10.6 miles (includ. 4km detour off the camino)
Very flat stage with olive groves and vineyards stretching to the hills on the horizon. Red clay.
Some straggly vegetation and wild flowers—thistles, mallow, corn camomile, white broom, poppies, white rocket, spitting cucumber, sperges, wild radish, reseda.
Much of the stage was on the Calzada Romana (old Roman road). We took a detour off the camino along an old dirt road to Almendralejo—a leap of faith since it was hard to believe that there was anything along this desolate road!
Almendralejo is a town of 35,000 people which prides itself on its wine production. We entered town along a dispiriting street of car dealerships, some selling quite expensive cars. It was in the eighties and felt unbearably hot.
There may be nice sections of town but we never saw them. Our two star hotel is on an ugly street in an area full of old apartment buildings. We have a clean basic room (55 euros).
The hotel is close to a restaurant (which is good as we have no desire to venture far in the heat). The restaurant serves highly overpriced food with very high quality ingredients. I think that the waiter deliberately steered us to the highest priced items on the menu without letting us know that the portions were so incredibly large that one portion was more than enough for both if us. (There was no written menu!) Lunch and dinner each cost substantially more than our hotel room—highway robbery in these parts!
We bought supplies (bread and bad pastries and fruit) for breakfast and lunch at three different little stores — two run by Asians and one by Rumanians. The chain supermarket was closed for the holiday!