Camino Reflections

The Camino is an all-encompassing experience.  It drains you physically and emotionally, while recharging your spirit at the same time.  It's so engrossing, that it's hard to stop the "Camino rhythm". I've found myself waking up in the middle of the night, double-checking which town is our destination point for the next walk, what time the alarm should ring, whether my phone is safe and charging.  It's as if I'm still in the last albergue!

We've had a few days to reflect on this magical journey.  We've come up with a list of "take-aways" that will stay with us for years to come.  

1. Every large goal or objective can be broken down into smaller, achievable parts.  Chip away at the task, one small step at a time.  You'll develop momentum.  You'll be able to track progress and that will energize you.  You'll achieve that big objective in time.  

The Camino seemed like an insurmountable goal when we started: 779 kilometers, with many mountains between us and our objective, Santiago de Compostela.  Breaking down the journey into discrete stages of 20,30, or 40 kilometers a day, and focusing on each day as it came, helped turn something unthinkable into something achievable.

2.  We need to slow down to notice and enjoy life's tiny joys and pleasures.  Butterflies. Snails. Corn. Rock formations. Roman roads.  Roof tiles. Farmers' faces. The sound of the wind.  And you can't notice or hear these things if you're connected to media.  Unplug!

3.  Look for the "good" in everything you see,  Yes, rain can be a drag; it also cools and cleans the air, making a long journey less hot and dusty.  Yes, a long line at the cafe delays our coffee or Coca Cola gratification; it also presents an opportunity to get to know fellow travelers along the way.  Yes, learning that albergue after albergue is full for the night is frustrating; it's also an opportunity to take the road less traveled and discover an unexpected gem around the next corner.  

4.  Ultimately, finding "The Way", the right path, is your personal responsibility.  You can't just follow the crowd.  You can't solely rely on local residents' directions.  While it's good to solicit input, it's your job to find the right road to your objective.

5.  Life, and The Camino, are not a race.  Everything takes time.  You need to set a sustainable pace and keep at it.  Others may scamper past you, but The Camino is long slog, not a foot race.  It's better to take things more slowly, avoiding injuries, than trying to finish "first".

6.  You need to take the time to prepare thoroughly and properly for the task at hand.  We spent months walking increasing distances, carrying a lot of weight in our backpacks, to prepare for this journey.  That practice paid off.  We finished in good shape, with few injuries.  Most travelers arrived on The Camino with no advance preparation.  Many didn't make it to Santiago de Compostela.

7.  Your "reward" is commensurate with what you invest in the journey.  If the only thing that matters is a "certificate" ("Compostela"), then that's all you'll have to show for time spent.  But if you immerse yourself in the experience, you'll be richly rewarded.

8.  Always keep your guard up.  Be aware of your surroundings.  Danger lurks, even in quiet and innocuous settings.  We always slept with passports, phones, and valuables under our pillows.  An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

9.  Be grateful for all the farmers of the world.  They work very, very hard to provide us with the food we eat.

10.  The last few miles (kilometers) are always the most challenging.  The goal seems so much further away when you're tired and have walked for countless hours already.  Keep going!

11.  Guidebook authors have many different motivations.  Try and experiment for yourself.  Try something new.  Try something not in the guidebook or internet notes.  You may discover something unique and incredible.

Epilog: Paco's Version

We arrived in Santiago on Thursday in the rain, and the bad weather continued all through Friday.  The reaction of the local people was "Summer's not supposed to be like this.  The weather's changing."  The high point of Friday was eating lunch in a really nice restaurant, "San Jaime", in the historic city center where most of the restaurants are tourist traps.

We went to the cathedral to hug Saint James, but the lines were too long.  Let me explain.  Behind the altar, there's a statue of Saint James (Santiago).  You can climb a set of stairs and enter a small room behind the statue and discreetly give your favorite apostle a bear hug even during mass.  It's actually a super nice thing to do.  We decided to return early Saturday to beat the crowds. 

Saturday, August 10

Since we know when we're leaving, we no longer have to do our laundry in the sink!

We go to the Cathedral fifteen minutes before it opens... and wait on line outside.

Nobody likes getting up early in Spain.

But the plan works!  We're among the first inside and we get to hug Saint James.  Afterwards, we enter the crypt below where he's buried, say a prayer, and light another candle.  Now, the visit to Santiago feels complete.

