And then there were certain “oases within the dessert”, and San Bol (shown in the very center of this picture) was one such stop.

This small, extremely austere hostel has only been staffed by “floating hospitaleros” for years — where one pilgrim simply decides to stay on for a time and care for others until another pilgrim agrees to take over that service.

I was deeply moved by the place when I arrived. My original intent was simply to give the resident caretaker my last Euro as a symbolic tribute to all the wonderful stories I had heard about the place from other pilgrims.  A Dutch woman (who called herself “Naisah”) was the hospitalero at the time, and she simply smiled when I told her my intentions.  “I think you’ll be staying here tonight”, she said as she made me a tea.

She was right. The place was too magical, and I remained for a day and a half — bathing in the ice-cold, spring-fed “bathtub” in the backyard, warming myself by laying on the fire-heated floor tiles thereafter, reveling in the amazing conversation by candlelight in the evening, and facilitating the building of a labyrinth in the yard the next day (photo thereof later in this series).

“A bend in the road is not the end of the road,

unless you fail to make the turn.”

~ unknown

Filed under: Walking The Way (Camino de Santiago - 2008) by Scaughdt