Day 12, September 12, Hornillos del Camino to Castrojeriz or as I previously titled this post, "We met Santa Claus!"– updated

 
                                                                                                                                           Still in the meseta, today’s walk started even earlier because we were already near the center and the heat will be intense.  We had to be a little conservative with our water consumption since the closest town is day’s stop. We were also running low on cash and hoping to find an ATM in Castrojeriz. A lot of interesting people today, not least of whom was Santa Claus.

Oh I know, it's off-season, which is probably why, in lieu of lugging a red velvet sack filled with presents and wearing his Christmas uniform, he's sporting hiking clothes and a goody bag of medicines and foot relief







implements for weary pilgrims instead.

This big man with a loud voice, who talks like Michael Caine, sets up camp from town to town, going into albergues, opening conversations by asking, "How's your foot?" and "Have you got any blisters?" and generally asking about the condition of pilgrims. He looks at pilgrims feet, offering Compeed and other goodies to soothe whatever aches and pains pilgrims have.

He said that from the time he started doing this work, and even when he did his camino 10 years ago, I was the first Filipina he's ever met. He looked at my feet, saw the Compeed and checked the slight swelling and gave me a bandage to minimize the friction and to prevent blisters. I told him, has has to meet my sister (who would be Filipina number 2). What I actually meant was, my sister has to meet you. So, I half dragged Anj to the reception to have her feet looked at. She got some wool padding and ibuprofen gel to ease some of the pain in her ankles. And thus we were introduced to this amazing product. :D

He was quite chatty and we traded stories for a bit. We told him we were supposed to bus it to Fromista but we were running low on cash and needed to find an atm quick and none of the previous towns had any, and he said, "I can give you some money right now, how much do you need?" He actually volunteered to give us money! We learned that he was a Franciscan brother and he's been doing this work for 10 years, checking albergues and helping out pilgrims. Anyway, we let him go with a hug and our gratitude since he still had several albergues to visit before his day was done.