When I reread the posts from day 1 and day 27, I laughed to see the repeated mention of the Queen song "We Are the Champions"...  Then this happened:

It's like the Camino has an official anthem!  These are the same ladies that were playing Louis Armstrong when we arrived.

We had time to kill before our first museum, so we got some coffee and sat outside at a cafe.  We were accosted by mangy pigeons that wanted the free pound cake that came with our drinks. Seriously, they jumped onto the surrounding tables and then jumped to the spare chairs at our table and wouldn't stop despite repeated shooing.  Then Tina came up with a great idea. She put a glass ashtray over the cake and put it on another table.  All of the pigeons went there!  They fought over the ashtray, but they couldn't get at the cake.  Passersby took photos and videos.  We had our coffee in peace.

We visited the Galician People's Museum (Museo do Pobo Galego), which is a really cool place that isn't on anybody's list of must-do things.  It highlights the history and culture of this amazing part of Spain.  Having walked for days through small towns, it really resonated with us.  We'd previously visited in 2005 and really wanted to do it again.  This one display, for me, showed how poor this area was: a raincoat made of straw.

Straw raincoat plus wooden shoes.  It rains here at least nine months of the year.

The building is amazing. A double spiral staircase.

The museum used to be a convent.  Part is still an active church.

We also visited the Pilgrimage Museum, a new building next to the cathedral.  I posted this photo on Facebook, taken from the stairwell.

Stuff we never wrote about in the blog.

You might remember me talking about the town of Boadilla on Day 14.  Probably the low point of the trip, it had a lot of mosquitoes--and I made the mistake of sleeping in front of an open window.  For the next week, I was covered with bug bites--so many that I was worried that it was bed bugs.  I bought insect repellent and hydrocortisone for the itch.  We ran all of my stuff through the first dryer we had access to.  I itched for a week until... until I stopped itching.  I can talk about it now, but I was mortified.

We passed a lot of small farms along the way.  It dawned on us that the small farmers were all old people.  These small towns are dying and the old people are clinging to their way of life.  Larger farms seem to be the norm in Castilla y Leon, but even in Galicia, we started to see larger parcels and big pieces of farm equipment.

A small tractor, pulling a load of hay, blocks the Camino on Day 25.

Here's a photo I never posted from the start of the Camino.  Once we got out of the Basque country, it just didn't seem to fit anywhere.

Don't even try to figure out the Basque language!

I've got lots of stupid observations that I'd be happy to share over a gluten free beer somewhere.  My last bit is about this blog.  I blogged about walking the Portuguese Camino four years ago with my daughters Julia and Michelle, and that document has helped me both remember and relive that wonderful experience.  At the time, the express purpose of the blog was to keep everyone at home informed of our progress.

This blog is meant to do the same thing, but it's so much longer than the old one.  Anyway, the last comment is that we didn't meet anyone else writing a blog, but there were a lot of people writing copious notes in their journals every evening.  It wasn't unusual to see a light in the bunk room as someone was trying to remember all of the wonderful details of their day.

The Camino has been (as I expected) one of the best things that I've ever done.  I never want to forget these four weeks.  Thanks for following us!

Day 27: Santiago de Compostela, 779 Kilometers Later

We loved the albergue where we stayed last night.  Tina already described the owner's generosity.  We were the only Americans there.  Most of the rest of the pilgrims were a group of young Italians and their priest.

Last night they had a big communal dinner (which they invited us to, but we declined. Pasta and my Celiac disease don't mix.)  We could hear them enjoying themselves from the open dormitory window.  Dinner finished and they began singing.  It was after nine PM, and like good little pilgrims, we were getting ready for bed.  In an albergue, you always come prepared with earplugs and eye shades to help you sleep through anything.

Well, these kids started with church songs and great harmony.  On and on they went.  Running out of those, they switched to songs by Queen, in English!  "We are the champions, my friends!  And we'll keep on fighting 'till the end!"  It was hard not to laugh.

Their party broke up by ten PM and we had a great night's sleep.  This morning, we got up at five, dressed, read some very nice overnight messages from our kids wishing us luck, and were out the door into the darkness at 5:30.

Everything was wet.  It had been raining overnight, and before long, it started misting, then drizzling, and then intermittently raining.  This would continue for the entire 25 kilometer hike.  I had fresh batteries in my headlamp, we both wore our ugly blue Smithsonian ponchos.  We were ready for anything.

