Whoa! We're Halfway There...

Yeah! Living on a prayer! This has been my music in my head for the last two days. (Without other means of music, walking lends itself to having songs play on repeat in your head for days.) It is appropriate though considering we passed the halfway mark a couple days ago. Spirits are high in the Aber camp. Today was our longest day yet at nearly 17 miles, but it didn't seem much harder than an average day for us now. Our feet seem to be mutating into rawhide punishment machines and aren't hurting as much anymore. (I also do math in my head when I walk...go figure. Anyway, I figured up that we're going to take about 900,000 steps on the Camino)

We've lost some of our original walking mates now, but we're on to a new chapter. We've been walking with Jim and his grandson, Nick from Minnesota for a few days now, and the Utah 4: Dean, Tracy, Jane (actually Canadian), and Kaitlin (actually from Colorado). We've also got the Flying Dutchmen, Mike, Erik, and Op, all of whom walk neatly twice as fast as us. It seems we've lost track of Marius, Tom, Martina, and South African Hank and his groupies. So goes the Camino, many new beginnings and endings.

Tonight, we ate the communal dinner at our albergue. We took part in preparing the salad, and also had some awesome lentil stew with potatoes and chorizo. Also, wine. Always wine. It was so perfect because I was starving. Its amazing his much food you can eat when you spend all day walking. This is how I imagine the Camino in the middle ages, walking all day then coming in to eat hearty stew with 20 fellow travelers in the basement of your albergue. And also being serenaded by an elderly peregrino in Spanish just because.

We've been getting some pretty rad dinners in general lately. Last night was artichokes and ham for the first course, rabbit and meatballs for the second. The night before we managed to get ourselves whole trouts, heads and all, on our plates. (Although, sad to admit that we're seriously craving some Chinese food and McDonalds milkshakes with fries for dessert. We actually haven't seen a single McDonalds, Burger King, or KFC along the Camino. I find this pretty amazing.)

The best part about dinner is the company. We haven't eaten dinner alone for days or weeks now. Lots of people say that they're on the Camino to learn how to live with less. I've learned that you can live with less of everything except other people.