Last night before arriving at Santiago: I am sleeping at Lavacolla, where at its homonymous river pilgrims traditionally stopped to cleans themselves before arriving to Santiago. Funny word "Lavacolla", which basically can be translated as "cleaning bollocks".
Once upon a time, behind seven hills, after the house of the seven dwarfs (basically in the middle of nowhere) lives an Italo-Austrian woman, who walked the Way several times. On her seventh trip (not 6th or 8th) the Way spoke to her and said: You shall live here and "grow" alpacas from now on - so she told me and 4 other peril grimes sitting in her garden. I said to her that alpacas would "grow" well in this climate indeed, thinking she meant capers as she was talking about growing them. The woman ignored me and turned to tell her story to two English youngsters, a Swedish woman complaining about her feet (surprising after walking 750km) and a heavily tattooed guy, that she first had to google (sic!) "alpacas". Once Wiki had revealed her what alpacas were, she bought the plot of land we were sitting and has been since been waiting to get a permit to "grow" i.e. breed alpacas. Everyone was ecstatic to hear about this revelation and all agreed this is a typical Way-revelation .... whilst I asked myself what these guys were drinking to believe this was such a fantastic revelation and not just a crazy business plan. Whilst continuing walking, I thought to myself what business plan the Way would reveal to me if I walk this another 6 times?
Ps. Picture of alpacas
Finally, on a more environmental note, I noticed that my co-pilgrims love the eucalyptus forests we have been walking through for the last couple of weeks. They are impressive to look at and also smell incredible. In 1950's, General Franco started a reforestation program in northern Spain (also for paper production). The Franco Regime looked for a tree type that grows quickly and decided to plant Australian white eucalyptus trees: Not Austrian, but from a continent completely opposite of Spain. No wonder that the trees turned out to be a bid of a curse: Despite thriving fantastically, they killed other vegetation and destroyed the soil.... There are often two sides to a story.
Publicado con Blogsy
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