At a few minutes after six, we walked into the town of O Pedrouzo, and I whined enough until Tina let me get a cup of coffee.  The cafe was so hot inside that Tina sat outside, under an awning on a small ledge and I stood on the sidewalk while we had our drinks.  During those ten minutes, pilgrims came from both directions to this, the only open cafe in town.

We resumed walking and ran into a group of three Canadian ladies, friends from Alberta, also wearing head lamps.  We exchanged pleasantries.  (Another bit of wisdom: never assume people are American.  Canadians hate that!)  The best line of the morning, from one of the ladies upon discovering that we too had started weeks ago in France: "Of course!  Only people who started at Saint Jean would be crazy enough to be up at five!"

The glow of the Santiago airport as seen from the woodlands outside O Pedrouzo

At our usual pace, we average about five kilometers an hour plus breaks.  Today's walk would take something like five plus hours.  Of course, walking in the dark slows you down as you look for way markers, and the rain also makes you more careful.  For the longest time, we didn't see many other pilgrims.  The newbies seemed to be staying in, hoping the weather would pass.  It didn't.

Action photograph of Tina booking it through the rain.  Photo courtesy of me.

 There are not a lot of photos from this morning's walk because, frankly, whenever we went up a hill, you couldn't see anything.  There were a lot of hills.  The most famous one is named Monte do Gozo, and it's the site of a famous pilgrim monument overlooking Santiago.  We couldn't see it.  A friend of ours spent his final night there--and he didn't see it either!

During the last 100 kilometers, you're required to get your pilgrim credential stamped twice per day.  We got our first stamp where we got coffee at six and our second in a small Galician bar in a suburb named San Marco, where I had a Coke and Tina warmed up with another coffee at 9:45.  We were making great time.

Ten AM, we hit the outskirts of Santiago.  If you look closely, you can see "Santiago" in a small sign on the right.

Getting closer. You can see the cathedral in the background

This was exciting!  We followed the signs through the Western neighborhoods of the city towards the cathedral in the historic center.  About three blocks away, we passed a cafe where two musicians on violin and cello were playing Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World".  I started to lose it.

I may someday get the hang of taking a selfie.  That's us in front of the cathedral at 10:45 AM

We checked into our hotel--of course our room wasn't ready.  We didn't care--we're pilgrims!  Nobody gets a room that early in the day.  We left our backpacks and went to the pilgrim office to get our diplomas, the famous "Compostelas".  As we expected, there were a ton of people there.  Many had arrived the day before.  The lines are legendary, so they came back in the morning.

The line at the pilgrim office.  It stretched outside into the rain after we got there.

Our Compostelas.  It's official: 779 kilometers.  (That's 484 miles.)

Our credentials.  That's a lot of stamps.

Why is this woman smiling?

 After the Pilgrim Office, we got together with our friend Karin from Sweden.  She arrived yesterday and will be leaving tomorrow for home.  We had lunch in a touristy restaurant with a friend of hers from England, Michael.  It was great to share stories of the walk and the different towns that we'd visited one day apart.

Tina and Karin

After lunch, outside the restaurant, we ran into our friend Tristan from earlier on the Camino.  He had gotten in this morning as well.  The next few days will be like this as the fellow travelers we met over the past four weeks walk into town.

As we compared stories, we came to appreciate how lucky we were to be healthy at the end of this trek.  Friends less than half our age have been hobbled by injuries.  It's been painful to watch.  Some haven't yet arrived.  There are some lessons here...

Tonight, we went out for a nice dinner and had a bottle of sparkling Albariño, the signature grape of Galicia, to celebrate our anniversary (7/26/1986).  We're not setting any alarms for the morning, and I'm not walking any kilometers to get that first cup of coffee.

We realize that there are a bunch of items, some hilarious, that never made it into this blog.  There have also been a lot of lessons and observations from along the way.  Our next post will be a potpourri of all of those.

Day 26: Melide to Santa Irene: Walkin' In the Rain.

We got an earlier start than we planned in Melide, because a man in the next bunk bed decided to start talking--and then yelling in his sleep. Hello, 4:30 AM.  The day was forecast to feature showers, particularly later in the day.  We wanted to make as much progress as possible before the rains started, so we got out of bed and moved our stuff out of the dormitory room.

