About three weeks ago I wrote about a truck stop hotel in which I stayed in El Burgo Ranero, a few hundred yards off the Camino. With tractor-trailers lining the parking lot, and a jarring combination of truckers and pilgrims populating the dining room, it was a strange harmony to what I had been experiencing. But it was nothing compared to yesterday.

When I arrived in Melide in the early afternoon I was struck by how bustling it was. Was it a festival day? The ubiquitous octopus restaurants had lines out the door, the outdoor cafes were packed, locals and pilgrims were everywhere, loud recorded rock music was coming from a stage that appeared to be set up for a live band, motorcycles and cars jammed the roads, and unseen people were setting off really loud firecrackers in alleys and side streets. But the action hadn't really started. Turned out there was some sort of motorcycle festival/ convention/ exhibition, and by late afternoon it was really swinging. It reminded me of the low rider scene in the Mission District in San Francisco that we used to go see in the early 80s when we lived in the Bay Area. A sort of fetishistic display, with biker guys and biker chicks dressed up in futuristic-looking heavily-padded motorcycle outfits, with people wearing colors and styles representing clubs from all over Spain. They rode the bikes in a slow-motion parade, but the bikes were souped up so they could make these super loud high pitched engine noises. It was deafening; hard to tell what was louder, the over-amplified rock band, or the bikes. And to top it all off, there were high-heeled bikini-clad strippers caressing and humping the bikes while squeezing soap-filled sponges over their breasts. And they knew what they were doing. What made it completely Fellini-esque is that this all took place directly on the Camino route, so the whole time perplexed-looking pilgrims, dusty under their backpacks, were walking through the crowd. I thought it was a gas, and for the umpteenth millionth time I was reminded of what a messy, complicated, diverse real world we live in.

When I left town this morning, crews were cleaning up the trash left from yesterday's excesses, and in another part of town folks were setting up for what looked to be the Sunday morning farmers' market. Totally different scene.

Today's walk turned out to be 9 miles, again through some tree-canopied forests, open farmland, and small villages. There was a particularly nice old Roman bridge on the way into Ribadiso, the last village before the mostly modern looking town of Arzua, where I'm spending the night. With a population of 6000, it's the last significant population center before Santiago. Two days, 24 miles to go, and I'll be at the end of my journey.