Laughing in Gijón

From Llanes we took a long wet walk to beautiful Ribadesella, but it was not so great when we arrived late in the day and could not find any accommodation, but atleast we found Tanya from Australia and she suggested we taxi to San Esteban which is another 5kms (uphill) and has an Albergue. Here we also left Pierre behind as he catches a bus  to get back home.

We got there and found Chanelle all alone, and heard that Ester has left for home :( and Elizabeth and some others had fallen behind, and that was a little sad - we are not sure we will bump into any of these people again. We did see some other peregrinos we knew and met some new ones :)

The next day we walked to Colunga with Tanya and Chanelle, but we were all pretty tired and tired of the rain. In Colunga Colette and I caught a bus to Gijon (the G is pronounced like a G in Afrikaans or ch in Lochness). 

In Gijon we did an Airbnb and stayed with Luis and Carmen in there great home near the beach. I bought a big pot of Nutella and we have almost finished it in 3 days! 

I have never laughed as much as I have laughed in Gijon, we were so tired... and our hosts could not speak any English... Carmen did once say "good bye" and that was it! These people were soooo friendly and wanted to help us so much but it was sooo hard, and it just became hilarious... all we could do was laugh at ourselves :) we stayed 3 floors above the kitchen and we love the kitchen, every time we came back from it we had to lie down... and laugh 

We had a wonderful experience in Gijon, we ate at a Sidreria and Colette had the best prawns of her life, and she was also able to Surf on my workday. The Asturias was really beautiful, the Picos de Europa is rugged and massive, more like the mountains in the Cape and the people are wonderful.

Today we decided to take a bus to Ribadeo, so we can have shorter, more enjoyable days before Karin joins us. She is fit and rested so we want to take it easy before she comes so we can keep up!

We got to the bus station this morning, and believe it or not we met an Argentinian lady and her dad whom was taking the same busses than us. She heard us speaking and started speaking English with us. This was the biggest blessing, as 2 minutes later a Spaniard came by explaining something in Spanish... and everyone looked upset. She could explain to us that the busses are striking and we need to take a taxi to a train station to catch another bus, she hailed us a taxi and got us to the right place. If we hadn't met her we would perhaps still have stood at the station laughing in Gijon!