The early part of our walk was quiet and uneventful, with few other pilgrims joining the path.  We left at 5:10 am and walked along woodland paths through many small villages before coming to our coffee stop 6 kilometers away in the small town of Boente.  We stopped at a roadside cafe that was doing a bustling coffee service at 6:45 am.  Lots of pilgrims had already gathered there.  Some had spent the night in Boente's hostels.  Other had traveled there and stopped for refreshments.  It was quite the scene in the early morning.

Waves and waves of pilgrims kept peeling off and continuing their journey.  There were families, folks with strollers, people with pets, even a family pushing an elderly man in a wheelchair (not sure how that works on the rocky climbs and descents of the Camino!).  We joined the crowd and were surrounded, for a while, with our fellow walkers. As each group settled into its own pace, the crowd thinned and we again felt that we had the Camino to ourselves.

We passed the usual Galician sights: cows, corn, and kale.  And lovely hills,  And views from mountaintops.

Cows in repose.  This scene repeated itself throughout the day. Do they sense impending rain?

Views from Our Walk

Mountain Villages in the Mist

Galician Home With Grapevine Arbor

It was a very sentimental walk.  After nearly a month of walking, we were within 50 kilometers of our destination.  We tried to soak in all the sights, sounds, and emotions of the moment.  We're really going to miss this when it's over!

As the day progressed, we were joined by more and more pilgrims on the road.  The town of Arzua, which we reached by 8:00 am, is the crossing point of the Camino Frances (our route) and the Camino del Norte (a route which follows the Bay of Biscay).  That means that even more pilgrims crowd the same narrow paths we all walk to Santiago de Compostela.  Fun!

Not Our Private Camino Any More!

Mist started falling by 10:00 am, then turned to rain a few hours later. Out came the beautiful blue ponchos we mentioned in past posts.  Here's Paco posing in the rain:

Paco Dressed in Smithsonian Garb!

We trudged along for hours in the driving rain.  The countryside was beautiful, despite the weather.  We were grateful for the cool temperatures and soft breezes.  It's much easier to walk long distances when it's not hot and sunny outside!

We arrived at our albergue around 1:30 pm, having walked 31.2 kilometers and scaling over 1,000 vertical meters (that's 3,000 additional feet, in the rain!).  We were the first to arrive, so we got first choice of bunks, first chance at the showers, and the owners even offered to do all our laundry while we went out to lunch.  The proprietor drove us to the restaurant himself. Now that's hospitality! (It was the first time we'd been in any kind of vehicle since July 12th.)

Roasted vegetables with local goat cheese and prawns. Lunch in a small town!

There's a large group of Italian teenagers staying at our hostel as well.  The proprietor told us that the first group of 8 young people who checked in was here with their father.  Paco's response:  wow, that's a big family.  Reply:  no, that's the parish priest escorting the students.  That made more sense!

Tomorrow is supposed to be rainy as well.  We have about 24 kilometers to go to reach Santiago.  We hope to be there by noon.  We'll start early, as usual. It's exciting to have our objective nearly in hand, and sad to know that this magical journey is almost at its end.

Day 25: Gonzar to Melide. We have two days to go!

Tina is a genius.  It was her plan to go one town further than all of the day trippers who started at Sarria.  Our albergue in Gonzar was filled with serious backpackers.  The vibe was totally right.

At an albergue, you do a number of things.  You shower.  You do laundry.  Maybe you eat.  You sleep.  It occurred to me that we never posted a photo of the laundry part.  A few of the albergues have machines that you can pay to use, but most just have wash sinks, like the one in your laundry room at home.  Then, you hang your clothes outside to dry.  Usually, it's bring-your-own-clothespins.  We have seven clothespins, and we picked them all up along the way.

The clotheslines in the yard at the albergue.  This is luxury.  In some, it's just a rack on a window balcony.

We set our alarms for 5 AM and hit the road by 5:20.  We were nowhere near the first to leave.  This albergue was full of veterans.  We walked in the dark for a long time because the sun no longer rises as early as it did when we started. (And, we're much further West.)

Starting so early, you know that coffee is something of a crap shoot.  We were lucky to find two open cafes in the town of Ventas de Naron, about 5 kilometers out.  Unfortunately, the place we picked, had great coffee but nothing gluten free for me.  We enjoyed a cafe con leche, stowed our head lamps, and continued walking.  Our objective for the morning was a town called Palas de Rei, over 17 kilometers from where we started.  This would be our half way point.

