Thursday - At the end of yesterday's hike, Fabian our tour coordinator, said that today would be much easier. Well, it was shorter at only 17km, but not much easier.
Our day started by being woken at 5:20 by a very persistent bird calling for a mate - after about 5 minutes of whooping a return call started and he flew off towards it. Definitely better than an alarm clock.
While having breakfast, we were treated to many more birds flying around and courting. My favorite was a few big oropendolas being all black with a bright yellow tail. When they did their call, they would flip upside down under their branch and then back up. Very entertaining.
We were dropped off to start hiking where we stopped yesterday and we're on the trail at 9:15. By this time, the sun was high in the clear sky and it was warm. Humidity was lower than yesterday but the steep climb to start the day got the sweat flowing just fine.
After our first climb over a mountain through a cattle pasture and following an old path, the rest of today's hike was on rural dirt roads with one tense mile on a busy paved road with very minimal shoulder.
We stopped at a roadside open air restaurant for lunch after only 2 hours due to the heat. The rest was appreciated and the food was good even though I was still working off breakfast.
From lunch, we climbed and dropped up and down mountains through villages until reaching our destination of Pacayitas at about 3:30. We enjoyed a fruit drink and rest for an hour in a cool, shaded patio area. One of our guides whose family runs a small chocolate company shared a cacao fruit with us and then some chocolate samples, and explained the process of creating chocolate. He did a great job, but I found the cacao fruit to be slimy and gross. The chocolate, on the other hand, was wonderful!
This town is where our tour company is located. Since it is a family business, we have all been farmed out to various relatives and friends to spend the night in their homes.
The two of us are at a friend's home and it has been the best night of the trip so far. Venturo and Elisa are wonderful, gracious hosts and 'google translate' has been heavily used to communicate since they speak no English and we are both lacking in Spanish. We took hot showers then visited and had dinner with our hosts, their son, and our two hiking guides (Steven and Samuel).
We had 'Frog juice' for dinner - lemon and brown sugar - and a tasty chicken meal.
We have now covered about a quarter of the Camino distance and are gradually gaining elevation. I'm sure tomorrow will have more mountains to cross and surprises along the way.