523 km to Santiago de Compostela
Again we started early and arrived to the town of Atapuerca by 9 am. From there we walked to the visitor receiving centre for the archaeological park.
A bus came to take us to the excavations and we had a witty and funny archaeologist as a tour guide. This is probably the most important dig in the world. They have found up to 300 humans and humanoids from different ages starting with a young girl of about 20 who lived 1,300,000 years ago. Her bones show signs that she was cannibalised. Very interesting. Tomorrow we will try to visit the museum of evolution in Burgos which complements what we saw today.
The tour ended at 2 pm and we still had over 20 km to go. We started by climbing yet one more hill to Alto Cruzeiro. The day had been getting colder, around 4 or 5 C but with strong winds. We really could not find anything to eat so we went without lunch and only the fruit we had left. From there we walked another 10 km to Villafria. We had some rain and more very cold wind. Villafria is a suburb of Burgos so we gave up and took a city bus to downtown. This saved us about 5 more km of cold and rain.
We are set up in a very nice hotel near the centre of the city and it is costing us less than a room in most of the albergues. We got a nice pilgrim discount.
Too early for Spanish dinner we went to the corner cafeteria and had nice burgers for dinner.
It was a long day, in total we walked just over 20 km and with the cold and rain both of us are very tired.
It is 9 pm so good night
St. Francis of Assis, you are an example of humility, teach us to be like you. You walked el Camino de Santiago 800 years ago. Protect us during our journey and pray for us.
How interesting! Just today I read that Atapuerca is closed to visitors, I'm glad I found out that that books was wrong, since I may be visiting in a couple of weeks!
ReplyDeleteGlad to hear you are doing so much better!