Just when I go to sleep on a Camino de Santiago high I wake up and immediately start my day by getting lost.

Getting out of Molinaseca is not easy and I walked for kilometres without spotting a single yellow arrow.

I was starting to get a bit concerned and attempted to distract myself by listening to my Wuthering Heights audiobook.

Just as the book was getting creepy and I was feeling on edge from my own lost state a man appeared out of no where running at me!

I screamed as the local runner diverted past me and continued on with his morning exercise…

Feeling tense, afraid and lost I was on the verge of tears when I started approaching a small city.

I managed to exhale and started to wander around the empty city desperately searching for those comforting yellow arrows that I had been missing for far too much of my morning.

Eventually I saw another human being – with hiking poles! A pilgrim! Finally!

Overjoyed I approached the lady and asked if she had seen any yellow arrows yet.

She pointed to the building right next to us which was clearly marked as The Camino de Santiago…

Feeling foolish I asked if I could walk with her out of town. I was sick of my own company that morning and I was definitely sick of creepy audiobooks and fit locals.

My new friend, Colleen turned out to be completely lovely and great company to redeem my creepy morning.

Colleen was actually walking the Camino de Santiago with a friend from her home back in Canada but unfortunately her friend had fallen victim to a pilgrims worst nightmare: blisters!

I was still blister free (and far too cocky about it).

Colleen and I hit it off super well and with similar walking paces we spent most of the morning walking as a powerful duo talking about everything from our families to Colleen’s hiking experiences in Nepal, until a man with very long legs started to overtake us with humiliating ease.

“You have very long legs.”

The long legged man was British and shot us a smile that had ‘my-new-best-Camino-friend’ written all over it. He had overheard our Nepal conversation and soon Colleen and long-legged James were sharing Nepalese hiking adventures and filling my mind with all kind of Nepal dreams.

Having all started in Saint John Pier de Port (even though James said I looked ‘too fresh’ to have been hiking for that long which I took as the ultimate Camino de Santiago compliment) we shared all of the crazy adventures and misadventures we had experiences along the way. Eventually my story about Tom the sleep-screaming German man came up. We all giggled and decided to stop for a coffee at the next coffee shop and you will never guess who was having breakfast…

“TOM!”

“KAT!”

“I was just talking about you!!!”

We all erupted into laughter at the chance of running into my funniest story character on the Camino de Santiago and soon Tom and I were apologising to each other about getting off on such a bad note.

Tom had assumed he would never see me again because I had been walking such long distances but due to my few days knocked out in bed we had found ourselves back at the same stage of the Camino de Santiago – in the very same cafe that morning!

Something about this pilgrimage was making me start to believe that not everything was completely random after all..

Colleen kindly shouted us a round of coffee and after a blissful coffee break we all headed off together simply having far too much fun and laughing so much that I was an extra workout in my abs.

We eventually reached the bigger town of Villafranca where Colleen was meeting her friend who would be busing into town and where James had planned on ending his day’s walk.

As we started to enter town I ran into more friendly faces – seeing my Swedish teddy-bear friend Hans happy smile brightened up my already joyful day and overloaded with happiness I was soon having lunch with so many wonderful Camino de Santiago friends. After weeks of feeling like a complete lone wolf it felt good to be around so many lovely people. I forced everyone to pose for a happy photo for me because I had to capture this moment of becoming a ‘social pilgrim’.

Everyone told me to ask Bill to take the photo – I hadn’t met Bill yet but apparently everyone else on the Camino de Santiago did.

“Just yell for Bill”.

I did as I was told and the popular Danish Bill obediently took about 50 photos.

Tom and I managed to convince James (pretty easily) to continue walking with us and unfortunately we had to say farewell to Colleen, Hans and all of the other familiar faces around us and we headed on to smaller places.

The afternoon consisted mostly of Tom explaining complicated theories of how plants communicate between each other and the expelling the dangers of  ‘tiger pigeons’.

James and I were going to have sore abs in the morning.

At some point we discovered that it was Tom’s birthday-eve.

We eventually entered the small town of Trabadelo where we entered the first albergue we could find and collapsed on the ground in happiness when we were told there were beds for us.

Soon Tom was doing push-ups and James and I were giggling again and the lady running the albergue decided there were no longer beds for us.

We reluctantly put our backpacks back on and kept walking until a nice old lady on the street directed us to the Parroquial albergue. I hadn’t been in the care of nuns for over a week now and was keen to check it out.

For five euro’s each we were taken to a room with two bunk beds and a small young lady on a bottom bunk unpacking what seemed like a portable pharmacy.

She didn’t look like a snoring roomie and we were all happy to call the room home for the night. She was a lovely young lady from Colombia who would turn out to be one of my favourite faces on the Camino de Santiago.

Soon Tom, James and I were all showered and ready to hit the town… We headed to one of the two cafes which was run by a Dutch lady and had an impressively different menu from the menus of the past 20 days of my life.

Currys, nachos, margaritas and gin and tonics were ordered and with the excuse of Tom’s birthday soon approaching we had far too much fun in the funky little bar.

Knowing that the nuns at our albergue had a designated lockout time and not wanting to risk sleeping outside the church we responsibly ordered and almost skulled our final drinks and headed home for the night.

The last thing I heard that evening was a loud:

“Gute Nacht!“

And unlike the last time I heard a loud German in the middle of the night this time it just made me (and James and our nice Colombian roomie) burst into giggles.

I definitely feel asleep with a smile on my face that night on the Camino de Santiago.