The Hills Are Alive With The Sound Of

Well I´m not actually in Manjarin but it was the closest place to El Acebo that I went through. Quite funny really as El Acebo is a nice stablished village with probably at least 300 people in it and Manjarin is a tiny hill top hamlet, which I use very generously as there is one family (Austrian I think) running a very spartan refugio there and that is it! So I´m really in a place called El Acebo about 7km further on than Manjarin.

But onto the blog...

The Alburgue had its own Komodo Dragon!

I woke up this morning in Astorga happy that the meseta was over and I would soon be back in the hills. The german-run alburgue was providing a breakfast, which as you know, I´m a bit warey of as it usually doesn´t consist of much. Alas, for the first time, I was wrong. All you can eat breakfast with cereals (a first in Spain), orange juice, large slices of toast (OK it was really toasted crusty bread but it was good), fruit, yoghurt and coffee! All for €3! So I tucked in and enjoyed the first decent breakfast I think I´ve had on the Camino.

As I said, the hostel was German-run. There are quite a few of these on the Camino as the walk is really big in Germany. I was told that a very famous German comedian, one that EVERYONE in Germany knows, did the Camino and wrote a book on it. As a result, that man did to the Camino, what Hugh Hefner did for women getting the tits out - just about everyone´s doing it these days!

So natually, a lot of these German-run alburgues are ful of Germans. Meet the guy sitting on the other side of the table from me. Sort of a cross between The Professor from the original Italian Job and Hale or Pace (whichever doesn´t have the mo.) He would prepare his breakfast (lets say putting spread on his toast) with his elbows at shoulder height. He looked like a muppet! Then he would take a mouthful and from the look on his face, would seem as if he was analysing the quality of it and comparing it to the last mouthful. A slight nod of approval and he would take the next mouthful, looking to the ceiling in deep thought as he pondered whether it was as good as the last mouthful.

I finshed breakfast not sure what to make of that guy but knowing that getting enough distance between he and I wouldn´t be that bad. I made my way to the first village, then the next one, then the next one. I couldn´t feel the road getting any steeper! There were only 5 villages to the top of the highest point on the Camino (1517m) and I´d just passed through half of them without knowing it. Seriously, you could have pushed a granny in a wheelchair up it. Infact, she could have pushed herself! I felt like I was back on the meseta! Finally, a glimps of hope, there was a little bit of a climb. Well whoop-de-do-dar. That lasted all of 10mins! Then I was at the final town before the summit. There was a little bit of a hill to get to the top but nothing that did it justice. For those in Hobart, an analogy: Imagine walking to the Springs. In a straight line. But starting from the airport and walking on a gradual incline. You´d notice the distance but the angle that you were walking probably wouldn´t give your calf muscles a work out. That was it. 23km with a 600m climb.

So I made it to the Cruz de Ferro or Cross of Iron. I´d heard a lot about this. Traditionally, pilgrims brought a rock from their home country with them and left it there. I read about this about a week before Mum & Dad came to visit so got them to bring me an Australian rock (read:stone/pebble) to carry there. I got up there and looked for something which I thought would compete with Rio´s Christ the Redeemer. Alas, it was a telegraph pole with an iron cross about 2 1/2feet tall on top. But it was sitting on the biggest cairn pile on the Camino. About 2m high! I took my photo thanks to the timer and a fence nearby and added the rock. There were all sorts of memorabilia up there. Walking poles, bike chains, flowers, photos of loved ones, Uni ID cards, hats and other bits of clothing. It was like a hoarder´s totem pole!

I then started the walk along the ridge past Manjarin and the family that lives there with their cows and combie-van. I got to the other side and looked for El Acebo. Off in the distance, I saw a village. It seemed so far away yet it was the closest one. I could see the track leading to it and almost cried. I thought I only had about 2-3km left but this looked at least 5km away. At the end of a day, it´s a lot to know you have to go further than you thought.

Well this town wasn´t getting any closer so I made my way down the hill. It was quite steep and according to one profile map (like a cross-section of the height of the hills), I would drop 100m in a km. It looked like a cliff face!

Well I plodded on walked along a ridge, which then turned and went along another ridge which turned and went along another ridge. However when I got to the end of that ridge, I could see the town of El Acebo hidden behind it!!! It was about 150m away! Apparently, the town I had seen was the next town. I was never so happy and checked into the place.

Even though the alburgue has 24beds, there were only 3 of us. Myself, a Hungarian guy called Adam I´ve seen twice before in other Alburgues and an American lady. For the first night on the entire Camino NO-ONE SNORED! It was bliss! I swear some places have record players of people snoring pumping throughout all the rooms. Even in a room of only 4 people one night, two of them snored! One loudly on the inhale, the other loudly on the exhale. They were like a double-team, I thought if the 3rd guy started farting, I would walk out!

Also, the alburgue has its own Komodo Dragon! How cool! Very tame. Got a few photos and it turns out that it like ice-cream too! They had a dog too (read:very excited puppy) who would have loved to have played fetch but it couldn´t quite get the ball in its mouth so it just guarded the ball after ´fetching´ it.

The views around the area were amazing. I got some marvellous shots of the mountains with the sunsetting in the evening. It was like the village was on the side of a cliff. They just looked so big and magnifient! And close.

This is what I had been missing!