We met along the way the hilarious Erica from California. I mentioned her in my post Zariquiegui to Cirauqui but I felt the need to talk about her further. She is an environmetal engineer and I learnt some really cool stuff from her. We started talking about the subject of wind-turbines because in Spain they are every where. She explained she worked on a wind-turbine project in the North Sea. It is a popular place to put wind-turbines beacuse it is only 20m deep! They dig down 50m into the earth to anchor them there. There you go Mr Stokes, that ones for you!
Erica has a postitive view of everything about life and she was heaps of fun to walk with. She made the camino kilometres disappear and kept me laughing all the way. I was having a bad day and Erica seemed to turn every little winge of mine into something positive and it made me think how negative I can be sometimes.
Erica bought her own style to the camino. She wears this huge red sombrero which you can spot a mile way and know it´s her coming over the hill. Her backpack is enormous, it is like a Mary Poppin´s bag, you never know what´s coming out next!
One night we spoilt our selves and had a break from the communal dormitaries and got a private room in a hotel, so I could finally have a private bathroom. Oh it was so nice but there was one thing wrong, it was only mum and I in one room and no other interesting pilgrims to talk to and find out their story. I don´t mean that mum´s company in not fun, we do always seem to crack up over something but it´s more interesting in a hostel because you meet people from all over the world. People have such interesting stories and they are all different in their own ways. This was when I missed Erica and I realised that it´s the people you meet on your journey that really make it special. I couldn´t believe I´m actually saying this but the next night I wanted to stay with my fellow befriended pilrims in a refugio.
Here is Erica bobbing infront of a stone shephard´s hut, with her huge pack but sin sombrero!
