Wednesday May 22

Today was a fairly straight forward walk of 13 miles from Fromista to San Zolio.  The first 6 miles was along a tree lined canal, which is used for irrigating the agriculture. When we were first leaving town, we came across a group of 20 hikers from Barcelona. This group hikes a portion of the Camino each year for a week.  That way, in 5 years they will complete the entire Camino.  They also rent a bus, which accompanies them along the way, carrying their luggage, providing transport if you don't want to walk that day, etc.

At this point, we stopped in Villal Cazar de Sirgia for a coffee and to tour a 11the century church.  They have made a real business of this church.  First, you pay 2 euros each to get in.  Then, the church is virtually dark and you can't see much.  There are a number of exhibits along the way.  If you put a euro in a box, the lights on that exhibit go on for 5 minutes or so.    We tried to freeload by following some rich Brits around- let them stuff the box!  It got me thinking though- perhaps this is how we should set up the US government- let's just have a series of boxes (a locked box Al gore?) for gov services.  If we want to use them, we stick dollars in.  If not, the lights stay off so to speak.  The same with wars- if some country wants us to help them out, we send them a money box first.  "oh, you want us to bomb your rebels?  That will be $1 million per bomb...."  It would sure beat the hell out of of the totally ineffective and worthless group of leaders, legislators, lobbyists, etc that passes for government in the USA these days.

We then had a rather bland 5 mile walk along the highway, arriving at Carrion de Los Condes around 1:15.  Carrion formerly had over 10,000 people but has shrunk to less than 2,000.  Based on the  activity in the town, it probably needs to shrink some more, as things seemed pretty slow. Along the way, we passed several hikers that we have met over the past several weeks.

We then came to our lodging for the night at San Zolio.  This is an impressive converted monastery, and the rooms are quite nice, although beds are hard as rocks!  We took a tour of the monastery, and have included photos.  Mike then had a 2 hour board call for a US company.  When that was finished,  we had a terrific dinner at the Spanish restaurant at the hotel.  After sharing a large portion of outstanding jamon de iberica (the unique Spanish ham), I had a very creative salad which included fois gras.  Excellent food.

Tomorrow will be a more difficult 19 mile hike to Moratinos, a town of less than 100 people.