I went there over thirty years ago when it was still easy to just walk in without booking or being part of a tour. One thing that impressed me about it was its

I went there over thirty years ago when it was still easy to just walk in without booking or being part of a tour. One thing that impressed me about it was its effect on others. There were lots of Japanese tourists there at the time. I climbed the stairs up one of the towers with a Japanese man festooned with cameras as usual, I had my SLR with me too. When we got to the top we sat in silence looking out onto the church with it's unfinished roof, neither of us took a single picture. I think both of us were first overwhelmed and then we realized that no picture would capture what we saw and felt. I did take a few pictures of the spiral stairs on the way down, just to have a souvenir of the place. When I got to the bottom I shovelled all my Spanish coins and notes in the donation box. Perhaps they bought a few kilos of cement with it, I like to think that I helped in an infinitesimally small way to build it.