Camino de Santiago
We left our monastery hostel just in time to see their bread delivery!
It rained today. A lot. Here is our friend Laney getting ready to hike 17 miles… her coat apparatus is made to cover her pack as well. She’s from England “where there is no bad weather, only poor attire choices.”
Estaban el Stud also chose to walk 17 miles today. He said it misted for the first 11, then rained for the final 6 miles. In fact the only picture he took on the trail today was this one:
The remaining three of us chose to go to El Olmeda Roman Villa, about 16K out of town. I had planned on visiting it today anyway, and the rain was just icing on the cake to justify the decision. We took a taxi there, and when we were done, we took a taxi to Terradillos de los Templarios… which is where we were going to meet Steve after his 17 mile hike.
The Roman villa, with nearly 35,000 square feet in the house and baths alone, was one of the largest Roman Villas I have ever seen.
It has 15,000 square feet of mosaics! The mosaics are known not only for their quantity here, but for their quality. Many rooms were completely in tact, undisturbed by plows, floods, earthquakes etc for over 2000 years. Think how many of your houses would be covered by 15,000 square feet of mosaics! (This number does include the bath complex that is attached.)This Roman must have been rich. Discovered in 1968, it dates from the 1st - 2nd century. Gotta give the Spanish credit, they built a fantastic building around to to preserve it.
They usually had several “master” mosaic artists, and then many apprentices or laborers available to fill in perimeters, or big open spaces without patterns. I wish I knew how long it took for them to do this!
Lastly, we expressed interest in this hydraulic organ that someone had meticulously recreated. If you express interest in an item in the right way, of course the docent is going to go out of their way to explain it to you. Our guy loved telling us about it…
Our docent explained that they found the plans for it, and a craftsman built it… one of only two in the world. I had never even heard of this machine, so after a lot of ‘si si” and ‘fantastico’s” from us, he loved explaining it. When I went to buy two postcards, he gave them to me free. Maybe because he recognized “a fan of all things Roman” or, more likely, he did not feel like opening and logging into the cash register in the little used gift shop area. I’m going with he liked me.
It was a tremendous day. By the time we taxied to our next stop, our albergue for the evening, it was still pouring, and we watched all the hikers come in absolutely soaked. Including Estaban el Stud.
The town of Terradillos de los Templarios was founded hundreds of years ago, and unfortunately it has been going downhill ever since. There were only two restaurants, both at albergues, and my walk around town showed not a storefront nor much sign of life. This statue was interesting of a knight in a small park though.
I was interested in the mud brick buildings we saw. Often the bricks wet covered by some stucco for added protection. The ones I touched were as hard as cement though. Interesting.
To finish, I’ll just share some Camino magic stories. One big, one little.
We met a woman named Nancy who was hiking the Camino and made friends with a woman from New Zealand. This kiwi knew a woman who had bought a fancy Camino tour, staying in hotels, having your luggage transferred from stop to stop and lunch and dinner every day! A big deal. Well with two weeks to go, the woman could not finish the trip (didn’t ask why) and asked the kiwi if she knew anyone who was further back on the Camino who might want to take her tour package for her! The Kiwi told Nancy, Nancy called the tour group, and voila, Nancy now owned an all expense paid Camino for the last two weeks… all at no cost to her! Wow… that’s thousands of dollars. Good for her!
My magic was much smaller. Along a morning stint walking with Steve, I just said out loud “I gotta stop and take off my jacket”. As I put my pack down, I noticed that the scallop shell I had been carrying from day one (18days ago) was gone. So I said out loud “Crap, I lost my shell!”
A woman passing said “thats funny, I found a shell about a mile back. Is this yours?” Yes it was! If I didn’t say it out loud right at the time she was passing by, we’d both never have connected. I later talked with her over a beer in town. Her name was Erma (pronounced Earrrr-mah) from Holland and we had a fun conversation about it.
Small things, but very fun things.