August 25, 2013

“There’s got to be a morning after,
if we can hold on through the night…”

Maureen McGovern sang the title song from “The Poseidon Adventure,” one of the great disaster movies of the 70’s. The words of the song were running an endless loop through my brain when I woke up at 6 am to the throbbing beat of the mobile disco parked about 25 meters from our hotel window. Actually, this was not too bad a situation – the disco had started at 1 am and I actually slept through the first DJ’s set and the first couple hours of the second. Thank you, ear plugs and Ambien.

When we checked into the hostal, we were warned that the music would go all night long. It finally ended at 8 am, just in time for the brass band to start playing below our window. Bars in Orange County close at 2 am at the latest, bars in Chicago close at 4 am, bars in Spain never close at all. Imagine that.

Kathryn and I went out around 11 pm to catch the first set of a 12-piece show band. They seem to have a lot of bands like this in Spain – 4 singer/dancers and a full backup band including brass. Think of the most over the top wedding band you’ve ever seen, including full lighting and smoke machine, They’re a lot of fun to watch.

The photos below were taken from our hotel window between 8 and 9 am. Those people had been partying all night long. The interesting thing is that we have not seen anyone fighting or passed out drunk. Just a lot of people keeping a steady buzz on for the entire night. Did I tell you that they drink red wine mixed with Coke? Try it sometime, but only when you ready to party until the sun comes up.

We finally rolled out of the hostal around 1030 and walked our bikes around the corner to get some breakfast. The streets were littered with trash and broken glass, but the cleanup crews were hard at work. I think we had lived through day 3 of the 4 day festival.

Our bike ride continued through gently rolling countryside with few towns along the way. We met Ignacio (Nacho) from Milano, Italy who lent us a tire patch in case we needed it. We also passed Hannah from Germany who we had seen two nights earlier. She had been pounding out 35-40 km days (on foot) and was looking a bit tired. Someone had taken her socks off the clothesline a few nights earlier so Kathryn gave her a pair to use. Our Camino will pause after tomorrow but our socks may make it to Santiago this year.

Notes from today:

Left Carrion de los Condes at 1100
Arrived Sahagun at 1600
Total time 5 hours
Total distance 39.8 km
Average speed 8.0 km/hour