We set the alarm for 6:45 and got a fairly early start out of Rabanal Del Camino. The town was so pretty we didn’t want to leave. We had yogurt and fruit in our room and then café con leche downstairs at the bar. Two woman, sitting at a table behind us, had ordered a full breakfast and they couldn’t finish it so they gave us a plate of toast with cream cheese and walnuts. We were ten minutes down the road, traveling briskly in order to get warm when I realized I had set our 1.5 liter bottle of water down. We had to go back as there were no towns for many kilometers.
The Camino today went up into the mountains and it was probably the prettiest day of the whole route but it was hard to tell. The temperatures were in the upper thirties, the wind was howling and it was pouring rain. We had all the clothes we brought on. We were basically in the clouds the whole day. The trail narrowed drastically at times with tall weeds on both sides of us and it felt like we were following a deer path in Durand Eastman.
At the highest elevation, around 5000 feet, there is a tall oak telephone pole like structure with an iron cross on top of it, La Cruz de Ferro.This is where pilgrams leave a stone, usually something they brought from home, at the base. We had two hand picked stones from the beach at Durand. You make a wish or declare an intention or vow and move on. It’s a Celtic tradition with some Christianity glommed on top.
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