day 27, Palas de Rei, somewhere 60ish Kilometeres from Santiago

214 junk e-mails in my Hotmail inbox. I guess maybe this is some kind of measure of time since I have last been online. It is interesting for me, a person who lives more or less symbiotically with 24/7 internet when I am in Kalamazoo, to be using it hardly at all. As far is that is concerned I feel really out of touch with what is happening in the world and everything that I usually spend my time trivially clicking around random webpages, playing games, and reading articles. Strange...
So you may be asking, Jason, what has been happening to you in the last 200 or so kilometers? Well, a lot. I ended up deciding to meet my brother in Sarria, a little spanish town around the 112-114 kilometer mark from Santiago and it was quite a push to get there in time. It wouldn´t have been hard at all except inbetween Astorga and Sarria are two quite sizable mountain ranges. One around 800 meters or so high and the other pushing up pash 1300 meters. Since I have been in Spain I have discovered that I love mountains, perhaps because I have little to no experience with what to expect. For example, I made my third 40+ kilometer day a couple of days ago and about 15 kilometers of it was more or less straight up, over and straight down a small mountain. In the first 20 minutes this spanish guy, Raul, and I had walked high enough up that the entirety of the town we had just walked out of was spread out in precise detail below us. Then after and hour or so more of walking up and over the peak we were staring down at a new valley which we were shortly to descend into and then in the next day climb out of. It really is a profound feeling of a closeness with the land. To realize that in the last week, I have walked into, through, over, and out of a fairly sizable range of mountains, and into an entirely different community of Spain. Galicia, land of green trees, CRAZY old farmers, streets completely full of cow crap, rolling hills, and best of all SHADE!
Some of the more interesting things that have happened in the last couple of days:
*Walking into a tiny little town in the mountains, desperate for some more water, and being served a draft beer by a young boy who couldn´t have possibly been older than 13.
*Staying in a tiny municipal Albergue in a tiny town on the top of the mountains. Notable only because its main street was completely covered in cow crap. I´m not talking in the way that you can walk a little here, and a little there and completely avoid all of the mess. I mean completely full of crap, it was a necessity to just accept it, roll up my pants a little, and not pay attention to where I was stepping. Also, in this same town, am amazing italian guy who I have been walking with, Alexandro, cooked some very tasty pasta for five of us in the Albergue. Of course all good meals need to be accompanied by wine and after three bottles or so we went out and wandered around the village. The church in this town was small, old, and beautiful, with and incrediably old bell tower (supposedly the oldest on the camino) which the four of us ended up sitting and talking in. Then we got the wonderful idea to ring the bell for nine o´clock. I think perhaps we were slightly under the influence of a little to much wine... :-P I´m not entirely sure what the village people thought about us drunkenly ringing their church bell, partially because they were speaking Gallego, and partially because they were all quite old, and a little crazy.
*Walking down a mountain highway, seeing a lonely cow wandering up the street all by itself, later running into the boy who was watching the cows, telling him that he has lost a cow, and getting absolutely no reaction from him in responce to this information.
*Walking down the Camino, turning a corner and suddenly being confronted by a donkey leading a herd of cows up the Camino. Suddenly realizing that there was NOT enough space for me, the donkey, and the cows on the Camino and having to jump into the ridiculasly thick brambles on the side so as to not get gored or trampled by the peaceful mountain cows, only to be laughed at by the farmer when he walked by with the slowest cows in the end. :-P
The next day was a hard push into Sarria to meet my brother at the train station and for the last two days I have been busily trying turn him into a true pilgrim. 22 kilometeres, and then 26 kilometers with 20 pounds on your back are not trivial days for the uninitiated, and I need to remember that he hasn´t been walking the last 700 kilometers with me. It is quite nice to have him here. The Camino has a completely different feel now than it has for the last 700 kilometers and many of my friends have this slightly frazzled and anxious ambiance, almost like a surprised deer looking for a place to jump to get away from a clumsy hiker who has stumbled into its peaceful mountain meadow. I think that walking with my brother is having the effect of mitigating this feeling for me. I am sure that I would be feeling it if I were still walking solo. Also, all of the prices have gone up, due to the natural market forces of supply and demand, something that is frustrating my friends a lot. The Albergues are more or less full every night, and it is becoming necessary to seek out alternative accomadation. This is not always a bad thing though as tonight we have a very nice two bed room with a shared bathroom for the trivial sum of 20 euros. Spain is the place to be if you can keep the mind set of how much things cost in the US because EVERYTHING is so cheap in comparison.
Well three or four days will bring us into Santiago. I am not able to describe the feeling that I have right now for the proximity of the end of my pilgrimage. I guess I will go to find out in a couple of days. Maybe I will be able to describe it the next time I encounter internet.