Another day and more adventures! We had 3 tough hills to climb today but we managed…. Just!!
We started off the morning at our usual pace and then we found a hat that had been left behind… the day then became the quest for the rightful owner.
It was almost like we had adrenaline pumping through our veins to search for the owner and we just flew through the kilometres to try and catch up with the possible owner. Every pilgrim we bypassed we asked if they had lost a hat!
It became almost like a challenge for us and we must’ve asked about 50 people if it was their hat, we had found! And due to language barriers at times, we had many people confused, thinking we were offering a hat, thinking we were asking if they had their hat, thinking we were asking where their hat was – it was rather entertaining!
By the end of the day, most people who we had come across, recognized us and would ask if we had found the owner… to which we sadly had to answer, “No!” Some poor person out there is missing a hat, (which luckily they didn’t need today) but may need somewhere on the rest of their Camino!
So because of this found hat, we had new-found FAME J and made some interesting friendships and had some interesting conversations. It’s incredible how these experiences arise on the Camino!
To date, we have talked to so many different people from all around the world. But in the last two days, we have managed to have conversations with people where they speak VERY little English! We got the opportunity to brush up on our very limited knowledge of Spanish and Italian. And still hold a conversation for over half an hour… to which at the end, we were invited to be guests in Italy and Spain and have had guests invite themselves to stay with us in Sydney!
These are the wonderful experiences of the Camino that we will cherish for life. 🙂
Anyway, back to the hat story! We are disappointed we never found the owner. We will try again tomorrow but doubt we will have much luck. We have a rest day in Burgos so think that we will start losing more friends that we have met on this stage, which means it will be futile trying to track down who lost this hat!
But what we have taken away from all this is that the important thing is that we tried! We could’ve left that hat there but we carried it with us the entire day in hope we could reunite it with its rightful owner! To everyone who saw what we were doing, many acknowledged and thanked us for asking them. They all seemed appreciative to know that we were trying. Success isn’t everything, sometimes it is about how much effort we put in and the inadvertent positive outcomes.
“Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment. Full effort is full victory.”― Mahatma Gandhi
"Sees" the Day 