Day 34 - Wednesday December 6th - walking from Sarria to Hospital da Cruz (33km)

The sun came out this morning and I was elated. It was if I was in another country and another season feeling the warmth of the light and I walked as long as I could to take in as much as I could. Even though it wasn´t raining I still got wet because the rain left a lot of little and not so little puddles on the pathways. Sometimes it was stepping from stone to stone to get accross, other times climbing up onto a stone wall and sometimes you just had to get wet. Today is Constitution day in Spain and I think a couple of the farmers were celebrating by killing a pig. One I heard squealing loudly and desperately from behind a barn and the other I had the pleasure of seeing right next to the camino.

For most of the morning I walked quietly on my own and then all of a sudden around 11am I was passed by about thirty other pilgrims. This week because of the holidays there are more pilgrims and also because I have crossed the 100km mark. It is a different dynamic with people walking quickly with small backpacks, others talking on their phones or smoking a cigarette while they walk and others in their own world listening to their headphones. I am trying not to judge them, but I don´t feel they are walking the same camino as me.

There is also a change in the albergues which are run by an independant Galician association and ask only for a donation. In some there are kitchens, but not always dishes or burners that function, the toilets do not always offer the luxury of toilet paper and heating is limited and often gets turned off at night.

I realize to an English speaker that if I say I am spending another night in town called ´Hospital´ it may seem a little questionable, but I am told its origins have something to do with hospitality offered to pilgrims.