I Feel Like One of Those Clowns on a Motorcycle with the Helmet Strapped to his Seat

It always bugs me when I see people on motorcycles with their helmet strapped to the back. But here I am trying to knock out 500 miles in flip flops with a pair of sneakers tied to my bag. Oh well. I took some Ibuprofen this morning which seemed to help a little. We met some funny Italians yesterday. One of them spoke some English. So we hung out with them during dinner. Then we watched Mexico beat France which was awesome. There were some Germans with us who wanted Mexico to win just because it was against France. haha.

My MP3 player died today. I was going to charge it, but I think I accidentally left my converter for the different plugs here in Burgos. So I might plug it into a computer tonight while everyone is asleep. I´m a little bummed about my converter.

It rained really bad a couple days ago. We only made it about 10 km. It was pretty miserable. But oh well. We sure slept well that night. Yesterday we called mom then the phone cut out on me. I´m not sure how long I was talking that my mom couldn´t hear me. But apparently all the phones in town died. I was a little bummed I couldn´t talk to Mary too.

I´m running low on time, so I´m going to comment on these pics:


There are windmills everywhere! Lots of them. They are pretty cool.

Here´s an example of a triple bunk we stayed in in Viana. That's my bag with the bread sticking out.

Its kind of hard to see, but there is a stork nest at the base of the dome. We´ve seen a few of these. If storks bring human babies, who brings stork babies?

If this works, its a video of some hippies making music out of some boards sitting on a saw horse in Hotana last night. The guy with dred-locks was really friendly. He ran the supermarket in between his performing. We bought stuff for sandwiches and got some cheese that he explained was made here from cow and sheep milk. He clarified "queso de mooo y baaa" haha, it was pretty funny ... ok it didn´t work. At the top is a pic of them playing. I´ll add the video when I´m not on a time limit.
We just got news that the US game is not on the channels they have here. So we will wait to see the England game this evening. Oh well.

I Hope the Camino Sign-Maker Got Fired!

Yesterday we decided to push past Estella because 1) we got there around 11 which is way too early to stop, and 2) everyone wants to stop at the big towns. So we pushed a little past. We made it to Villamayor de Monjardin (Upper Village of Mountain Garden?). They had no phone or internet! That put the big town of today way too close as well (Los Arcos). It is ironic that we passed through Los Arcos today, because my feet finally gave in. I think there is something wrong with the arch in my left shoe. I think it's too high or something. It has been bothering me a lot. Today was too much. So I put on my flip flops for what turned into the last about 15 km! I wouldn´t say it's better, but definitely less bad on the feet. We are in Viana tonight and there is a sports store that opens at about 5. I don´t know what happened to the people that colonized America, but they should not have abandoned the siesta culture of Europe. Anyway, we passed through a town that had a sign that said 3km to the next one ... then we saw another one a few km later that said 8. I was pretty mad which is why I´m encouraging firing this camino sign guy. I know no one is perfect, but that was pretty messed up.

Mom - if we can´t find me some shoes, we are going to call you about possibly getting bikes ... I´ll call you, please hear me out. (Love you)

For some reason my camera isn´t hooking up to this computer, so no pictures today. But I´ll go through them to recap some of the past 2 days:

We watched the game 2 nights ago, I was glad to just not lose. I also ordered a Budweiser (1 for a 90 minute game, mom) which turned out to be a flop as it was recommended to drink by 19 May. I guess the Spaniards aren´t too enamored by our beer, so it gets old.

There are huge slugs that are really dark colored. They look big enough to be cat poop. We´ve even seen small dog poop far away and guessed it was a slug.

We got Kinder Eggs. I´ve been calling them Kinder Huevos. But they are different from when we had them in Italy. Its a plastic egg shell, one half has chocolate in it and a small spoon (it's very soft chocolate) the other half has a prize. Mine was actually a little scallop-looking shell that has a button to push and a snake pops out.

We stopped in Bodegas Irache where they have a free wine fountain! I´m no wine expert, but it tasted pretty good to me, and the price was right.

Above the place we stayed last night was a castle that I was told dates back to the Roman days and has been used through the Medieval days. The bar in town had the key and you could walk up the mountain to check it out. We passed. We did about 29 km yesterday (and today, accidentally).

The hostel was free and provided by the church. We left a donation for the average cost of one anyway. It was cool, it was basically just a huge horse shoe-shaped bench with mattresses on it. If I have a dozen kids They get one big room and that´s how the sleeping arrangement is going to be.

That's all I have for now.

Hasta Luego!