The Meseta

I had heard about this part of the Camino from other pilgrims; mostly from the ones on the bus on my first pilgrimage. They were bussing past the meseta. The meseta is a very long stretch, maybe 200 miles or so, of flat terrain. Pilgrims say it´s boring. I say it´s beautiful.


It´s Spring in Spain and the landscape is colored up for the occasion. It´s our amber waves of grain with the color adjusted to 31 different shades of green. The fields are mostly corn, and the stalks already have their bands about them, like little green bamboo shoots with a mess of leaves sprouting out of their heads. They are only a foot high in some places, but they are growing fast.

It´s lovely to walk along side the lake of green, as it laps up against the Camino trail. And the lake sways and rolls over the horizon, broken in parts by trees lined up like soldiers in carefully planted tree farms.

As I approached the town of Hontanas (home to the International Snoring Competition), all I saw was green, flat, spacious. Then a sign declared ¨Hontanas - .50 km¨. Nothing to be seen but this sign, for miles and kilometers around. Then half a kilometer later a crater opened up in the landscape and tucked inside was the town. Such a delightful surprise.

Later on the meseta turns flatter than flat, but the tree farms continue to decorate the land, and I am content to be amongst them.