May 17 - Alcuescar to Aldea del Cano

I am handling walking so much better now. Rarely do I feel any pain. Finally! The day has started out beautifully! Skies are clear, although it is chilly. The wildflowers are getting more and more abundant. I think that as we move north, spring is moving north as well. We will probably be in eternal spring!! All around us is eye candy. The skies, the flowers, the birds. Stork nests are all over the place now. The babies are moving around in their little homes, peeking over the sides. I can see plumage, no longer little naked babies. When the mom flies over us I think they look just like they look in cartoons, all they need are the little bundles of babies in their beaks. Aside from these magnificent looking birds, there are many other large birds flying around all the time. Eagles, hawks, falcons (?) I do not know, for sure, although I can make out an eagle, but the others I am not sure.
We crossed an intact small Roman bridge as we entered a town called Casas de Don Antonio. These names!! A nice little fountain made a comfy area to rest and eat a little breakfast. We carry some food with us, nothing too heavy. Fruit unfortunately weighs a lot so one can only carry a little. Today I ate the orange. Less weight in the backpack.
On we went. Another Roman bridge in the middlw of nowhere. I would think that hundreds of years ago, this area must have been a forest, for one can only wonder why there would be a bridge in this particular spot. Another Roman piece of "construction" we see is the Miliario. They are basically mile markers. Placed by the Romans when building the road we are walking on. The distance from one to the next is considered a Roman Mile, which is about 1000 steps or 1.4 kilometers, close to our mile. Hmmm I wonder if our word mile comes from this word, miliario.

We are doing some road walking now and there is a town straight ahead, yessss, almost there!! But wait, why is the road taking us to the left of the town? And further left,hmmm. Now we have the town to our right, and the yellow arrows keeps pointing straight and away fromthe town. We decide to venture into the town anyway and see if it is our chosen destination. Well, yes it is! I still wonder why the camino did not take us into this town. Our guide says there is no albergue there, but a very basic refugio in a nearby school. Luckily we went into the Las Vegas bar and there was our friend, Manfred, from Germany. He said he had the key to the albergue and took us there. Well, this was not a basic refugio, but a very nice albergue. I was so happy, no sleeping on the floor tonight. We paid at the bar and settled in. Manfred was a little high, said he likes this town because it has many many benches for him to sit and relax in! All other peregrinos that arrived today went to a hostal,,,, guess they did not know about the albergue. Conrado from Salamanca joined us, and we were 4 for the night. Back at the bar, we ate and Manfred was drinking a bit heavy and kissing people. Later that afternoon, when he started putting money into people´s pockets, I had to intervene. Drunk people have no idea what they are doing and I wanted to protect him, I just had to. I asked people to give me his money back, I have no idea if they all did, and with a little assistance we got him back to the albergue and put him to bed. I tucked his money into his credencial. Later he went back out and was escorted back by some local guy. I put him to bed. Slept very little that night, between the bar noise and Manfred. Gotta love him! TOTAL 17 KILOMETERS