Part of why I say Tina was a genius is because most of our day was spent alone on beautiful verdant paths which hours later would be overrun by yesterday's crowds.  Same place, but totally better experience.

The sun trying to break through the clouds, as viewed from a cornfield.  It never succeeded.

One of many tree covered walks that I photographed.  This Camino is almost over, and I feel the need to capture the beauty and serenity.

As we got closer to the half way point of our day, Palas de Rei, we became aware of the presence of the touregrinos from yesterday.  Where did these old people, carrying close to nothing, come from?  Why was there a pit crew waiting with walkie-talkies as we passed?  What was up with the big blue buses?  You too can have an authentic Camino experience!  Our big blue bus will be waiting for you with snacks, a rest room, and maybe a quick ride to an easier part of the day's trek down the road a piece...

First sighting of the touregrino bus.

An hour or two later, waiting at a random intersection for the brave touregrinos...

Anyway, enough snarkiness.  We stopped in Palas de Rei for another coffee and some Spanish Omelet at about 10 AM.  We had made very good time, but getting served took forever because of a large group of Americans who walked in just before us.

We have not seen a lot of Americans before today on the Camino.  We've seen tons of Italians.  Lots of French people.  We told you about all of the Koreans.  We've met lots of Eastern Europeans.  Heck, yesterday, we met a Dutch couple that started the Camino from the front door of their house in the Netherlands.  The Americans were somewhere else until it was time for my delayed breakfast this morning...  20 minutes later, I had my omelet.

The second half of the day was another 15 kilometers (plus altitude) to the town of Melide which has a population of 7,500 but for some reason has the reputation of being the octopus capital of this seafood crazy country.  95% of our walks were on totally isolated country lanes, covered with lush tree canopies.  We walked through groves of white birches and eucalyptus trees.  It was a dream.

Couldn't you walk here all day?

As we approached Melide, in the suburbs, there was a park dedicated to pilgrims who had died along the Camino.  We didn't mention this earlier, but there have been memorials since the beginning to people who have died along the way, and most were really, really touching.  This park had stone markers with names and dates.  Lots of them.

We got to the final outskirts of Melide just after 1 PM.  Here's a photo of Tina just before we crossed the last old bridge.  A car followed us onto the bridge, but there was no room to get out of the way, so he just had to wait.

Almost there!

For a town this small, it feels like a larger city.  Our albergue is in a newer part of town right next to the historic center.  It's very modern.  (We're washing our clothes in actual machines!)  We showered and went to lunch at a pulpería, a family style restaurant specializing in octopus.

Octopi waiting to get cooked

I told the cook that he was going to be famous.

In Galicia, this is called Pulpo a la Feira.  Ourside Galicia, it's Pulpo a la Gallega.  It's boiled octopus, olive oil, smoked paprika and sea salt.  Simple, yet delicious.

Our lunch: octopus, chorizo, padrón peppers and a mixed salad (ensalada mixta.)  These salads have become a daily favorite, with all kinds of greens plus superb quality tuna on them.

After lunch, we walked into the old town and visited the main church in town, Sancti Spiritus from the 14th century, where we sat for maybe five contemplative minutes until we realized that all of the old ladies there were probably about to start a rosary.  We left having taken this one photograph.

We went to the supermarket to pick up some fruit, some sausage and some gluten free bread.  Yesterday, after some difficulty, we made a reservation at an albergue for tomorrow night, and we're not sure that there will be food available.  We won't starve, but it won't be like today!

So, tomorrow, we'll walk something like 36 kilometers to an albergue outside of Santa Irene, and the next day we will arrive, after 27 days (including two days off) at Santiago de Compostela!

Tina will fill you in on tomorrow.  Oh yes, rain is in the forecast.

Day 24: Sarria to Gonzar. Disney Meets the Boy Scouts

We now understand what the guidebook meant when it warned of the huge influx of pilgrims joining the Camino at Sarria.  Why does this happen?  Because you need to walk at least 100 kilometers in order to earn a “Compostela”, the certificate of completion for the Camino.  In Spain, a Compostela is a valuable credential when applying for jobs, applying to schools, etc.  It’s a status symbol.  Sarria is 112 kilometers from Santiago, so this is where pilgrims join the Camino for the last leg of the journey.

