The Mountain.

 Hi, it is Bob blogging again. Today is the hobgoblin of my nightmares of the Camino. The climb to O'Cebreiro is the biggest challenge after the first day with Foncebadon being the third worst. We have already transcended the first two, so now we had to do the big one. It is a long stage - 18 miles and then it is the biggest climb since St. Jean, Pied de Port. nearly 3000 feet from a 1800 foot base elevation. The path is 16 to18%

grade for 5 miles. After much trepidation it was gratefully accomplished. The climb was tough, and Kim was the king of the mountains and now wears the polka dot jersey into the finishline at Santiago, but the rest of us mules get the badge of having accomplished the stage.

All along the route today were cats and freeways. Mitch took pictures of the cats and the freeways soared to greater and greater heights as we climbed (spoiler alert: the freeway climbed away from us).

The scenery from the top is amazing. You feel like you are on top of the world with 500 of you best friends and acquaintances and about another 1000 newcomers you have never seen before. This is because the first 70 percent of the camino are people who have walked from St. Jean in France, the same as us. Now, there are many more who have just joined. The completion certificate only requires that a pilgrim walk the last 100 km of the camino. For bikers, 200 km, and they can ride those no effort electronic bikes and horseback riders can get by with 200 km also, but they don't have to pickup their horses**t that the walkers have to navigate around. 

Near the top of the climb, we finally crossed out of the autonomous political arena of Castilla y León into the Automous political arena of Galicia. We spent three days in Navarre, four days in La Rioja, and since then, 21 days in Castillia y León. Now, finally, for the last 8 days, we will be in Galicia. 

Tonight, on the top of the world, we attended a pilgrim church service in O'Cebreiro that happens every evening during the pilgrim season. It was a normal short form Catholic mass. It is in Spanish, but it was encouraging to me that every segment of the service was similar to our Lutheran service. we had a greeting, opening prayer, lesson, homily, words of intinction, Lords prayer, Lamb of God, communion, closing, benediction, etc. Then all the pilgrims gathered around the altar and There was a special sending in all represented languages for us. The priest asked what languages were present, got out his book and each language sent a representative to read the sending for their language group along the road to Santiago. Each pilgrim was given a pebble by the priest to carry to Santiago. we all gave up our imported rocks at Cruz de Ferro, and now we have a new burden to carry to the finish line for our pilgrimage.

This has been a very fulfilling and successful day.