Day 10: Granon to Belorado aka "we don't eat backpacks here!"

For some reason, I was really tired today. Luckily for us, my knee has gotten better and so has my mom’s ankle. We woke up to clean clothes and ate a decent breakfast. We also got to talk to the South Korean a little bit more, and he even offered and gave us a ride to the city center. Before then, I got to play with Anna’s (the owner) puppies who are four months old and adorable. Anna also gave us a behind the scenes tour of the church attached to the arbergue that is seldom used because it’s farther away from town.

On the way to Belorado we passed four different towns. This is rare, and breaks the monotony of isolation on the road. We came across this random café in the second town, Viloria de Rioja, and got some fresh orange juice. It was all donation based, including the albergue attached. The owners seemed cool until the wife freaked out on Klause because he tried putting his backpack on a table, yelling “we don’t eat backpacks here!” The Spanish can be really particular and passionate about certain things and then are blasé about others. The orange juice was perfect though.

It was raining when we walked into Belorado. So we stopped at the first Albergue we saw and warmed up with some good sangria. We eventually moved along and dropped Klause off at his albergue and headed to our hotel (Hotel San Jacobo). Our hotel was definitely not worth €80. It was nice, but not that nice. Klause’s municipal albergue with a private room would’ve been a much better deal, since it was only €20. We met for dinner at Klause’s abergue (Albergue de Caminante), and for €10 we got some amazing food and even better entertainment. The owner and cook, Alberto is just hilarious and we were literally cracking up the entire time. At dinner, we met this Hungarian woman named Andrea who is 70 years old and is walking nearly 30 km a day with 15 kilos on her back. She’s a mathematician/librarian and she likes to stop at every church she sees along the way in order to pray. She reminded me of Peace Pilgrim. We are off to Atapuerco tomorrow !