Halfway

Salamanca is 20km away and marks the halfway point of Via de la Plata. I've been traveling in a group of four for the past two weeks or so. Silvia from Italy, Patrick the Frenchman, Nicolas from Holland and me. Some of them are going home from Salamanca and supposedly a lot of people start there as well, especially this time of year.

The route really has filled its promise of being full of ancient Roman ruins. There are 2000 year old cylindrical stone mile markers lining the dirt road that were on for much of the time. Not every mile anymore, but each time I pass one it sends my imagination way back in time.

The weather has been comically bad. It has rained enough to soak my boots for eight of the last ten days and it's gotten to the point that we don't even talk about it anymore. I'm afraid that the soaking / drying cycle has taken its toll on my boots because they're failing in the exact same places as my old ones did in Galicia a couple of years ago. Today we had to cross a river twice that was so overflown that we had to take off boots and socks, roll up our pants and cross barefoot in thigh deep water. It's rained so much that it seems like it will take weeks for the ground to dry out.

It's been interesting to see the difference in local people as I head north. Andalucians were pretty nasty and most of the pueblos were pretty crappy. It was mostly vineyards and olive groves. In Extremadura the people are much nicer as are the villages. Terrain changed from crops to livestock and now that we've passed into Castille & Leon it remains that way. Cows and pigs all day long.