I pressed the pause button today.

I have walked 232.8 kilometers to date and I have 533.8 to go, but I am beginning to feel like the Camino Frances is walking me.

I am not walking the Camino.

The other night, in Santo Domingo, I didn’t get to see the famous chickens in the cathedral, a highlight of the town apparently. I only saw the outside of the church as I walked away from the town in the dark.

I did see the inside of the supermarket, laundromat and sporting goods store. And the ATM.

Yesterday in Belorado, in the Cuatro Cantones hostel, I did not jump into the swimming pool, after a long hot day walking.

Why? Because I have been chasing bunk beds down the road.

Leaving each day in the dark at 6 am has been more pleasant than I originally imagined. It beats the heat of the late afternoon and the chilly solitude is welcoming.

(Note to self, get new batteries for the headlamp.)

So I’m sticking around for a day.

I woke this morning after many had left. I leisurely brushed my teeth and strolled out of the hostel at 8 am without my backpack.

I walked straight to the town square and sat on a bench under the trees. The air was crisp and fresh and not a soul was moving, save for the occasional pilgrim in search of the yellow Camino arrows.

I watched a young woman in black and white fall prostrate on the steps of the church for nearly an hour. As the church bells rang out she jumped up, leaped about with arms waving in some sort of ecstatic ritual dance into her iPhone camera.

That was my cue to walk around the corner to La Frontera for coffee and torta.

I also managed to book beds in Ages, Burgos and Hontanas. (I think. I’m still having trouble figuring out what day it is.)

This will take me another 81.2 kilometers down the road, with 452.6 to go.

Cruising speed!

And it looks like rain is approaching as I reach the wide expanses of the Meseta, right after Burgos.

The hot spell is nearly broken. Friends wrote this morning to say they are walking my way under cloudy skies, the first since we started.

Another reason for stopping is to give my right knee one more chance to heal before the big push to Burgos. It feels fine. The only real concern is that I will do something stupid to re-injure it.

There has been no more pain since I switched out of the Hokas and into my Reeboks alternates.

I have been shipping my backpack ahead each day, and wearing a daypack that I picked up in Viana (between Los Arcos and Logroño).

The daypack is critical to carrying my bananas, apples, Digestive biscuits, and other frivolities.

Once I enter the Meseta, I plantó resume carrying my own bag. After I jettison the Hokas and a broken walking stick that I can’t let go of, like a sentimental child.

Since the hostel didn’t reopen until 1 pm, I climbed up a steep trail to view the Castillo ruin behind the Iglesia Santa Maria. And to walk off the tortas.

The view was superb. All of Belorado lay before me. I could imagine a 13th century king getting his jollies viewing the serfs, from this vantage point.

Up above five vultures rotated counterclockwise on the Tirón Valley updraft. They made slow, easy circles ever upward. Another one was on watch duty up nearly in the clouds.

I glanced down to make a note and suddenly there were 11 — Griffins, Bearded, or Egyptian vultures, I know not which.

They were soaring in and out of my range, full-feathered carrions in flight one moment, black specks against the blue the next.

They had no interest in reaching the ground. Flight for the love of effortless flight. (My new Camino goal— effortless movement).

When the sole remaining vulture was the highest one on the sky, I slowly descended into town.

What a change in my absence. The town square was filling with people, about 50 milling about as if waiting for something to happen.

In each of the numerous entrances to the square, Guardia Civil cars were parked and at least four dark green-clad and armed officers stood on alert.

I walked to a park bench in the center and took some photos.

Quickly and quietly two officers descended on me, one speaking briskly in Spanish.

I suggested English but he wasn’t interested.

His partner was fluent however and politely grilled me about my country of origin and reason for being in the square, whether I was a tourist or resident. When I mentioned “Camino,” the tension evaporated.

It was an anti-fascist protest. “Don’t take pictures,” he said. He meant of the Guardia Civil.

“So are you here to keep the skinheads out or the anti-fascists in?” I asked.

“Neither. We’re here to keep the peace,” he said. “We don’t pick sides.

“You have heard of the Thin Blue Line,” he asked. “We’re the thin blue line.”

The protest was mostly young middle-class adults, some with babies in buggies. They started promptly at noon with call and response chants, a single foray around the square, on short but impassioned speech and in 45 minutes, it was over.

Not a skin-headed fascist in sight.

At the hostel, waiting to check back in, the young woman in front of me left the line and raced down the street to take a selfie with a mural.

She explained that her friend is a day or two ahead of her and plants “googly eyes” on murals along the way, then texts clues back to her friend.

“It is just a fun way to stay in touch as we walk,” she said. “We’re meeting up again in Burgos!”

As I waited, one of my favorite couples walked by, Debbie and Jose. We haven’t seen each other in two days so it was a little reunion.

They are walking 7 kilometers farther down the road for the night.

That’s the Camino, sooner or later, everyone bumps into everyone.