Lost (and Found) on the Via de la Plata

I left Salamanca this morning as the town was waking up. Many people (mostly women) were cleaning the portals of their buildings, sweeping the sidewalks in front of them, washing windows. Then there were workers (mostly men) washing every square inch of street in the city of Salamanca, emptying garbage bins, and to top it all off there were (I kid you not) small car-sized vacuum cleaners driving around vroom vroom vroom to pick up the stuff the others didn't get.

At the moment I hit the edge of town, up pulled a cab and out popped a "new" pilgrim (new to me, anyway). I said Hola buenos días, he looked at me sheepishly and I continued on. A few roundabouts down the road, as I was looking for the arrows, he caught up with me and we had a more formal greeting. The first words out of his mouth were not his name, hello, how are you or anything like that but rather an explanation of how he happened to be in a taxi cab. (Anyone who has walked on a Camino knows that for many it's a badge of shame to be caught travelling in anything with motor, we seem to be very judgmental, we pilgrims). He quickly explained that he had started walking, gotten lost in the suburbs of Salamanca and decided that he had already lost an hour and needed to get on the road. And he just wanted to make sure that I didn't think he was a "cheater" or somehow less holy than I. We walked together for a few kms on the highway and then realized that while we had been talking we had likely missed the turn-off. Our choices were threefold: continue on the highway shoulder till the next town (UGH); backtrack to the turn-off (NEVER); or head westward confident that we would somehow intersect with the Camino. We took option three, and it only took us about 35 minutes trudging through wet grasses up to our waist, lots of mud (Salamanca had a 90 minute downpour last night), and occasional steep slides down hills till we made it to the Camino. Or almost to the Camino, because what separated us was a large very steep arroyo (water filled gulley). Many heroic jumps and splashes later, and finally we were on the Camino. We made it to Calzada de Valdunciel around noon, and here I stay, in the little 8 bed albergue that looks like Hansel and Gretel's house. There are three of us and we are quite comfortable.

So, the lost and found. Since I am now about halfway there, I thought I'd take stock on what I had lost and found on the Camino. Since I am not a very deep thinker, this did not involve metaphysical musings about happiness or priorities or life's great decisions. No, it involved thinking about what I had lost and what I had found. And here's the tally:

LOST (and never found): one little bottle of eye drops; my bandana; one little hotel tube of conditioner.

LOST (and found again): my sunglasses (found by another peregrino along the way); my journal (left in a restaurant and later retrieved); and my totally filled fanny pack (left by the hotel internet machine).

So I have lost six things, found three of them, and I'd say that someone is looking out for me.