April 23, 2007
It turns out that today is a holiday in the region of Castilla-Leon. Both El Cubo andVillanueva ar tiny two-bar towns. Neither of the bars in El Cubo opened this morning. We knew that would be the case, so we made arrangements last night to eat breakfast at the private alebergue. We spent the night in the competing parish albergue. When we showed up at Casa Carmen everything was locked up tight. We rang several times, but she must have decided that if we'd wanted breakfast badly enough we'd have stayed there in the first place. So we had an orange and a handful of nuts and hit the trail, not knowing what we'd find open in Villanueva. Fortunately, we had ordered a few sandwiches "to-go" at dinner last night, so we had lunch covered.
Villanueva is a 2-bar town with one of the bars permanently closed. The other is open and will fix dinner and pack a lunch for tomorrow. Good thing, because there isn't even a store in this pueblo.
The albergue here is one of the nicest we've found. It is sponsored by the town, and they've put a matron in charge of collecting the donation and keeping an eye on things. The men's shower is something to behold. There is what looks like a closet door in the bathroom that opens to what looks like a closet with a drain the floor. No shower pan or threshold to prevent the water from running out. In fact it appears as though the low point in the floor is somewhere out by the sink. I saw the problem coming and tried to fashion a dam with a pair of pants I was going to wash. Even that wasn't enough to stem the tide. Rather than correcting the problem, they just leave a mop in the bathroom. we asked the matron about it later, and she told us that it was built that way to comply with the equivalent Spaniards with Disabilities Act. That was her story and she was sticking to it. The image of wheelchairs negotiating these trails is something straight from Monte Python (The Paraplegic Pilgrims). More likely someone will be left in a wheelchair after slipping on the wet tile.
Three Germans showed up late yesterday after walking a torturous 34km from Salamanca. It was their first day on the camino, and it couldn't have been uglier. They were pretty beat up this morning, so they decided to make this a short day. The arrived here a little after us. They must have gotten lost, because they left half an hour ahead of us and we stopped for lunch, too. They had lunch in the bar, then arranged with the bar owner to give them a lift into Zamora. Must be on a tight schedule.
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