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Published: February 9th 2013
Day 33: Ponferrada to Villafranca Journal Entry-------------------- Thursday May 3rd, 2012 I took my time waking up this morning. I left the hostel a little after 0800, returned the room key and started walking. There were few other pilgrims that I passed in the beginning. I walked and walked and walked and somehow found myself on the alternative route into Villafranca via miles and miles of wine fields. I was all alone for the whole duration. The view was amazing... wine fields backed by mountains. I cried. It was perfect. In villafranca I checked into a private albergue. An English couple, an American and one other English man invited me to eat with them because they had cooked a lot of food. I love sitting down to dinner with different people. It's an amazing experience in and of itself. I forgot to mention that on the way into town I passed two curly haired women- one with light hair and one with dark hair. I heard them speaking with Austrailian accents and on a whim decided to ask if one of them is named Jackie and if they have a travel blog. Well it turns out that it was the same two women that I had spoken to on Travel Blog!! How odd!!
--------------------end of journal entry This day was filled with strange emotions. I was all along walking for the whole entire day and somehow I felt okay with that. I remember getting off track and taking the alternative route through all of the wine fields. I kept stopping at first thinking that I had gone off the trail and was no longer on the Camino. Somehow, it didn't matter. I was all alone to breathe in miles and miles of wine fields. They were all mine for the moment. I stopped and cried for what felt like an hour.
I remember at one point walking alone on the trail without having seen another person for three hours thinking, "Wow, if someone wanted to snatch me up, right here would be the perfect place." This was just a fleeting thought that passed within minutes. An hour later the thought returned when a pickup truck went flying past me, slammed on the breaks up ahead and then started to reverse. Not knowing why I jumped into nearby bushes off of
Day 33
Running into two fellow travel bloggers!!the trail/dirt road, and hid but pretending to take a photo so as not to appear to be hiding.
Three days later I spoke with a young lady who had a similar experience in the wine fields. Except for her, the man in the truck stopped and kept asking her if she wanted a ride. She told me that she had spoke with others about this experience and found that there was in fact a man in a pickup truck prowling around the fields trying to get young single women to hitch a ride with him. That is a little creepy. This was the first time I had heard anything like this on the Camino.
Day 34: Villafraca to Ruitelán Journal Entry-------------------- Friday May 4th, 2012 Today I was going to take the route that travels along the road because I had spoken with two women who had told me that it would be difficult to go the mountain route on a rainy day. They also said that the view would be terrible because of the rain and fog. When I stopped outside this morning I thought, "What the hell... I'm taking the mountain." It was a hard climb and the constant steady rain didn't do much to help. But it was so worth it!
A couple of times I was worried that I wasn't going the right way because no one else was around. At one point a German man passed me, but that was it for a long while. Then I met up with the English couple from last night, Phillip and Hillary. I walked with them for the rest of the long rainy walk. No one passed us until we had to join the road again and walk on the side of the road for the rest of the way. I am so glad that I decided to take the mountain route. It was absolutely beautiful, even with the fog and mist. --------------------end of journal entry Sometimes, you have to think for yourself and take the difficult way. I was so happy that I did not listen to everyone else complaining about how hard it would be to go over the mountain in the rain. Had I really thought it would be dangerous, I probably would not have done it. The warnings of others came off
sounding more like complaints than anything else and because of this, I made up my own mind and went the high road. The rain and fog really did make for beautiful scenery.
For most of the day, I was alone on the mountain. Once again, I found comfort in being alone. However, I was very happy when Phil and Hillary caught up to me. They are such a lovely and lively couple. The two of them like to sing and we all had a wonderful time slipping and sliding up and down the mountain singing silly songs about our adventures. I don't know if it was because of the combination of rain, mud and a mountain or what, but this day reminded me a lot of my rainy day climbing up mountanous hills with Tina.
That night in the albergue right before dinner, we all looked out of the window and saw a double rainbow!!!The second rainbow is a little dim but if you look hard enough you can see the second outline of an almost washed out rainbow. It was the first time that I had even seen a double rainbow and because of that silly YouTube
video I couldn't help but to keep saying, "ooooohhhh wow a double rainbow!" In my mind.
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Krystal L
non-member comment
I want to be free!
Your post and honesty about the raw emotions that one is bound to encounter on a journey like this are beautiful. My family is planning on doing this together in 2015 but it feels like a lifetime away and I would love to pack up and leave tomorrow. Please keep posting, I can only live vicariously through you right now!