The house of snails

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Ok I know I haven't written in this in a while but some un-camino stuff has happened lately and I've had a bit of writers block. But I'm going to try to keep telling the story...

Today we walked through a long expanse of pine forest that reminded me of the drive from my dad's house in Queensland to the sunshine coast. Lou and I walked with an American lady called Tish who had some cool stories to tell. We heard through the Camino grapevine that there was a nice albergue up ahead that provided meals and accomodation by donativo like the last couple of places. So we kept walking and eventually stumbled upon 'The house of snails.'

Our host's name was Anya, a Spanish lady who was maybe in her 60s and rented her home out to pilgrims. She had long grey hair and glasses, a tough face and kind, knowing eyes. Anya's house usually had room for about 8 pilgrims, but tonight 16 of us piled into her dusty attic on mattresses on the floor. Anya told us that we were the largest and youngest group of pilgrims she'd ever had - she didn't seem used to this much excitement, but nevertheless she was happy to have us here. Her description of this refuge was that it was like the last couple except without the religious stuff. She put some of the boys to work chopping wood while a few of us other pilgrims snuck out to the bar for a couple of bottles of vino before dinner. Heh heh heh.

I stumbled into the house with Kellie at dinner time a little more than tipsy after a much needed sisterly heart-to-heart at the bar. Dinner was amazing, I just wished I was a little bit more sober to enjoy it, and I was trying very hard not to appear drunk, but it took a surprisingly large amount of effort for the food to reach my mouth. After dinner came the vino and after a while it didn't matter that I was drunk because everyone else had caught up. We played games and Anya went around the table asking all the pilgrims what they have learned on the camino, was it everything we expected, why did we do it etc. This was an incredible bonding session for al of us, and Anya just seemed so understanding and knowing. It was as if she was a tougher, drunker fairy godmother from Cinderella.

Kellie was the first to go to bed after trying to fall asleep on Frederick and under the dinner table. Apparently she had a sleepwalking experience during the night and may have startled our German friend, Hans. It was a miracle that she didn't fall out of the attic - there was only a piece of rope seperating her from the floor about 4 metres below.

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Photos

Anya, Hans and Santiago
From Moira's gallery.

Patxi and Hans
This one's from Moira's photo gallery, check it out at http://picasaweb.google.com/moiraalex/CaminoDeSantiago