from Viana

In the last two days we walked 64 km. It has been a bit too much, and we are achey. So far, the blister count is one, and we are trying to take care of any others before they have a chance to surface.

We stayed in Villamayor de mon Jardìn last night. It is a tiny town that has a few houses, a church, a winery, a bar, two refugios and well, that´s it. There is no store. This morning was by far the best one of the journey, as we got an excellent breakfast at the Dutch-run refugio that we stayed in! Coffee, yogurt, muesli, bread....nothing like a full stomach to get you going till the next town about 12 km away. As the dawn began to light up the town, we prepared our feet (hurrah for Compeed!) for the day as our Canadian traveling companion expertly played some tunes on the guitar.

The scenery today was also among the most beautiful I´ve seen. In the morning the sunlight added warmth to everything, so I saw the darkness of the mountains, the golden yellow of the harvested fields, the red clay of the upturned earth and a dark blue sky with storm clouds ahead! We´ve passed vineyards and olive groves, hay bales and a couple towns. On wine tender gave us some grapes as he came to inspect his vineyards. He said they weren´t quite ripe yet, but soon they would be harvested to make Chardonnay. He also handed us some figs and wished us well.

We are going to take it easy tomorrow. That is the plan anyway. The body is weary. We are looking forward to Sunday, when our friend Steven from the US will join us for a week!

(thanks for leaving comments on the blog, dear friends!)