La Laguna

Today is a bit of a good news, bad news story. First the good news. Butt shirts are once again making hours on a bike tolerable and, by sticking to the road, we’ve managed to keep Arandaño Joe from deserting. Best of all, though, is that we somehow managed to find ourselves on a secondary route that circles around the first hill on our map rather than climbing up and over it. This is like winning the lottery as we’re able to cruise through the first 25 miles of this leg.

The bad news is there is no such secondary route around the second hill and the climb is brutal. The temperatures aren’t as high as they have been, but the humidity is awful and sweat is soon pouring down our faces. Which attracts the flies. Oh, the flies.

For two hours all we can do is push our bikes uphill, breathing through our mouths only when necessary to keep the number of flies ingested to a minimum. Efe Bomba meets us on the road and walks us in the last few yards. Our small albergue (La Laguna is so small that there is only one) is a sight for sore eyes

Pilgrim activity is starting to pick up as we get closer to Santiago and accommodations are getting harder to find. Our goal was O Cebreiro, a bit further up and across the border in Galicia, but they are all booked up and we see people coming back down the hill towards us hoping to find some space for the night.

It’s nice enough, although nothing we do gets the air moving through our room to try and cool it down. Efe Bomba is able to find a quiet corner on the tile floor to catch some shut eye but it’s just oo hot for me and I retreat outside passing time with a cold drink and watching the locals wander by our front door (I said it was a small town).

We focus so much on each day, how far we need to go, how many hills we need to climb, what the weather looks like, and so on, that we forget just how much we have accomplished. I remember looking at the map I have on my phone the first few days feeling like the little white dot was hardly moving. I gave up after a while as, after a hard day (which is most of them), it could be a bit disheartening.

However, when Sam asked us how we were making out and I sent him this screenshot, I did a bit of a double take. Holy crap! Are we really almost done?