Day 4 (30 March) 12 miles — Bar Central

The morning started in darkness. Took me a while to figure out that Europe went on to daylight time.

We were on our way at 8:45. It was an easy day – 12 miles. We had good signage throughout. Hard to miss our route.

We made great time reaching Villacazar de Sirga — the three-quarters point before noon. Time for our cerveza break.

While we were relaxing, a group of Malaysian pilgrims came by. We had seen them before. They are a spirited group and seem to flow easily along the Camino. They flew 19 hours from Kuala Lumper to Paris and then to took the train to Spain. They will be going all the way to Santiago.

As we left Villacazar, I met my fourth American. The Malaysian contingent outnumbers Americans at this point on the Camino. Tucker is between jobs. He was suffering some serious foot issues at the moment. We ran into him early morning as we were leaving Fromista. He was keeping an excellent pace (just under 20 minutes/mile) considering his injuries. We left him as he cooled his feet.

We were closing in on Carrion des Los Condes but many kilos remained for the days ahead. We reached Carrion before 2:00. Finally, some down time for a nap (I don’t know what the rest of the pack did).

The Happy Hour call went out for 4:00. We went to one of the few bars that was open on Sunday— the Bar Central. A classic.

The patrons were all men of our generation gathering to shoot the xxxx and to play card games unknown to us. We sat at a corner table where green felt mats were neatly folded on a rack above us. Locals came up and took them one at a time. They spread them out on the tables and money was placed on top to wager on the games. The coins looked like pocket change.

The players and their fans were very animated. They slapped down cards. They whooped it up and had wide grins when they won. They winced when they threw out the wrong card.

When we were finished with our cervezas, I asked the players at the nearest table if I could take their photo. They gladly agreed. I had wished that I was an anthropologist who spoke Spanish.

The sun was setting. Following Spanish custom, I dined at 8:30. No one spoke even a smidgen of English at La Marbella, a bar restaurant on the edge of town. The menu was very limited. I opted for a mixed salad, a soup that turned out to be tomato, and rice pudding. I asked for cerveza y vino tinto. I used the y because I didn’t remember the word for or. I got a tall glass of beer and a full bottle of red wine. I was one happy puppy at the end of the evening. To be honest, I drank only one glass of the vino and the cerveza. I was still a happy puppy.