The Meseta. Whew. Hot, dry, no shade, early mornings to beat the heat, and late nights of overheated sleeplessness. It definitely makes a person excited for a cold beer. But it’s all part of the experience, and not all bad. It’s basically like walking through Kansas for a week and has its ups and downs (not in elevation), but the ups – like gorgeous sunrises on a cool morning – make it all worth it. Plus one definitely feels a sense of accomplishment, especially as you see the big tour buses roll by, skipping the real hard part.

Our days were long and mostly uneventful during this section. We slowed down the drinking and socializing since it was just too hot to party, plus we were waking up at 6 am so we could get to the next town before the afternoon heat. Locals always told us we pilgrims were all crazy for walking around in that heat. At one point we took an “alternate” route to avoid a lot of walkers, which ended up being something like 20 kilometer stretches with no amenities. But the solitude was amazing, so in the end we were glad for it.

As we neared Leon, we got excited not only because of the end of the Meseta, but because that’s roughly were we had both started in previous trips, so we were coming to the point of recognition. A few more days to the beautiful landscape in Galicia!

We finally made it! We had been discussing waking the entire Camino Frances since 2013, when we walked a portion of it with Javi’s family. And actually Javi and his sister Leti had walked some of it way back in 2006 so it had been on his mind for even longer. When we decided to do this adventure, we made it a priority. Now it was all happening.

We took the train to Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port in France and began the journey on May 30 with 40 days of walking ahead of us. We have smallish but heavy packs for this grand adventure, but we didn’t need all that stuff for the Camino so we had sent a few things ahead to Santiago. Despite this, our bags still felt a little heavy, especially Javi’s. We wanted to take our camping gear, since camping is preferable to us over hostels, so that’s mostly what was weighing us down. But we figured we’d get used to it over time, and we eventually did. Although we didn’t end up camping as often as we would’ve liked, the times we did (7 nights) were great.

In the interest of avoiding extremely long posts (because we could write about our experience on the Camino forever), we figured we would just do an overview of our time on The Way…. (basically it was awesome). One could mentally and physically separate the walk into thirds – the Pyrenees to Burgos, the Meseta (roughly Burgos to Astorga), and Galicia.

The first third was mostly spent getting used to walking every day, working out any physical issues, meeting people and socializing (aka drinking “cañas” ), and being in constant disbelief that this was actually happening. Several folks we met at the outset began getting injuries during this first part, some actually having to quit or take long breaks. We took our time and didn’t push it, and basically just got lucky given that we didn’t really train for this trek. Laura’s feet weren’t doing so hot the first couple of weeks but they eventually toughened up.  In the whole Camino she only experienced one tiny blister, which must be some sort of record.

The Camino is a really social endeavor (unless you seek solitude and actively avoid people). It didn’t feel overcrowded (yet) and folks started to form friend groups. We mostly walked just the two of us during the day, mainly because we were always the last to leave our hostel or campsite, but always had a good time hanging out with other pilgrims in the evenings. While walking, we spent long days alternating between a comfortable introspective silence, and singing ridiculous made up songs and just being plain weird. Walking for 40 days can definitely make you a weirder person, especially when you are mostly just hanging out with your partner. Hence the importance of making friends.

After a few days walking, we enjoyed a fun evening in Pamplona but it is definitely surreal to be in a city after walking through rural Spanish towns for so long. When we arrived in Burgos on our 12th day of walking we took our first day off, and many of our friends did too so we had a big crazy night and a chill rest day. We went to the Museum of Human Evolution in Burgos with a friend, in keeping with our travel theme of learning about ancient human history. We were absolutely amazed at how cool this museum was. Modern, relevant, well coordinated and curated. And only 4 euros! This was truly one of our favorite moments along the Camino. We learned that the specific area of Spain we were walking through has such importance because of several significant discoveries of early humans.

We moved on after our rest day rejuvenated and ready for the infamous Meseta.