March 24th: Salamanca to El Cubo de Tierra del Vino

Woke up at a luxurious 9am today, my nose was blocked and I was afraid I was snoring all night at Arián’s place… she was too kind to mention it… got some licks from Kiss the greyhound in the morning… she thought it time for me to get up as well… side note, more people need greyhounds in their lives… what a great little pup! There was another one too but she was terrified of me and my masculine nature as much as I tried to befriend her… Winning over a dog that doesn’t like men is like the absolute victory, maybe the next time I am in Salamanca we will be friends…

Took a walk to the Cathedral for some religious tourism… also hoping deep down for god to reach out and scoop me up, explain to me my existence and tell me it will all be alright…. 10 euros and a very anticlimactic moment of silence later, still no answers… disappointed with this divine intervention, I thought the only thing I can easily choose to do today is to ride… I wasn’t supposed to ride today (again) and it was the first day with some cloud cover and wind, but I had no other ideas… so I packed up, said goodbye to the doggo and Arián, and hit the road around noon.

I beat the rain by possibly 30 minutes… I could see the really dark clouds roll in behind me onto Salamanca, and I pedaled hard towards the line of sunlight that cut the road about half a kilometre ahead of me… still dry, a little cold from strong cross winds but felt good!

I made it into the town I was aiming for by 4:45pm, there is an Albergue here and after reading toooooo many google reviews, I was skeptical of the place, because it was 30 euros, almost double of any other Albergue so far, but did include dinner and breakfast…. Also they had a nice little garden where I could finally get some work done on my bike… the brakes needed servicing as well as another big decision… replace the back tire or let it roll till I’m forced to replace it when it explodes… I chose to leave it be and not get too smart with Maria… I did change out some break pads and tried my hardest to clean the drive train but it is just covered in thick black gunk…

The dinner turned out to be really nice, simple home cooking but worth the extra cash, and I have some walking pilgrim roommates tonight and they are nice enough… Beata from Hungary and I had a good chat, I think we are both very glad to come across people who understand English and can reciprocate… well I am at least :).

Since I wasn’t supposed to ride today, tomorrow will also be an easy day, only 30 odd kms, I will try to get to Zamora by noon! My warm showers had not responded to me, I guess I’ll be staying at the Albergue in town, I may check out their camp site… depends on how social I feel.

• Europe