Continuing from before, here is the true honest version of each and every day. You will literally feel my pain/anger/struggle that it will cause your feet to start hurting!
Day 1. Hey it's not that bad! That's what I told myself when we arrived at our destination (Again, I'm still in that excited stage so, go figure). We walked 27km and arrived at San Martin del Camino. All of us walked together. Yup all for one and one for all, but that didn't last long. My thoughts on this day were: "Hey it's not as bad as I thought it'd be, 27km is a piece of cake, psh I can do this!" Oh, how naive. But you know what goes up must come down, and that's exactly what it happened. Stupid physics and Newton laws!
Day 2. And so it begins--excitement turns into pain/anger. Today was the start of the "Why am I doing this to myself/I want to die/TAKE ME WITH YOU (to the byciclists/cars passing by)" days. Today me and 3 other people decided to separate and walk ahead because the other half of group was taking too long of a break and we were in the zone and wanted to keep on going. It was a great time of fellowship and getting to know them, but guess what, like I mentioned before, we follow the arrows to get to the next place. Too bad we followed to wrong ones and ended up going the LONG WAY which added about another 6km and when you're walking in the valley of death with no shade, 6km is like a gazillion kilometers! Though we did meet a cool ex-pilgrim guy who was handing out free refreshments in the middle of the nowhere! haha Oh and it doesn't end there, to cross a set of railroad tracks right about where we enter our destination, we had to go on a bridge and this was no ordinary bridge! See picture. Honestly, we were almost there, and they had to drop this bomb on us. It's just a set of train tracks! We can run across them! No labyrinth is necessary! Oh boy, we just walked more than 25km, they should make it easy for us pilgrims, but honestly the whole camino is just tough love status. However, after the death valley and the death bridge, we finally got to Astorga, where we met up with the 4 other peeps joining our group!
Days 3-4-5 Just when you think it can't get any worse, it does. Days 3-4-5 were one of the TOUGHEST days ever. I felt like I was walking my own death march. Adding to the horribleness, it's kidna gross, but I was having the first signs of dehydration, which gave me stomach problems, and it was no bueno. Foncebadon-Ponferrada-Villafranca, I just wish you never existed so we didn't have to go to you! Foncebadon was definitely tough. Uphill all the way till you get to the albergue. But I gotta say, it was my favorite albergue we stayed at--very hippie-ish and it had a cool vibe to it and we met cool German people which we saw till the end! Ponferrada was a definitely long. You can see the city from about 8km, but seriously, it'll be the longest 8km of your life! Me and one of my friends even contemplated taking the bus down, hey it stopped right in front us, so why not take it! But we didn't. This place also had a cool albergue with a fountain! Which was amazing cuz it was wonderful for my feet! At this point I'm defeated. I even broke down and cried like a baby on my way to Villafranca. I was at the top of the hill. No one was with me, so I just started shouting hateful things and tears of pain/anger came rushing down my cheeks. When I just wanted to continue my cry babyness, I turned around and there's this guy behind me, so I just wiped my tears off and continued walking towards the city. I even saw cars passing by me, I tried waving them down, yes hitchhike, but I couldn't even lift up my arms! Oh wait, I see the "Welcome to Villafranca" sign, I must be close, NOT! Once again, they tricked us poor pilgrims and made us walk another 6km after the welcome sign. UGH!
Day 6. O'CEBREIRO. All caps cuz that place was horrible. We knew that this was going to be THE TOUGHEST DAY EVER! So we decided to send our backpacks up through this company to O'cebreiro so we have a lighter load climbing up the mountain of death. Seriously the first 20km is flat and the last 7-8km is like vertically vertical (I don't even know how to explain the height)! This mountain was seriously monstrous. Gotta be honest though. I cheated this day. I walked about 17-18km and I couldn't go anymore. I think I let the whole "O'cebreiro=super tough" get to my head, so I just took a cab. It felt nice though, and I think cheating helped me regain my strength and energy for the rest of the camino. Going up this mountain in a cab only took like, literally, 5 mins! It could've taken me like 10 hours to get up here. We were at the highest peak. Just look at the picture and see the other peaks, they look tiny and we're above the clouds!
When is this going to end! Stupid Camino de Santiago! Why am I doing this to myself....
***bicyclists/cars passing*** OMG TAKE ME WITH YOU!
...To be continued
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