<p>We roused ourselves in the morning, ate yogurt and raisins from the supermercado.  On my wife's good advice we also buy sports drinks when we can, so we drink stuff that is of a color and flavor not found in nature, but Ketl says we need the salts and minerals.<br>
During our break fast, we consult our map.  If we followed the Camino we would walk away from the coast and up some 300 meter hills.  Quite honestly we are a bit gun shy after our moments of crisis in the Basque hills.  So we pick a route that is marked as an alternative.  It is closer to the coast and follows a road (not quite a state highway-US12-but not a dirt track).  We will cross the same hills, but we will walk on grades for cars, not goats.  It will also trim a few K off our day.  We are quite humble about our capabilities now days.  Our target is Ponteferron and it is only 11 or 12K (between 6 and 7 miles). So off we set into the cool of the morning and begin, for reasons I will not recreate here, to talk about the Nicodemus stories in John's Gospel. What transpired was a weak Christian version of the Jewish practice of midrash. We began to solve puzzles in the story (in this case, the text merely says Nicodemus comes in the night--puzzle: what is the precipitating incident?) By retelling the story with details filled in. Imagine a morning walk in sunny Cantabria swapping version after version of the same tale and running off on politics, theology, philosophy, art and laughter. My,my but we are happy fellows. As an aside, I know so little about this method of interpretation, but it seems so rich compared to historical-critical methods and propositional methods. What I do know comes from Bob Levy and Lisa Delson, rabbis at the family synagogue and a scholar named Kluge (The Bible as it Was, Jacob, and some others I can' bring to mind just now).
So we get Ponteferron. The abergue was empty but open. We choose bottom bunks and left in search of food. There was a supermercado 2K away so we loaded up with tinned fish, bread, tomatoes, pears, yogurt, and some microwave in the pac lasagna (yes, the abergue had a microwave) and headed back for a bite and a nap.
As we slept we were joined by two Hollanders and a Czech. There were great guys, but they took one look at the lasagna as it came out of the micro wave and begged off from our offer to share. They walked down to the market themselves, and by the time we finished we too decided they were right. So we sat and drank wine and talked into the night. The Czech was living in Munich working as an engineer. He and his girl friend had planned a two week holiday on the Camino, booked the flights, then broke up. They flew silently next to each other to Bilbao, and she agreed to a one day head start on Camino so they wouldn't have to travel together. One of the Dutch was head of IT for a small and elite bank. He was quiet and good humored. He played guitar for us. His traveling partner was head of security for the Dutch Royal family. Now if ever there was a man with stories to tell . . . But he couldn't, well unless he killed us after he told. He also said it was so difficult to leave work behind, this was his third time on the Camino. The physical exertion, after one or two days--they were 30K a day guys--would 'clear is head'. So we met the Queen's guard but don't know much about guarding a Queen.
This day I mingled hopes and sorrows with Tony A and Luene S.
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