Caceres

hi everyone
oh my god this is so much fun. i have walked for two days with the german man and his son. barb took a bus to this town on thursday morning.we met on the plaza espana at 2 or so today.
she looks great and her toe is healing nicely. barb and i will stay here until she is ready to go. she wants to go now, but knows she must wait a bit.
i know she has had a good time finding a boot store and a farmacia etc. we are a little bad. we think the lisping ci is hysterical. if we say famacia, we laugh and laugh like 10 year olds.
anyway, back to my walk. lets see. since we last talked we went to a crabby town, with a very nice albergue. when i say the town was crabby i am serious. erika and alison, it was like the brute family, only a brute town. everyone scowled and frowned and wouldn´t help. at the end, there was actually an altercation between a pilgrim and a restaurant owner, who then came to the albergue with the police. ( it was all about a piece of glass that was found in our food.) the restaurant owner said we put the glass in to get a free meal. it was like being in college, the drama and all.the police were very serious.
but before dinner, the man who volunteered at the albergue was very friendly. i could talk with him in spanish, because i can ask questions. later he came to me and said the television people where there and wanted to talk to pilgrims, and my spanish was very good! he asked if i would come down to the common room. i said sure, because i thought all of the pilgrims would be there. but no. they all said no, they didn´t want to be on tv. the interviewer said she would ask me simple questions, and said a few examples, where are you from , where are you going, what do you like about the pilgrimage etc. i thought, well fine. put on some lipstick and waited. the time came, the camera was rolling and she started talking a mile a minute and not the questions we practiced. i just kept saying, si and como? and all the coward pilgrims, including my sister, stood back and tried not to laugh. luckily it was live tv and i didn´t see it. but i have been teased a lot since then.
michael and paul are the father and son we have been walking with. barb calls paul grasshopper because he runs and jumps and dances while he listens to his music along the way. it is crazy how much energy he has- he is 17. both michael and paul speak english very well and are great to walk and talk and have dinner with. we laugh all the time. they will leave for home on monday and barb and i will be on our own again, until the new family forms. there are french people who snore that we are trying to stay away from. watch, they will be with us all the way.
we don´t know what our schedule will be. we are using up days walking shorter distances than the plan shows, so we have to take a bus for some kms. we want to walk under 20kms for a few days, and it´s difficult because some towns are more that 38kms apart. but what makes me happy is that we are relaxed about the whole thing. we really are living right here right now. ( before i came here, i went to dinner with mary marsden and we had a long wonderful talk about right here right now. it is the mantra for barb and i. thanks mary.)
the walk continues to be beautiful and interesting.
i have seen so many roman ruins. i love them. merida is a gorgeous city with an amazing roman theater, roman circus, temple to diana etc. there is also a great museum. but while we walk we also see the roman past, today alone i saw two beautiful small bridges with worn stones where carts and feet have walked. and also milestones, one with a cut out place for mail. all of these things have been there since 28 ad. a man also opened up a hermitage for us to see. there were dolmens someplace, i thought i saw them, but they were only big cows. so no dolmens today.
it has been raining more again. everyday but three. more mud and jumping rivers and walking on stepping stones, but so much fun.
i forgot my camera cord, so i don´t have photos. i,ll come back tomorrow and download some.
bye, i love you.
mary, mom, nonna