April 29 Tuesday - When You Wish Upon A Bunk Bed

April 29 Tuesday - When You Wish Upon A Bunk Bed

So at the very end of my last post I said there was little opportunity to have a conversation in English in my current stage of the Via de la Plata because there are no native speakers or people who are fluent. So, I had been walking about two hours this morning enjoying the fresh air and scenery and a man approaches me from the opposite direction, says hello, and starts walking with me. He doesn't have a back pack, so he's not a pilgrim. But he starts talking and walking. He says he walks this way every morning and meets pilgrims and walks with them. He's originally from London, but has lived in Spain for 23 years. He is married to a Spanish woman and they live in the village we are walking toward. 

His name is John, just like my hubby. And he is a conspiracy theorist, just like, well, my hubby. He was telling me his theories about 9/11 and the third building. I thought he meant the Pentagon, but no, he meant a third building near the Twin Towers.He doesn't think the planes brought the towers down. It started sounding all Grassy Knoll to me. He walked with me for about an hour or more. We talked about many things including kids and Grandkids. 

John, the English guy, not my hubby was also telling me there had been a plan to put an oil refinery on these beautiful hills near his village. The plan was to carry the crude oil 200 km through a pipe line and then send the refined oil back through another pipeline. The water they used to wash or process the crude oil would be dumped in a river that joined another river that flows into Portugal and empties in the ocean off the Portugese. Coast. Apparently Portugal wasn't too thrilled with this plan. Imagine. Anyway John and the other locals fought for eight years and defeated the project. This explained all the "Refinerías No" signs I saw along the route. 

After he left me, I thought WOW last night I'm talking about needing or wanting a little conversation in English and plop out of the middle of really no where, here is this guy this morning. Boy that was amazing. 

I also started thinking about his theories. I thought about how horribly scary it would be if he were right. Them I realized it wouldn't surprise me if some power group within the US perpetrated this horrendous act. I think I've been watching too much TV, programs like Person of Interest or I've been listening to John too long. lol. I decided I did not want to spend my Camino thinking about such stuff. This is why I don't watch or read the so called news. If the powers that be call me up and ask me what they should do, I'll study up, but the odds if that happening are too great to calculate. 

So back to the Camino. I walked the rest of the way into Villafranca de Los Barros which felt further but was actually closer than I thought it was. This part of the Camino is not as breathtakingly beautiful as the first part, but a lot of that was through Parque Natural or other open space. This part has a little more industry. I found the Albergue El Carmen and got a bed, a lower bunk. It's a nice small homey place. I took a shower and did my laundry. 

I am feeling less tired in the evening, but it still hard to get it together to go out at 8pm to eat. So I went to the store to get some food for dinner. Now we will see if I can get it together to cook something. lol

Good news I managed to cook it. So far nobody in this group is making communal meals. I even offered my left overs to everyone and had no takers. They were all going out for the Pilgrim's meal. Oh well. I would go for the Pilgrim's meal or any meal if I could het into to town in time for the midday meal or stay up late enough for the evening meal. At this point if I went out to eat at 8:00 or 8:30pm, they would find me face down in my pasta snoring and inhaling noodles in the process. While I was eating my dinner, an Irish man and the Austrian woman were sitting at the table comparing their guide books and trying to plan the rest of the Camino all the way to Santiago. I was speechless. I'm just hoping to make it to the next town tomorrow. 

Well good night all.