Villafranca to Atapuerca

Today was a beautiful day to go for a walk.  Carson starts each day asking me if i want to go for a walk.  I always tell him yes:-) It was full fog cover as we started our adventure today.

We started the walk with Tim and chatted about backpacking adventures.  We soon after stopped in St. Juan de Ortega to look at a cathedral in restoration mode and found a pit stop for cafe con leche.  Carson had a 9am cerveza as he decided that would help him along the way.  At that stop, we found James, Nick, and Mark, shortly after Jessica.  We also found our Scottish ultra running friend, Tristan.  We continued walking with James after our pitstop and enjoyed our company.   Today was an easy grouping of miles which we were looking forward to after several longer days in a row.

We pulled into Atapuerca, and were thinking we would go to the UNESCO world heritage site which is a prehistoric cave which holds the earliest human remains ever discovered in Europe dating back 900,000 years.  We couldn't actually get into the albergue until 1pm, so we relaxed in a nice park with other pilgrims and chickens.  Turns out the tour was a bit of a flop so it was best that we didnt make it.  Too bad they aren't gaining more interest!!!

While we were hanging out a big white truck announced its arrival with a bunch of honks through town.   It stopped at the basketball court and hydrolyzed doors opened to a store. It had fruit, meats, beer, pasta and most everything to make it without going to the grocery store.  We saw several older ladies walking over to get oranges and other things.  Very cute:-)

We walked and got checked Into the albergue and grabbed a tuna empanada and vino with coke.  We tried to buy cheap wine and the store clerk mentioned the Spanish people only drink that with coke, so we tried it.   Tasted a little like sangria without fruit in a way...

We organized a small group to have dinner together.  Fun to meet another Spanish teacher and to compare Camino stories with other walkers.  Bryan from Brooklyn suggested pasta so we went for it.  Chorizo, tomatoes, salad, bread and wine!!!  We said a nice prayer and enjoyed delicious food together.  A great end to a relaxing day:-)