This Little Piggy has a Blister

Well, I’ve been wearing these shoes for 9 months and never had a blister. I’ve been practicing with George walking 5km every other day when he’s in town. I walked over the Pyrenees and never had a hot spot. A woman I met in January who walked the Camino many times gave me some advice: tape your toes! But I disregarded it, since there had been no blisters on my feet from my well-broken-in shoes.

But today, the tips of two toes, the ones next to my pinkies, have pockets of pus (I know, gross description, but niceties are unnecessary on Camino) and they hurt when I walk. The preferred band-aid of choice here is called Compeed. It’s a skin-colored and -textured piece of something that covers your blister and acts like a second skin. It conforms to wherever you put it and can stay on your body for 3 days, even through showers. I have some and stretch it over my blisters before I walk. It sort of helps, but they still hurt. So far, everything else is fine. Perhaps the blisters are from my longest, fastest walk yet yesterday, 24km in 6 hours, the last couple of hours in the sweaty sun. Fortunately, there are no blisters on any of the weight-bearing parts of my foot.

Last night we stayed at La Casa Abuela (Grandmother’s House!) and this morning the church bells wake us at 6am. After breakfast, we are on the road a little after 7am. Uli has already gone, so it’s Las Tres Chicas on the road. We walk through farmland through small hill towns, where, at this hour, the only action is at the pilgrim fountain.

Today we’re going through Torres del Rio, home to Iglesia de Santo Sepulcho, a 12th century church of the Knights Templar. It’s a simple octagonal stone building, based on the church of the Holy Sepulcre in Jerulsalem. The acoustics are amazing. I recorded Susie singing a fragment of a hymn and it sounded like a heavenly choir. I wish I could post it here but I can only do pics. Too bad.

We continue through the countryside, taking a break outside a small church on the hill to take silly pictures. Walking through a cloud of bugs that stuck to our sweaty skin, I kept walking as Susie sat for a rest. Soon, I crested the hill that led to the town of Viana, our next stop. On the way down, I saw two people sitting under an umbrella in the road. I stopped to see if they were ok and found two young Asian girls creating their own shade, having a rest, a soda, and listening to Bob Dylan. Certainly everyone has their own Camino.

Viana is a fairly large town with a vibrant main street. We see Morgan sitting at a table outside of one of the many street cafes with some pizza and a beer. Our accommodations tonight are at the monastery-turned-municipal-hostel, adjoining the ruins of an old church. Our drying laundry had the best view of the valley below. This hostel was unusual in that it had not regular double bunk beds, but triple-bunk beds! Mary and Susie ended up on the bottom bunk, I was on the second, then we saw Uli up on the third! Reeeally hard if you have to get up to go to the bathroom at night! We’ll see how well we sleep, since the big Spanish guy on the bottom bunk explained in sign language that we should use our earplugs since he was going to snore

We are there early enough to have a nice lunch on one of the side streets. After lunch, I have time to write, post a blog, take a nap, and then do some shopping at the pharmacy for tape for my toes, since, after today’s walk, there are four (poor pinkies!) now that have blisters. I also bought some nice cream for my feet to add another layer to the sock and liner program I had been relying on up to now. Since we had such a huge, late lunch, we got just a quick snack and were in bed by 10pm.