Total distance today: 25.6km

Total distance remaining: 510.7km

We realized that we were a day behind on our total distances, so its now updated accordingly...and tomorrow we break 300km travelled!

The past few days have been those of the elements. Rain and cold weather! Lots of wind (hello wind burnt faces!), lots of mud, and a fair few big hills. Since we last wrote, we went from Santo Domingo (chicken place) to Belorado then to San Juan de Ortega and finally to Burgos (where we are currently).

In Belorado we stayed in a small refugio run by the Swiss friends of the Camino. It was very basic, but atmospheric and friendly. In San Juan we stayed at a 16th century building adjoining the church. It has been a pilgrim refuge for that long! When we were there they served us traditional garlic soup (basically garlic, water and bread. nat you would have loved it) and stayed in the coldest draftiest rooms yet.

From San Juan we headed to Burgos. The hike into Burgos was brutal, so thank goodness we had a shiny, lovely hotel to stay in :) Hurray! I insisted that we get our laundry done, because both of us were running on empty with clothes and everything was stinky. So for 10 euros and 2 hours of our time, we have fresh clothes. Our hotel room was amazing, so swish! It had a downstairs lounge with a lofted bedroom and bathroom. So it was a nice relaxing environment after almost a week of dismal trudging.

Today we checked out and have moved into more humble accomodations of the refugio. It is still very nice, brand new last year. We walked around town today to check out the sights. The cathedral was awesome, took probably about 150 photos (which we´ll post after this). Other than that, just mostly wondered around and soaked up the city.

Tomorrow we start our week of reasonably flat stages, so we might be able to crunch out some extra km´s if feeling motivated and healthy.