Shelter from the Storm

It's been a few days of lengthy walks on mostly flat ground and featureless surroundings as we make our way to Leon, where we should arrive in two days time. After tomorrow's task of 30 or so kilometers, we'll have two days of walking around 20km that I'll count as my rest days. 

Last week, I was considering bypassing Leon with more mileage in order to avoid the big city. All of that changed when I spent most of my time during the last few days with the same group of new friends. Four are from Spain, one is from Italy and will be pursuing a Ph.D. program in New York this year, and the other is a former German soldier. We all pretty much came on our own and have varied paces that seem to match up for different lengths of the walk. We kind of just uniquely fit together and lately have had dinner every night where we put together whatever we collect from various markets. 

Oh and I should mention that I'm the only native English speaker (again) and the group is determined that I'll be fluent in Spanish by the end of my Camino.  I've been dubbed as their English teacher as well. 

Two of the group members will end their journey in Leon. Due to work requirements, every year they've come out for a week or so to do a portion of the Camino along the different routes.  Though they have limited English, we've spent our walks pointing at random things and repeating their names in both English and Spanish. I use the "thumbs up" sign for pretty much everything and teach it to them too.

Tonight in Terradillos de los Templarios, a former Knights Templar stronghold, it started to storm violently to include large chunks of hail.  We ended up playing poker, board games, and doing magic tricks to entertain ourselves indoors. 

My poor poker skills resulted in learning the term, "Farolerra", since anytime I won I was usually bluffing.  We played Connect Four with a couple from Wales and talked about how we hadn't played that since we were children. One our friends, who walks nearly 40km a day so I'll likely never see him again, taught us a magic card trick that I can't wait to do when I return...if I can remember it. Our German friend showed us a collection of photographs he carries with him which include a photo of his daughter when she was five years old.

Classic rainy day fun, that made me almost forget about the long walk ahead for the next day. Sometimes people are the best shelter, no?