Day 11 View from the Flatlands

I spy a lone tree ahead on the grassy field path.  A place to sit in the shade, a bit out of the wind, a perfect place for a short rest.  It´s at least two hours away by foot.  So spacious is the land here, so flat.  Flatter than Kansas.  Grassy fields, countless grazing cows in the distance at every direction, herds of unbridled horses, uniterrupted by much of anything else..the occasional wind turbine pump to drain the land of the salty water, a small cluster of trees surrounding an old homestead now in ruins.

The land seems merely a hand´s breadth above the water level, and much of the land is inundated by recent rains with a hand´s breadth of cold floodwater I cross barefooted.  It´s pretty land, green and breezy, but broadly underpopulated, save for the abundance of chatty birds and scurrying guinea pigs.

The villages are widely spaced along this old camino real, leaving few places to sit and rest, as in under a lone tree, two-hours´walk away.  Endurance is a necessity.  The villages seem swallowed by the curvature of the earth and only appear from a distance of less than 10 kilometers.  For as many places as I´ve visited, this is new and interesting terrain.

La gente es, por supuesto, muy buena.