September 6, 2023
I arrived in Madrid late at night on September 4th from London. Our flight as delayed nearly an hour, but finding my hostel was easy, just about 45 minutes from the airport. The hardest part was figuring out where the sheet was for my bed because there were other people asleep in the room and I didn’t want o wake them up by turning on a light or making too much noise.
The next morning, I had to check out by 11am, so I walked over to the bus station and got coffee and something to eat to try to kill time while I waited for my bus to El Burgo de Osma which was leaving at 14:45. I wandered up to a park where pieces of the Berlin Wall are on display in the center of a fountain. The park also had many resident green parrots. Thankfully they also had a drinking fountain because I had finished the water in my bottle and unlike the USA, Spain doesn’t appear to have much of a culture of public drinking fountains near public bathrooms in places like train stations and airports. So, after filling my bottle from an outdoor fountain, I headed back to the bus station.
The bus was very full and left only a few minutes late. The woman next to me spoke no English and we had some pleasant small talk about where I was going and where I was from although my Spanish is quite rusty. She kept telling me to speak to the other foreigners on the bus in English, so eventually I asked one of them who was part of a big international group what the purpose of their trip was. From what I gathered, there was some sort of conference they were all going to. It’s wild to me that an international conference or meeting would happen in a place like where the bus was going rather than in a city like Madrid. As far as I could tell, they all got off the bus in the middle of now where. It was fun to try to eavesdrop on their conversations a little bit. I was able to understand a little of a conversation some Germans were having about the logistics of the conference. The nearly 3 hour bus ride was pleasant enough, although it was really wild to be going through tiny Spanish towns that seemed to have a population of maybe 100 at most.
The countryside was beautiful, with rolling hills as well as flat fields. Occasionally there were horses or cows on the side of the road and lots of fields of sunflowers. In some ways it felt like I could have been somewhere in the Midwest of the US, but then randomly there would be a ruined castle or small adobe brick village and the illusion would break.
When I arrived at the bus station in El Burgo de Osma, my friend Abby was waiting for me with her electric bike, rollerblades, and some groceries. We plopped by bag on the back of the bike and Abby rollerbladed along side me as I biked the approximately 14km to Navapalos.
Navapalos is a stop on the Camino del Sid, one of the routes of the Camino de Santiago – although not the one I will be walking. According to Abby, in the 1980s, some people decided to try to revitalize this abandoned village. They rebuilt some of the houses and buildings. Then something happened and it ended up being mostly abandoned again. The Spanish government would like it to stay populated so that the existing buildings are maintained and the place is useful. So, there is a couple here, who have been given permission to live in Navapalos legally and for free and to allow others to live her as well. Abby has been living here for free for 4 months in a house with a lock on the door, glass in the windows, running – although non-potable – water, and occasional solar powered electricity. Her houses is surrounded by ruins of other buildings and some that have been fixed up. There is a stream with drinkable, although not necessarily good for you, water about a 2-3 minute walk from her house.
It’s absolutely gorgeous here with expansive vistas and very cool looking adobe buildings in various states of habitability. There is an apple orchard very close by and road running by, but mostly it is extremely remote and kind of a world of its own.
We wandered around some of the ruins and then had lunch with one of the inhabitants who later invited me over for coffee and a chat. He wanted to practice English, so we chatted a bit about his life and my upcoming adventures.
It is really lovely here and amazing to get to experience a place like this. It is absolutely fascinating that is exists and is free. It is also really exciting to me that I was able to get here without a car. Abby and I are going to get a taxi back to Burgo de Osma because she is also leaving the same day I do and has a bit more belongings than will easily fit on the bike with my things. But it is still amazing to me that I was able to get here from Madrid for less than 8 Euros and 3 hours on a bus.
