It's funny how you can get close to people in such a short time but yesterday's walk was a mixed blessing, a shorter day which gives me a rest but also a day I lost connection with the group I've been traveling with for the last week as they moved on further and I'll be taking a different route. In some ways it reminds me of road trips I used to take in college where when you spend a whole bunch of time with the group of people often Friends of Friends and have some shared experiences and adventures it's easier to develop a Stronger Bond. Here we spend hours and days on end together and often end the day with a communal meal and sometimes quite often some deeper discussions come to the surface which also creates a higher level of intimacy.
I knew yesterday's walk was short and so I walked really slowly in fact I think too slowly because it made me actually feel more tired than energized but it was a lovely walk through Forest and on Trails instead of the road bringing me to a Seaside town, Ribadesella where a cave was discovered in the late 1960s that had some fascinating cave art from prehistoric times 10 to 15,000 years ago.
I find this really fascinating and had the opportunity to take a tour of the cave and to see the art first hand that is some of the very first artworks by people.
Not only were there images that were easily recognizable like horse and reindeer and ancestors of today's cows but also there were symbols and signs that indicated human forms and then some just Mysteries symbols that were repeated but no one really knows what the symbols man including some that look like fertility symbols and parts of the cave that resemble reproductive organs it's just a fascinating mystery and it was a wonderful experience to get to see them firsthand something I've wanted to do for a long time. Probably because one of my favorite book series is something called The Clan of the Cave Bear.
Reading has always been something I've enjoyed and as I look back over my life it's really been an important part of helping me through difficult times and helping me to figure out what my own life philosophy is. I mean I'm not even sure I would be on the Camino if it were not for the Brazilian author Paulo Coelho whose first book on the Camino I thought was just all fiction until I read that people were actually walking it and it became something on my bucket list that I waited more than 20 years to ever do. And now I'm on number 5.
So while yesterday I had a short walk and a nice relaxing time in the city today I got to go and see the cave art and had lots of free time and created some silly videos (here with south African friends Jessie) which are also in the pictures linked above. Plan on treating myself to some good seafood for dinner as I'm about to head Inland for the next part of my Camino.
I've been following the Camino Del Norte so far which is all along the coast and I've gone about halfway. This Camino still continues along the coast and then wraps around and heads down to Santiago. Tomorrow I move ahead to a city called Oviedo which cuts across the interior of the country for the Camino Primitivo which is a much more Rural and nature type of hike and it's quite challenging with a lot more climbing. But I shouldn't have much time left probably about 10 days of hiking before I head back to friends in Germany for an extended vacation.
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