You never really know whether you will see a place again in your life. It's all a question of positive memories or, as in my case, a question of age. How often have I asked myself this question, following Ladakh or Myanmar or Laos. You look back with gentle nostalgia, and the older you get, the more often you realize that it might have been the last time.
It's the same with Mérida. I will miss the city, its joy of life, its weightlessness. But, as already mentioned earlier – the Camino is calling.
Merida – Aljucén
It's easy to get used to breakfast invitations, especially when they are prepared as lovingly as Lin and Frank's. And once again we fill our bellies, regardless of the distance ahead of us today.
The stage between Mérida and Aljucén is around 17 km long and leads through a hilly landscape with olive groves, cork oaks and holm oaks. The route begins with the Los Milagros aqueduct.
The Aqueduct of Los Milagros
The Los Milagros aqueduct is a Roman construction that supplied the ancient city of Mérida with water. It was built in the 1st century AD and has a length of around 830 meters. It is made of granite and bricks arranged in several rows of arches. It is one of the three aqueducts preserved in Mérida and is considered one of the most impressive and elegant examples of Roman engineering.
There is nothing to prepare us for this majestic spectacle.
We pass beneath a railroad line and discover strange structures above the trees seemingly from another world. We get closer and are quite stunned by yet another example of the incomparable architecture of the ancient Romans.
These enormous structures have been standing here for thousands of years, a little battered by time, but still with admirable resistance to the power of decay. It's not the first time we've been amazed and marveled. The Romans, those chaps, they not only conquered half the world, they left buildings showing posterity what was possible a long time ago.
Sometimes, especially these days, you lose faith in the human race, but when you are standing in front of the Los Milagros aqueduct, you feel a faint sense of pride in belonging to this strange species.
The Embalse de Proserpina reservoir
We really have to drag ourselves away from the ancient ruins - it's not a long walk to Aljucén, but we're already quite late due to our late breakfast.
Basically, we follow the route the water takes from the Embalse de Proserpina via the aqueduct to Merida. Everything belongs together. The Embalse de Proserpina was built in the 1st or 2nd century AD to supply the city of Mérida with water. It has a capacity of 6 million cubic meters and is surrounded by a 12 to 22 meter high wall made of granite and concrete.
It was an incredible piece of engineering to run a water pipeline over almost 6 km, first through a tunnel through a granite rock and then via the Los Milagros aqueduct to Mérida. And what is most astonishing: the pipeline to Mérida has a gradient of one meter over 2 kilometers with a capacity of 150 liters of water per second. That is first of all a small miracle and secondly a mystery.
We don't spend much time at the lake, although we could well imagine a longer break on the shore. After the lake, we follow the path through a varied landscape on red sand, lined with gorse bushes and holm oaks, and finally arrive in El Carrascalejo on a small ridge.
El Carrascalejo
There is a beautiful old church in Carrascalejo, but no people, just dogs that love to be caressed. We sit down on a stone bench in front of the houses and marvel at the all-encompassing silence hanging over the village like the heat. Once again, we wonder whether it is simply the daily siesta or a general absence of people.
Should I mention that my singing skills, performed with the 60s classic "Those were the Days" by Mary Hopkin, were met with little enthusiasm and that I have to put aside for good any potential career as a singer? Let's forget about that ...
The rest of the way remains an amazing journey, just as you might imagine, surrounded by delicate streaks in the sky, we make rapid progress, no wonder, hiking is simply a dream.
Aljucen
It might have been worse.
The lady of the house leads me into a first-class room, a few meters from the “Kiosque” restaurant, and the hostel where Lin and Frank are staying is not far either.
The village has only around 240 inhabitants, but the church is once again of considerable shape and form and has an interior bearing witness to a great past and deep religiosity.
Dinner at the "Kiosque" meets all culinary desires, which are quickly and easily satisfied in view of our hungry bellies. Other hikers turn up, most of them female, from Spain, Italy and France, and we will almost certainly meet them again on the Camino.
Aljucén – Alcuescar
For today, rain is actually forecast, initially rather a phantom, at least that's what we assume. We make good progress, but after a while Frank is nowhere to be seen.
After all, we know that thousands of years ago Roman legionnaires marched into battle through this wasteland, but this does not diminish the monotony of the steppe-like route. Once again there are bushes left and right, gorse and even pine trees and whatever else there is to see.
At least we are welcomed by a reddish curtain over the horizon, which might be a good omen for the long day ahead. However, the gloomy clouds next to it do not bode well.
The rain and the storm
While Frank has long since disappeared on the horizon, Lin and I take it easy, although the increasingly dark sky soon promises all kinds of damp and stormy conditions. The usual granite bollards and yellow arrows, and sometimes even an arrow artfully composed of stones, guide us through the undulating terrain.
Of course, we don't really take the first drops seriously yet, it won't be so bad, is the implied hope. The weather god, that miserable fellow, probably laughs himself half to death on discovering our mocking faces and adds a shovelful more.
Within a short time, the first few drops turn into a veritable downpour, an avalanche of water, a torrent, an unexpected shower, welcome on any other day, but today above all a nuisance.
In any case, we hastily get into our rain gear and give the weather god the middle finger. Unsurprisingly, he takes this as an insult and launches his next merciless attack.
Because now it's starting to get stormy too.
The rain beats down on our heads, shoulders and legs, while the increasing wind blows the poncho in all directions, leaving many things that shouldn't get wet, such as our pants, soaking wet.
The worst thing about walking in the rain is the fact that everything outside your rain gear gets wet. This includes your cell phone. As soon as you take it out of your pocket, the rain hits the defenceless thing and you quickly stuff it back into its safe place. It's just a shame that the poles are now missing and the usual arrows have hidden somewhere.
So now we follow our own sense of direction, asking a sympathetic man for directions and deliberately ignoring the alternative route along the country road to Alcuescar. Only after a while do we realize that we are following yellow arrows for quite a while, but these do not lead to today's destination. In view of the waterfall from the sky, the extra kilometers we have added are a nuisance that for once thoroughly spoils our enjoyment of the Camino.
A pious accommodation
But even this hardship eventually comes to an end and we reach our destination for the day, Alcuescar, tired, wet and in a rather bad mood, where we are actually approached by a gentleman of French origin and shown to the local hostel.
Alcuéscar has around 2.500 inhabitants and is known for the church of Santa Lucía del Trampal, a Visigothic temple from the 7th century.
While Frank has long since arrived and lies blissfully asleep, we are quite surprised to be able to take possession of our single rooms and then set off in search of open stores. We find what we are looking for with a rather unfriendly gentleman of Chinese origin.
And hey, Lin can once again speak her mother tongue for the first time in weeks. However, the Chinese man from the Motherland China doesn't find it particularly funny to meet a lady from Taiwan.. I see, the political antipathies are even noticeable here.
Dinner is prepared by the hostel. The staff for washing up and the like are recruited from our ranks, which is a pretty fitting end to this borderline day. The real low point comes a little later: it's so cold in the room (no blankets, nothing) that the sleeping bag and all the clothes we've brought for colder climates are the only things that can overcome the frosty humidity.
Matching song: La Rumba – Entre dos Aguas
And here the Camino continues… to Caceres
