Day 17, September 17, Rabanal del Camino to Riego de Ambros– late post

 “Lord, may this stone, a symbol of my efforts on the pilgrimage that I lay at the foot of the cross of the Saviour, one day weigh the balance in favor of my good deeds when the deeds of my life are judged. Let it be so.”

                                                       - From the movie ‘The Way’

The fog was thick going up and I could barely see five feet in front of me. There was also the continuous rain so the trail was muddy and parts of it were submerged in water. It had all the elements of a miserable climb so the pilgrims were a bit on the quiet side. But their spirits were alive with anticipation as you will notice by the seemingly impossible spring in their steps.

In the last town prior to Cruz de Ferro, a tourist bus stopped right in front of us and a wave of Koreans in full hiking gear got off and started walking in the cross’ direction. The funny thing was, when we got to the cross, the same bus was already waiting and after throwing their stones and taking their photo op, they got back on the bus and were off in a flash as if they were never there.

The Cruz de Ferro is the part of the walk where we were to pause by the cross and offer our rock and our walk as a symbol of penance for our sins, past and future. It is at this point where symbolically, we are cleansed from our sins and made new again.

Along this route, we pass by Manjarin which is a one-man town. It's a curious little town with signages declaring distances from that point to different parts of the world. Unfortunately, on this camino, we were only able to stop by for the obligatory photo-op.  

A short distance away, the rocky downhill walk starts and I think it’s the steepest we encountered on this camino. In fact, by the time I arrived at Riego de Ambros, my left ankle was hurting a little bit, it was a challenge to go up and down the few steps to the kitchen and to our bunks in the albergue. My sister had to go to a café in town to ask for ice for my ankle. I wasn't too worried. Although I was hobbling around the albergue, I was pretty confident that come morning, things will be okay again, the same way it's happened pretty much every day since we started the walk more than 2 weeks ago.