Oh what a day. More sharing tomorrow.

We started out from El Burgo Ranero this morning. It was cold and beautiful, well dark at first.

We walked the first 8 kms in the dark when suddenly Niel from Scotland came suddenly upon us. I will admit he scared us. He is a much faster walker than we are so he soon sped past us.

As we walked along the road in a nice path we saw ahead what looked like a bottle of beer on a camino marker. As we got closer we discovered it was a full bottle of wine with a note: for Noah and Debbie. We, of course, took it knowing Niel had left it for us. We found out that he had found the bottle along the trail. He carried it for a bit and decided since we had two bags we could carry it. 😂😂😂

We saw him later and he explained that to us. Noël shared with him that his name is Noël not Noah. He apologized. Noel wasn’t upset. Just wanted him to know.

Our day was going to be long because we couldn’t find anywhere to sleep for 31 kms. When we arrived at our accommodation it was on the outskirts of a small town where no bars/restaurants were open. There was a Dutch couple just ahead of us who headed up to their room. As we were getting checked in to say their room wasn’t clean.

After we got our keys all the way up the stairs I kept saying I hope our room is clean. It wasn’t. They gave us another key. Again a room not cleaned. We decided to check about dinner. Nope. No dinner, but we could walk back into town where there would be a restaurant open…at 9:00 pm. Nope.

We got a taxi for the 9 kms into Leon. I said to Noël, “if we don’t take care of ourselves who will?” It was a very good decision.

There are similar experiences in life off of the Camino. Stand up for yourself. Don’t think that you are being selfish. Look at it this way: on an airplane they tell you to put on your own air mask before helping someone else. So, take care of yourself first so you can be there to help others.

Hope you are well. Buen Camino!

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