I have discovered that after so many pictures my app crawls trying to finish the blog. Rather than spend hours, I am testing to see if breaking it into smaller blog helps. Sorry for spamming you!

Anyway, it’s amazing how beautiful every thing looks early in the morning. The walk itself become a meditation with little mindfulness and the Meseta comes alive with beauty.

Breakfast once again consisted of coffee, croissants, and orange juice. We continued to make good progress toward Sahagun.

Sahagun has some of the structure that date back to 8th century. We made it here at around 1 pm. We found a nice room at an old monastery and had a nice lunch at the plaza.

This rag tag team has made it half way through our Camino journey of approximately 500 miles. Three weeks and 2 days (including 3 days of rest) into our walk, we have made it past the halfway point. Although, in the path there is no point, it is a journey that goes on. We celebrated this by taking this selfie.

Our goal today was simply to go to the next village. The trick, it was 17 km with no water or food along the way.
Since we had done over 27 yesterday, this was considered short and easy day. We left the alberge around 6:45 in the morning.

Morning was crisp and cool and full of quite sweetness as we moved through the town and onto country road.

When the sun finally started to emerge it bathed the world in soft glow without any harshness to it.

When the rays finally grazed the fields , it was the grace dancing with field and creating a soft and gentle feeling of nurturing and healing.

It was peaceful and quite. Every one walking in their own rhythm dealing with their aches and pains as well as joy and bliss. Unexpected surprise was finding of picnic area and food where there was none thought to be available. Most every one was prepared for solitary journey but welcomed the pleasant surprise.

We ran into our German friends again today and enjoyed the travel back and forth.

We made it to Calzadilla, our destination just before noon. This was our semi rest day as we continue to move toward Leon. Every one was marveling at what we have accomplished so far and energized to tackle the next half of our journey.

We completed 2 weeks of walking with one rest day in Pamplona. In that two weeks we traveled from St Jean Pied De Port to Belardo, a total of approximately 240 km (150 miles).. We have seen some beautiful country side of Spain and couple of laerger cities (Pamplona and Logrono). We are in love with Spain. The country side is beautiful and peaceful. The larger cities are exotic and vibrant with life especially after Siesta time.

While the scenery is beautiful, and this journey has been an adventure of a life time, what you don’t get to see is all the blisters, backaches, bug bites and exhaustion. None of us have been immune to any of this, yet none of us is deterred and are fully committed to the journey (yes we need our break day to store up some energy for the next stages).

We have 2 days of long stretches to complete our next stage by getting in to Burgos, but I am getting ahead of myself.

So let’s talk about a day in a village. It was nice to have a private room where the noise was minimized. We still heard the 6 am church bell. We could still hear the pilgrims filling out the street and their click click of the staff as they went on the journey, while we lay in bed and enjoyed our precious sleep.

Here is the view from our alberege at 8 in the morning (no sunrise pictures today).

At 9, we went to the restaurant and had our usual (cafe con lechwe, cafe Americana, or orange juice – you can guess who had what) along with chocolate croissant, tortilla de patata (our savior most morning – this is Spanish omelet and something we all can eat – as most other choices are ham) , and pastries. After that some shopping for few necessities. Center of all of this is typically a plaza where you sit and watch the life unfold.

As we sat we saw this man saying hello to every one by name sitting and talking and singing his best imitation of Pavarati. Pretty soon he was serenading Sitara and us and showing his toe injury caused by a bull in Pamplona.

From there we decided to walk to the river and soak our feet in the cold water (very therapeutic as cold water seems to reduce inflammation and freshens the leg).

We ran into the boy named Arun who had brought his two pet turtles to the river with his dad.

As we came back, our friend was making the round around the town and happen to be passing by the alberge. He entertained us with couple of more songs from his child hood days. Daniel is a very good singer and was willing to record his singing and the watching it as we replayed it for him (unfortunately I can’t upload the movie but here are some shots).

We enjoyed our first sit down lunch of the trip. We started our lunch at 1 and by the time we finished it was little past 3. Since we bought our grocery this morning, we plan to cook our dinner tonight (we did that last night also). Tomorrow will be an early morning start again as we plan to cover 24 km.

Dutch alberge turned out be special with wonderful meditation at night. The morning view from the balcony was wonderful.

Our goal for the day was about 20K.
Morning view of the town was beautiful.

The next town was 12km away with no water or food. At least, according to all the sources. Half way down the road to our surprise we discover a food truck middle of nowhere. Wow

We made it to the first village, Los Arcos around noon for lunch.

At 12:30 as we were leaving for the next stop it started to pour. This time it was full fledged rain for almost 45 minutes walking through rocks and mud. With the rain and wind no one took break and we just kept walking.

It was a good day for Vandana. Sakkar had a rough day with multiple blisters. Sitara’s heal was sore but she was again our leader and made it to Torres Del Rio as we were leaving Los Arcos. Pat enjoyed the rain and kept her steady pace. I was oblivious to every thing and being in the moment having a grand day. The Camino finds a way to test us all every day and yet it carries us through for another day stronger and more resilient.

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Today was the longest day yet. We started at 7 in the morning and traveled over 15 miles over a 10 hour period. We traveled over the alto del pardon (the famous sculpture depicting pilgrims through the ages.