Catching up

So I am a little behind on posts so ill give y'all the highlights. After the last post we stayed in an albergue in La Isla(13km from San Esteban) with a very boisterous group. We decided that we had previously been walking with the early crowd(early to bed early to rise) and this was the late crowd. Some people didn't even get into the albergue until 8:30 or 9. Now you may be wondering how they walked in the dark. This seems a legitimate question until you spend a couple nights here. So far I haven't actually seen it get dark. I know it must, but even staying up until 11 or so it is still light outside. The first night we had gone to bed really early after our plane ride to get here. I woke up thinking it was mid day in a panic that we hadn't started walking. It was 10 p.m. Okay so back to the present. We walked another 20.6 km to Villiaviciosa. We walked into the next town and saw a nice church. I thought it would be nice to see it so we walked around a building close to it. As we were walking all of a sudden Gill started yelling. She said ouch and then started looking at her arm and leg. Then she started yelling at me to remove her pant leg. She said something was in her leg and that it burned like fire. We tried to make our way to a bench, but Gill could hardly walk. Then with tears streaming down her face we sat and I took a look. She had angry red welts on her arm and leg. We cleaned it up as best we could, but there were no spines that I could see. I knew that it had to hurt cause Gill is tough. I mean she has had the mother of all blisters on her pinky toe with out a single complaint. When the fire had subsided a little we continued on. When we told this story to others from Spain they said oh yeah that's ortega. apparently it is a nasty plant that looks innocent like a dandelion. It has tiny hairs on it that are actually spines. They are small enough that you cant see them in your skin and they burn like fire and then itch like crazy. Poor Gill got bit by a plant and we were walking on a sidewalk. After that we continued on and walked more than we had planned. Originally we were going to walk about 14km to Sebrayo and then take a bus. Upon arriving in Sebrayo an old man told us the bus stop was 1km further on. We had already decided that if we didn't find it we walk to the next city 6km on, well 2km later we still had not found it so we walked, up hill in the knee deep mud. It was the longest 6km of our lives. It was supposed to be our leap frog day as we have been calling it. We walk rather slowly you see and in order to make it to Santiago we have a couple of skip days. Gill and I have come to think of it like old school Mario popping into the tunnel and moving to a different level. Really this takes a day off our journey and gives us a much needed rest day. Instead we ended up spending the night and had to bus through Gijón and Avilès to catch up. Okay so we arrived in Avilès and had lunch, coffee and tea, and a fabulous Italian dinner. Gill had churros and chocolate which essentially is fried dough with sugar and a chocolate sauce to dip it in. Gill said it was delicious and don't get me wrong I feel no need to avoid the calories, its the question of a nut allergy and what all goes into that chocolatey goodness. After that wonderful evening we got up the next morning and walked again.