The Atapuercan Man

So I woke up at 6:30am for a shower. Got in and it was one of those showers that you push a button and 2mins later you have to push the button again.

I´ve just lathered up and got shampoo in my hair and... the water stops. Pretty much. Well Ok I got a dribble. But someone left the door between the bathroom and the freezing-cold-6:30am-breeze open! So I had to wash my hair with this dribble (at least it was a warm dribble). Thank goodness my hair isn´t long!

Your food/coffee got a good covering of soot and shit as trucks went past!

The €2 breakfast was served. I´m learning that a €2 breakfast isn´t good value. It´s fair. I got a cup of cocoa and 3 pieces of french stick with topping. I´ll learn to say no in future.

I walked at the town Villafranka de la Oca to have lunch by a roadside diner. The food was ok but I had the choice of sitting inside where it was VERY smokey or outside, which I did, where your food/coffee got a good covering of soot and shit as trucks went past and pulled out of the carpark. (Mmm! Try it sometime!)

Next came the 12Km hike over a mountain to get to San Juan who was Santo Domingo´s disciple (See ´A Week in one day´ blog) I was a bit disappointed as I´d heard about his architectural greatness and how at exactly 5pm on both equinoxes that the sun would highlight The Annunciation window of the church. I couldn´t even find the window. I did find San Juan´s tomb though. Had a nice lunch and headed on about 6km to Atapuerca. This name might be familiar to some of you as they recently (sometime in 2000) found the oldest human remains and it provided new archeological data.

There was a bit of a info centre that I just made it too as it shut in 20mins. I asked how long it took to see everything and was told it could take up to an hour and that the place didn´t open until 10am the next day. I thought 20mins was better than nothing so paid and went to look around. Not being able to read all the Spanish on the displays, I was able to wizz through in 20mins. There was a video of Robert Winston doing a BBC doco on ´Walking with Cavemen´but it was dubbed in Spanish.

The hostel is pretty good but we were all waiting around outside for about an hour as the lady running it was in the bar over the road and didn´t think people would arrive as early as we had but there was a good dozen of us waiting. She was apologetic though. (Plus she wasn´t staggering up the garden path which was a good sign I think!)