I woke up feeling great after finally sleeping in the private hostel. The night was without a single snore. A family lived upstairs and they renovated the first floor to be an exclusive hostel that was only advertised by word of mouth. The family left us coffee, milk, muffins and cookies for breakfast. We sat down and sipped the horrible, dissolve-in-hot-water-coffee with two other boys that staying in the home. They were 18 and tired of trekking. They told us that they honestly couldn’t wait to go home, sleep in their own beds, eat unquestionable foods and not have to live out of a small backpack. By now, we also had some of these thoughts despite how fun the trip has been.

My good mood was quickly thrown off when I realized that the German dreads-dude had yanked my clean towel off the door in the middle of the night and threw it in a crumpled pile on the floor with his nasty towel. The total lack of respect for my things really threw me off. I had to remove myself from the indoor situation because I was about to go off on him. I went outside and shook the thing, now damp and smelly, over the balcony. All of a sudden, a bedbug randomly appeared on the table beside me and I knew deep down that it had come off my towel. Bedbugs love hiding in places that are soft, dark and layered, so by throwing my towel on the ground, he created the perfect environment. We were now back at square one with bedbug eradication.

I was then on a mission to get to Luarca as fast as possible. It was a shorter day of walking, but I walked twice as fast. I pretty much sprinted the last 5km because my mind had been wandering into dark places with the bedbug situation and I couldn’t bring it back out. It was an extremely hot day and my sister and I got in a few tiffs along the way. Whenever we get into little disturbances, we both
just keep quiet for a few minutes in order to let things simmer down inside us. Then we usually both try to change the topic and get to talking about more agreeable matters. Being with someone for every instance of every day can definitely be a tell-all about a relationship. Throughout, we’ve gotten along really well despite our little hard-headed battles of wit.

We got to the hostel as fast as we could and begged the keeper to let us do laundry at the hottest setting possible. He argued that he couldn’t fulfill our request. I explained our situation and talked back and forth with the man for almost ten minutes. It was the most perfect Spanish I’ve ever spoke and it all came together in a time of dire need. He laughed at our state of panic and assured that his lower-temperature washer and drier would suffice to kill the “chinchas” as he called them. It was worth a shot, so we meticulously searched our things and entrusted them with the man for washing. We claimed our top bunks because we came up with the philosophy that it’s easier for the potential bugs to crawl/falling down than it is for them to crawl up.

At the end of our laundry fiasco, the German guy had caught up to us. I was sitting in the kitchen charging my phone on the only outlet in the place and he approached me with his gappy grin. He told me that it was national kissing day, pointed to his cheek and leaned in close to me. I laughed nervously and leaned back to escape his discomforting presence. He laughed and told me he was going to try it on Aria as well as he walked away. Aria was even more taken aback than I was when he asked her in the sleeping room. She lied and told him she had a boyfriend just so that he would back off. He then said that we weren’t living up to the American stereotype because we weren’t party girls. We do like to party, actually, we just like to do so selectively.

We weighed our dinner options and went to a place where we thought we saw Mexican food being served. Once we sat down we discovered it wasn’t Mexican food at all except for maybe the queso. We got different dishes so that we could both split our meals. Eating out is so much more fun when you split because then you get a little taste of everything! However, that only applies to good food that’s shared. Our dinner was quite the opposite of good and I had a really bad feeling about it when I practically had to drain my entire plate into my napkin. The food was so greasy and so salty that we left feeling like we, ourselves, had been dunked in the deep-fryer.

We waddled to the beach hoping to feel better by napping in the sun. The sun, however, made matters much worse and I swear I felt a fever coming on. I went from sweating to frigid and freezing in under five seconds. My body was really having a hard time with whatever I was forcing it to digest. Aria said she felt the same and we decided a dip in the Atlantic may be our only revival. The bay was more sheltered from the incoming tides, so the ocean was like bath water compared to the other places we’ve swam. Thankfully, it was exactly the cure we needed. It’s amazing how water can completely change your outlook on life. Whether it’s a hot shower, a dive in a pool, a dip in the ocean, or even a glass of water, this combination of hydrogen and oxygen has definite magical powers.