May 16 - Aljucen to Alcuescar

Ohhh, I had to wake up and get out of bed!!! After such a great evening yesterday. I felt great! And ready to walk. I had a good walk today, and realized my leg/hip thing was like almost gone! I believe those baths and the physical movements I did helped untwinge me. Oh yeah, and my quiromasadista!
It was very humid, overcast, and we had to put yesterday´s wash pinned to the back of our backpacks hoping they will be dried by our next stop.

We are in the region of Extremadura, and the government has placed these large square stones with the emblem of Extremadura, a Roman arch with the yellow path going through it. You are to follow the direction of that path just like the yellow arrows.
We walked through so many pastures, fields, farms with bulls, cows, pigs,sheep. Today´s walk had a lot of poop on it. I joked we were were on the Via de la Caca. At one point, walking through a farm, the farmer had spread out all the poop so that there was no other thing to do but walk through it. It stunk.
As I walk I have to look down most of the time it seems, to avoid pits, rocks, poop, whatever and notice that the ants are out full force. They make little paths across the camino; so many of them that they have pressed down the soil to actuallly see and trails. I avoid stepping on them all the time. I am reminded of the movie, 7 Years in Tibet, when the monks were moving worms(?) to another place as they dug the ground, for fear of hurting them since they may have been an ancestor in a past life. I don´t want to squash my great aunt Nana!
It was raining on and off, but we did get to use our ponchos for the first time. We had used a little umbrella on other rainy moments, but now it required the ponchos. I end up sweating a bit! Wet no matter what! The fields of boulders are majestic.
I get excited seeing such big rocks! How did they get there? Is this where the Romans went to take stones and make those incredible arches and aqueducts? One of the things I am very amazed at, is the amount of stone walls in Spain. I remember that from last year´s Camino Frances. Thousands of kilometers worth of stone fences, with the stones so neatly placed that they do not require anything to hold them together, and that they are probably hundreds of years old. And just the sheer amount of stones required to make them!! Boggles me.
We are seeing purple arrows. My fave color! They stop at one point. I saw green ones as well and realized they must be the arrows placed for pilgrims walking back, for they are on the other side of trees and posts that I am facing. I wonder how many people walk both ways...
The trail is flanked by those church incense bushes. I love the way it smells, and it gives a sense of tranquility, just like I feel when I sit awhile alone in a church.
We got to Alcuescar and I asked a gentleman if this particular building is the albergue and he was the hospitalero. From the window upstairs he can see us walking up the road and hurries down to the street to greet us. Antonx and Maria Paz are a married couple volunteering for 2 weeks at this albergue. It is a monastery and the priests there take care of the mentally ill. It is very comfortable and it is paid by donativos. Antonx took my rucksack after arguing with me that he wanted to do it since I have walked long enough and it is 34 stairsteps to the albergue. They had water and cookies for us. Salvador and I each had a room to ourselves. There are rooms with 1 bed (like ours), a few with 2 beds and one large room with bunks that were not used that night. I sat outside on the benches to warm up, since it was colder inside than outside, and I was greeted by some of the men that live there. One in particular keeps asking me for a cigarette and a pepsi, and Antonx gives him a cigarette and the guy hides in the bushes to smoke it, since the priests don´t want him smoking. (Don´t tell anybody, I don´t want to get anyone in trouble). 5 minutes later he is next to me asking for a pepsi and a cigarette. They´re lovingly taken care of here. It was very pleasant. Mary Paz gives me a tour fo the church and the chapel for the men who live there. The confession booth is quite old.

For dinner, we ate what the priests ate as well. Very tasty, may I say and by donativo as well. Priests do not eat at the same table as women, and since I was there (and the only woman) there were no priests eating with us that night. Shame. It would be nice to be together. I had no idea that was one of their rules. We all cleaned up together. I really enjoyed this albergue, it felt very real in some kind of way. Hard to explain. TOTAL 21,5 KILOMETERS.