Nick, Judy, Mary Lou and I met for breakfast to discuss strategy for completion of the walk. By now we have fallen into a comfort zone travelling together, quite enjoying each others company. Although they have a bit more time, we wanted to continue on. But what had become quite obvious was that ML and I did not have enough time to complete all of the legs on the Camino if we were to make it to Santiago de Compostella by the 2 Oct. We leave for London on the 3rd. In the end, the decision was to hop the bus that morning to Astroga skipping a 22 and 31 km section, allowing us to meet our deadline by sticking to the guidebook the rest of the way. So we joined the Freddy girls ( which has expanded by one with the addition of Beverly Morrell the night before) and headed out for the 45 minute drive. This meant leaving Will back a few days, a he was continuing to walk the sections we skipped. A bit sad.
Astogora is quite similar to the many other towns we stayed in, with two notable exceptions: it is a big chocolate making town, and instead of just one big cathedral, it had a second castle built by Gaudi. Disney should be so ornate. I am guessing that is where the term gaudy comes from, lets just say there is such a thing as too much. Not chocolate wise, there is never too much and we took full advantage of it.
Not a whole lot more to say bout the day in Astogora: a little bit of touring, a little bit of resting and a little bit of drinking: that is until a party broke out. We had talked upon arrival about cooking a dinner in the Albergue kitchen instead of going out, though nothing was formalized. When it became obvious that many had bought food, we pooled it all and decided to invite everyone and anyone to join us, and join us they did. Spaghetti was the main dish, and I volunteered to be the cook. While the rest were touring the cathedral, I got started on the sauce, and by the time they came back the place was smelling great. Barb and Pat volunteered to be sous chefs and chopped up all the fixins that went with it. Mary Lou came in and rescued a relatively bland sauce by adding salt and a couple of olives, it was delicious and ready. I hadn't even noticed all the other activity so when I turned around, wow, there was a smorgasbord. Well done people. This was a great meal, a great time and full of music as we sang to the Ukelele played by our Australian friend Marie.
Just to give an example of how it goes on the Camino. There was a young German couple sitting on their own and one of the girls went down to get them to join us. They were reluctant as they did not have anything to contribute to the meal, but that doesn't matter here, and we set them at the table with a wine and a beer. About fifteen minutes later as we were ready to serve the spaghetti, there were not enough forks. As I was considering heading to the Supermecado to get some, the young fellow says " don't bother, I have a bunch of plastic forks in my backpack". Yep, the Camino answers again.
The Freddy girls took charge of cleanup and in no time all we were all in our bunks getting ready to hit the trail again in the morning.
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