Day 21 - in Burgos

501 km to Santiago de Compostela

Burgos,  the home of el Cid Campeador, the Lord Champion, Don Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, a knight and military leader and Spanish hero from 1000 years ago.  A knight of legend.  The cathedral of Burgos is one of the largest in Spain and one of the most beautiful and contains the tomb of the Cid. When I was a kid I dreamed of being a superhero, a knight, a champion of Christendom like el Cid.

This morning we went to Sunday mass in the cathedral and later to the museum of evolution of man.  The museum is link to the archaeological digs we visited yesterday and complements what we saw yesterday.  The evolution of man has been one of my interests since high school when I read about the discovery of the skull of Australopithecus Africanus and later when I read  " The human phenomenon" by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

We did not want to eat in the tourist area so I approached an older local couple, well, as old as me, and asked for a good restaurant where they eat.  They very kindly walked us to a nearby hotel.  Well, lunch was an excellent full meal in a very nice environment and not expensive.

Then we came back to our hotel and reviewed our plans and schedule.  We lost 3 days in Pamplona with my incident of exhaustion.  We are walking slower than planned because of my chronic leg pain.  Being realistic we are behind schedule.  Painfully we had to accept that we need to recover some days so we are going to skip 100 km, that is 5 or 6 days for us, and take the bus to Sahagun. 

We still think that we can push ourselves a little and complete the last 400 km in time for Easter.

A little disappointed but the years sometimes are heavier than the backpack.  My teammate, my woman, my girlfriend, my love, is totally supporting and she says that she is not only learning to be patient, she is learning to love being patient.

God willing we will still be in Santiago for Good Friday.

Saint Therese of Lisieux, you never got what you really wanted in life, to be in the missions.  Still, you accepted your limitations and taught us how to become saints with the little things of life.  Please pray for us.