and I. More will be explained when I post captions later.
I love and miss you all, Camino family!

-K-

Update: I've added captions!  So now you'll have a slightly better idea of what these photos are all about.  I apologise again for the light post on Friday, but it was worth it--I got to have a great chat with Jana and spend some time chatting:  it seemed fitting that the reason my Friendly Friday post was light and delayed was because of friends.  I think the people pictured below would approve.



Jana and I with Jacques and Abel, our travel buddies for much of the Camino.  We're celebrating in this picture, because we made it up a very very steep hill first thing in the morning (I think it's about 7AM in this photo).  We have not yet had coffee.  Or breakfast, really (the melba toast and super-sweet jam they provide at some of the refugios in Spain is not breakfast).  So, we made it up there on probably a square of chocolate and sheer determination.  For a glimpse at how high we are, check out the photo from a few posts ago where I'm standing at the top of a descent, in much the same pose.  That's the trip back down the hill, which lies about .5 kms from where we're standing.



YUMI!  This is Yumi.  I'm hoping I'm spelling her name right!  We met Yumi on our first night in Roncesvalles (or Ronceveaux, if you're from France--it's right on the border).  She was travelling the world with just that backpack (which contained mostly food, amazingly), with an aim to have explored 43 countries by her 43rd birthday.  She's AMAZING!  She would just click along with those two poles, never going massively fast, but never stopping either.  We lost Yumi on the Camino for awhile, after she pushed on ahead while we lagged behind....but we found her again the day before we arrived in Santiago!  It was amazing to see her at the end of our journey, and spend some time in Santiago with her.  We even travelled through the Cathedral with her (and guarded her visit to the tomb of Saint James from masses of tour bus visitors).



Cheryl and Carol, our lovely African ladies.  We met on our second night on the Camino, in one of the worst hostels/towns known to man (it was Easter holidays, so Jana and I had supper from a vending machine--I'll share that one with you at a later date).  They were our bunkmates, one bed over and next to the Poulets rotis.  We walked together, laughed, chatted, drank shandies...and also lost them when we stayed behind and they pushed on to the next town.  We tried to get in touch, but sadly failed...until last week when an email arrived from Cheryl!  I'm so happy to hear that they did alright, and to be back in touch with them again!



Rest stop!  Yep, this is where we stopped for lunch (or breakfast, maybe?).  In a ditch, by the side of the road.  Parts of the Camino are really not that scenic.  Or convenient...imagine trying to find a secluded spot in this scenery for roadside bathroom breaks.  Here we have an early incarnation of our Camino Family: Christian the Viking (who, although Danish, sounded and look like an American football player...because he'd studied in the US and played football, hiked with a copy of Don Quixote in his bag...all 10 lbs of it...and could lift any of us over his head with one hand...he demonstrated one night, so we know it's true!), Cheryl, a very unflattering me, Yumi and Carol.



And these ladies...wow!  This is Patricia and Sinead, who we met by chance and formed an instant bond with.  They are sort of like our evil twins (but in a good way) and it's hard to find the right words to talk about our time together.  The Camino is like that- some people you meet, you feel as if you've known them forever after walking together for an hour.  These ladies were those people.  Believe it or not, this picture was taken the first day that we really knew them (we'd met them before, but never really chatted)- we were near the midpoint of the Camino, had walked over 27 kms, and had reached three towns with no room for pilgrims-all the refugios, hotels, casa rurals etc were full.  So, we did what anyone would do in our situation- we got a taxi 13 kms to the nearest large town (Sahagun), checked into a private hostel which also did our laundry for us for a fee (best 10 euros I ever spent), then hit the town and drank gin and tonic into the evening.  There's an entire bottle of Bombay Saphire gin in those glasses in front of us, con toniqua, and the waitress at the cafe loved us so much she kept bringing us free food (or maybe she was worried we couldn't hold our liquor, and wanted to keep us from passing out).  We bonded over blisters and walking shoes, U2 and Hape's book on the Camino (for anyone who's read "I'm Off Then", Sahagun is where he gets shot at in his hotel room...we found it a charming spot though).  We laughed, we ate, we drank and we made plans to meet up later in the Camino (we were pushing on the next day, while they were staying put and waiting for another friend).  And we did meet up again...but that's a story for another day.