May 9 –  It’s so nice to have a kitchen when you have Jim to cook you breakfast!  We took advantage of our casa rural – we were the only guests – by taking over the kitchen for all our meals.  We didn’t really have a choice – there was no restaurant in town to feed us.  This Casa Rural cornered the market by also owning the only grocery in town – we had to buy our food from them to cook in their kitchen.  I thought I did a good enough job cleaning up and doing the dishes after each meal, but the Mamasita of the owner snuck in behind me and refolded the dish towels when we weren’t looking.

 Today we continue our roadwalk north to the Hostal Asturias, which is a highway truck stop about a mile from the town of Jarilla, and a seven mile walk for us.  Early morning pastoral scene:

Daily stork and babies shot.  See the two little puffballs?  I really love my new camera, Canon SX710 HS.  My old Canon was great, but this one zooms like crazy (30x) and captures good shots in any light.  Way to go, Canon!

Jim said he’d buy us this house on the hill.  What do you think?  All the olives you could ever want!

We got to the hostal by noon, did our laundry, rested our feet, then had a fine midday meal at the restaurant downstairs with ice cream for dessert.  The dessert choices are always flan, custard or ice cream.  If you ask for ice cream, you get a cone or a pop or whatever they have in the freezer.  No flavor choices either.

 I watched Spanish Wheel of Fortune on tv, and was able to hold my own against the other contestants!  375 miles to go.

May 10 – Today is a fourteen mile day that will complete our detour and get us back on the actual Camino.  Rain is in the forecast for the next three days.  Our truck stop bar offered us coffee and cookies for breakfast, so that’s what we had.  Couldn’t help noticing that the truck drivers who were there for coffee all added a shot or a chaser to their order at 7am.  One of them was an ambulance driver!

The rain held off while we walked along the service road of the super highway for about five miles.  

Our map showed that after five miles we could rejoin the Camino.  The joke was on us – the Camino WAS the highway for the rest of the day!  The rain held off until about 10am, so we got some miles in.  The sun was shining over yonder, but not on us!

The sun came out at noon and the sky looked ethereal as the sun burned off the clouds.  Note the Camino sign at the left, warning vehicles not to hit us as we walk.  Instead of the signs, they might have given us a pedestrian path!

I pretended the white line on the side of the road was softer than the asphalt.  My feet didn’t buy it.

Eventually we reached our town of Baños de Montemayor.  They have a church here, and two stores that sell baskets.

Baskets shaped like shoes?

This town mustn’t have any real Roman mile markers, so it has put up replicas.  I don’t think the Roman ones had Arabic writing.  According to this one, we have 569 km, or 354 miles left in our journey.  Unfortunately, this number doesn’t agree with my book.  I wonder which one is right?  Baños is our last town in the region of Extremadura and the province of Cáceres.  Tomorrow we will walk into the region of Castilla y Léon and the province of Salamanca.

361 miles to go.