(*Updated*) A Beach in the Mountains

*********New update at bottom*********

So it was only about 23km today. Not a lot but I had company.

The man had a bowl of liquid flame - he had my attention!

I woke up this morning and just wasn´t feeling motivated. Not feeling down or gloomy. Just no get up and go. Trying to get out on Ponferrada is a mission by itself and when I made it to the next town 5km, I thought I´d get a coffee to give me a kick start.

Talking to other pilgrims there I met two American girls, Jessica and Kathleen (sisters) who didn´t quite fit the typical American mold. They were cool. We talked for a while and then they were shocked to meet me. Apparently I was legendary on the Camino as the super walker. (I went past them and the theme to Rocky started playing in their heads.) But this was ages ago before Logroño. I was known as the super fast Aussie who can fix your pack whose name was Jason. (They´d run into an Irish bloke whose pack wasn´t fitting right and I´d offered to help him, he helped spread the word!)

Surprised that I was meeting anyone from the start, I discovered that they had bussed a part of the Camino but it was due to injury and deadlines so they´re off the hook. We started to talk about all the people we´d met at the start and after a while, decided to walk together and continue talking.

They were headed for Villafranca del Bierzo which I was originally aiming for yesterday but fell short of. When we arrived, we were somewhere between medium and well done with the sun´s heat and I asked where the closest pool was. The lady behind the counter at the hostel said something about a beach. Now as you can see from the map in the top left, we´re not that close to the coast. In fact, we´re at the foothills of mountains. And she´s telling me the closest thing is a beach. But my mistake, the town has a ´beach´ in the local river. Well, there´s no sand and by beach she means they´ve dammed part of the river so it´s like a constant ´pool´ but there´s steps and concrete to enter the water from. Have to say it was pretty good and obviously popular with the locals as there was at least 40 other people there. But then it was 36 degrees and still 5:30pm.

We wandered back from the pool and went to find somewhere to eat but failing to find somewhere cheap, just drank at the local backstreet bar which turned out to be our meal.

This time, I really do hope to make progress tomorrow but will not be able to stop in the town of O Cerberio as hoped as I got word from a guy who passed through 3 days ago and said the refugio was closed for refurbishments. (Cos, the middle of Summer around the time of the Festival is such a good time of the year to do that sort of thing!)

Not sure what the internet will be like over the hill so it might be a day or two between updates. Apparently, Galicia, the next country is very green, cool and moist. If Spain and Ireland had a lovechild, Galicia would be it. The towns are a lot smaller than what we´ve experienced but you´re almost tripping over them there´s that many. We´ll see...

***********************************

I finished the update and then heard a guy outside carrying on with a crowd of people around him. I went to check it out and the man had a bowl of liquid fire. I didn´t care what he was going to do - he had my attention. No matter what, it was going to be cool!

He started chanting in Spanish "Pelegrino yadda yadda ya" and everyone would go OOOOOOOOH! "Pelegrino yadda yadda Santiago" Oooooooooh! and this went on 4 or 5 times. Each time raising the ladle from the bowl of fire and letting the liquid blue flame cascade back into the bowl. I wasn´t sure what he was burning but it went for about 10mins. Then he added a bag of sugar. About 500gms. Then he had two large jam jars which something dark. He pour both these in but I figured they couldn´t have been alcohol as he was pouring too close to the flame and the flames would´ve jumped into the glass if it had a lot of alcohol in it. He kept chanting for another 5mins then dramatically blew the flame in the bowl out. He then asked for the Australians to come out. ´Wow! He remembered me from check in. Another bloke walked out too. I wasn´t aware there was another Aussie staying there. While the witchdoctor guy was asking for the Canadians to come forth I decided to find out where abouts the other Aussie was from. "Where you from?" "Orstraleea" he replied in an accent that wasn´t quite convincing. ´Well no shit Sherlock, that´s why we´re both out here´ I thought. But before I could test his cultural identity we were shoved apart and made to get into a circle with the Canadian in between us and everyone making a giant circle around the table with the mysterious liquid in it. The ´spiritual leader´ the started to pour out this liquid into small glasses and hand them to us to pass around the circle. We weren´t sure whether we were supposed to drink it sniff it or what. The word was soon passed through that we don´t drink it. So we took a whiff. WHOA! You didn´t need to hold it too close to your face to smell the aroma of Rum, Whiskey, Brandy and wine somehow combined. We started to pass it around and sniffing each one. After about the 15th one I started to think this was pointless as they all smelt as bad as it other. So I just kept passing them around until eventually we all had one each.

The leader held his high, made a last chant then started to drink the vile concoction. By now it had cooled enough to drink and we started to neck it. Despite tasting like all the flavours I mentioned above, the alcohol wasn´t too harsh. Obviously burnt out. Either way though, it was enough to put most to sleep straight away!