Day 14: A day in the desert

Dear traveler, 

I slept excellent, like a butterfly in a cocoon, until Mamarmot woke me up.

I already got used to waking up early and also with hitting the road before sunrise so no additional convincing techniques are necessary to wake me up.

-"Marmot, today we'll be walking through the spanish Meseta for more than half of the trail so we must eat well and hit the road quickly."

Mamarmot explains what the Meseta is. A plateau, surrounded by mountains, an old landform and blah, blah, blah..it's to early in the morning for the geography lesson. I let her talk until I hear the word desert.

-"Desert? What desert?"

-"Marmot, did you even listen? I said that in a summer day it feels like in the desert. It's a lot of plain fields, no trees, we'll walk a lot under the sun."

Aaah, so this is why it's not ok that we walk this path during noon. Aaah, and this is why we must eat good now as we don't have places to eat on our way. Oooh no, my orange juice! Maybe we'll find oranges in the trees so I can get myself some. Oh wait, there are not too many trees. Oh..

We hit the road pretty quick and we start walking in the chilly morning air. And when I say chilly, well it's quite chilly. This is how mornings feel here until the sun shines.

The first part of the trail does not resemble a desert, or at least, not with the image in my mind of how a desert would look like. The path winds down in a valley, with few trees on the left and on the right and the sky seems to be painted right in this moment, by a painter that loves the color blue.

The wind pinches my face so I raise my buff on my nose and put my hoodie on. I don't know where that heat my folks told me we need to run from is, but it's clearly not here.

As we move forward, the sun starts to raise slowly. Along with it, we start removing our onion layers.

My folks are carrying the heavy backpacks, that contain more water than usual today. This is just because we'll be walking through wasteland for a while. 

Today is a good day for audio tales. But let's play a word game first. 

The trail is not changing too much today, and what I see around us is a lot of yellow, in all shapes and sizes. Whether it's just dry land or fluffy grass that swings in the wind, whether there are just weeds or a lot of stone, the landscape changes as we go. 

We passed through two villages where everything was closed. Fair enough, people are sleeping at this time. In my headphones, Aladin and the magic lamp is playing now and I'm imagining the desert.

It's not difficult to imagine the desert in these surroundings, even though we are not in one. We are just in a wasteland. The colors around us help my imagination to draw sand dunes on the sides of the road. A tree will appear from time to time which is not quite part of my landscape, but considering the strong sunlight, you can really feel you are there. And no drop of water in sight. Just in the backpacks of my folks. 

I'm not sure how time passed but Mamarmot tells me we passed the deserted part of the Meseta and we'll be reaching a village soon.

A village that can actually be a part of the story I listened to earlier.

Let's cool down for a bit. We find something cold to drink and a little bit of shade.

I find a beautiful sign with a shell that shows more ways of the Camino. Mamarmot tells me that you can come here from multiple directions, there are about 13 trails just through Spain. Hmmm..and let me guess, Mamarmot, you picked the longer trail, Her silence is an answer.

We continue our walk on the road that leaves the village quickly and greets us again with a barren landscape. It's actually beautiful. Now, that I don't have my headphones on, I am amazed by the silence around us. You can only hear a bee or a bird from time to time. Of course, I cannot be quiet for more than a few minutes but it's beautiful as it is. 

We reach an area with ruins, very interesting. Mamarmot is not sure what it is but she plans to find out when we reach the village where we'll be sleeping. It's quite amazing. Nobody is here.

The path takes us under the arcade and we leave the ruins behind. Still, how long until we get there?

- "Well, not too long, marmot."

-"Well, how much?"

- "Around 3 kilometers."

-"So, how many meters?"

-"Around 3000 meters."

Oooh. Ok. I'm going to count. But i don't know how to count up to 3000. Only up to 1000. I could count to 1000 and I'll see afterwards...it's just that, I'm kind of tired. 

Maybe dad will carry me on his shoulders. Surely from there I'll count better. 

I think I reached to about 700 when my mind switched to something else. It's just that, I see a village in the distance now. 3000 already? Man, I'm fast! 

We enter a small village with streets and houses paved with stone. Even the trees are made of stone. What?

The place where we'll be sleeping is made of stone on the outside, but on the inside is colorful and full of photographs. It looks like we'll be sleeping in a museum. 

We are invited in the kitchen where, on a table, lies a big bread. Gosh I'm drooling. 

It wasn't enough that it's a delicious bread, but the host shows us how they eat it. They slice it and they put a few drops of olive oil and salt. 

Needless to say, I circled that bread all evening. I would have eaten it all but I thought I'd leave some for the other pilgrims. But I have a feeling that the bread with olive oil and salt will become a very important tradition in our home. 

The time comes for us to get some sleep. I quickly take another slice of bread and I tuck in with it in my sleeping bag. I can't stop eating. I would share it with Fulgeraș, but he's just a plush toy. I do, however, share some stories about a day in the desert. And then, thinking about sand dunes, I run into the land of sleep.