June 16 Corconte and then to Pedrosa

I am now at el Balneario de Corconte, a gracious, gorgeous hotel that has a spa, as the name implies.  The room, on a Saturday night, is $70.00, the same price as last night's very modest hotel.  I will have lunch ($15.00 for two large courses, bread, a bottle, yes an entire bottle of wine, and dessert) in the elegant dining room, but am equivocating as to whether this requires washing my hair first.  I think not.  The frizziness sort of masks the swollen eye lid.

I did check out the start of the walk for tomorrow.  It was important to make sure that the new GPS was doing its job and that John's instructions were adequate because the first part of the walk is, again, his own invention.  To his credit, he does provide better detail than he gave for yesterday's disaster.  I can hardly wait for the part where, beyond the fence, to avoid the "dense shrub," about which I know plenty, you "go through a pasture and have to watch out for the trenches running east to west.  These were dug by the republicans in the Spanish Civil War and mark a line designed to defend the road to Reinosa."  To compensate, or not, there is a memorial opposite built after the war to accommodate (?  not my choice of words) the 300 Italians killed trying to defend the hill.  Abstention from comment.

A no photo day

Yesterday, when I checked in, the señora showed me how to unlock the outer door in the morning.  So, at 6:30 a.m. I did as she had instructed and tapped the thingee on the wall, only nothing happened; the door stayed locked.  I must have been making a racket because after a few attempts of pushing and banging, a tired looking woman employee in a bathrobe shuffled down the hall, and with a Dios mio finally got the thingee to respond and i was off to the hill where 300 Italians died only I had a terrible time figuring out how to get where I was supposed to be since John's landmarks did not exist.  It was a frustrating mess but I did eventually get on my way without falling into a ditch.

Part of the walk was through a wind farm, which normally I would not like so much but at least the directions were not an issue here as they were, again, later on.

The whole mishpoche:

Take your pack off, slide it under the barbed wire, and then lie down and slide yourself under the barbed wire, and voila! Really, though the fence looks like a good kick and a shove would knock it down.

Despite continued directional challenges, today I arrived at 2:00 only to have a fresh batch of frustration when I discovered that phone is not working because the SIM card is locked.  It took many consultations and finally a friend of el dueño to finally learn that this is a safety feature of the card and, yes, the phone is working, after a fashion, after all.