We left our hotel at 6:30 am, a little later than usual.  We enjoyed a quick cup of coffee in a local café, and no sooner had we finished when a hoard of young Italian students crowded inside ordering cappuccinos (Spaniards drink café con leche).  We could barely get out of the café, it was so crowded! 

Cafe Scene 6:30 am in Sarria

And that was just the start of it.  There were hoards of people walking onto the camino from Sarria.  There were school groups, church groups, large groups of friends, rowdy people, groups of people singing, people with babies in strollers(!)…lots of LOUD people.  Lots of people who wouldn’t let you pass. It was unbelievable. There’s a name for people walking the Camino in this manner: “tour”egrino.  The lines along the road leading out of town looked like those photos of Mount Everest this summer! 

About 80% of these “pilgrims” carried only day packs.  They checked their large suitcases in their pre-booked hotels, to be delivered to the next pre-booked hotel.  Why is this a problem? Two reasons.  First, carrying everything you need for the journey in a single bag, on your back, is a great life lesson.  It teaches you the difference between “want” and “need”.  Every additional item you choose to take along, you have to carry the entire way.  You learn not to pack anything extra.  If you need something, you can find it on the way.  So no extra food, no extra clothing, no “nice to have” niceties.  Just the basics.  Those checking large suitcases never had to make these choices.

Second, a bag weighs you down.  It slows your gait.  It makes you focus on the road so you don’t trip and fall.  The journey becomes a struggle, a good struggle.  Those with day packs were racing across the Camino.  We even saw groups of young people running, as if this was a marathon.  The runners and fast pacers were weaving in and out of the crowd, making the road all that more dangerous for the rest of us.  It was truly unpleasant.

After a few hours of steady walking, we started to get reasonable distance between us and the other pilgrims.  The day became filled with the familiar idyllic, rustic views of the Spanish countryside. 

Lovely Stream along the Route

Views From the Walk

We also passed many properties subdivided with low stone walls.  In Galicia, inheritance laws require(d) that real property be split equally among all the surviving children.  This resulted in smaller and smaller parcels of land, many too small to sustain a family farm.  An example of these walled divisions follows.

Subdivided Galician Land

We also started seeing many “Horreos”.  These are traditional corn cribs.  Thery’re built on four stilts to keep them off the ground.  They have an overhanging ornamental roof to keep the rain out, and (traditionally) wooden slats along the sides to keep the air circulating.  

Here’s what these typically look like.

A Typical Galician Horreo

Another aspect of this phase of the Camino is loud, boisterous music blaring from sidewalk cafes luring pilgrims to stop for refreshments.  It’s really annoying.  We walked 17 kilometers before stopping for our Coca Cola break—longer than originally planned.  It was a beautiful café in the town of Mercadoiro, just shy of the guidebook’s target for the day: Portomarin.

Tina at the Outskirts of Portomarin

For this leg of our journey, we decided we'd walk to destinations which weren't "featured stops" in the Camino guidebooks.  Most pilgrims follow the recommendations of the guides, so they congregate in those towns.  We wanted to set our own path.

We walked about 8 kilometers further, along cool, shaded paths, to a tiny village called Gonzar.

Paco Along the Shaded Path to Gonzar

We're staying in a wonderful hostel where we've met lots of new friends.  Maya is a young Israeli girl who will start University in October.  We also met two lovely ladies from Hungary who started the Camino from St Jean Pied Port one day earlier than we did.  It's such a small world!  And along the way today, we saw our bicyclist Camino friend from Santa Fe.  We're so glad he was looking strong and healthy.

We've planned out our trip for the remaining 85 kilometers of the journey.  We also booked our albergues for the next few days.  This was necessary because the "tour"egrinos pre-book everything, so regular pilgrims have no rooms when they arrive.  Sigh.  This really takes the spontaneity out of the equation.

Day 23: From O Cebreiro to Sarria. No room at the Inn...

Last night, we went over to the bar across the street to pay for our hotel room and have a glass of Albariño, the crisp white wine from Galicia that has been discovered by the rest of the world, including Napa Valley.  It was windy and cold and obvious that the morning was going to be foggy.  The bar assured us that they would be open at six the next morning for breakfast.

We were faced with the following choice: if it's going to be foggy, and you're on the top of a mountain, why would you want to brave it before having a cup of coffee?  Cooler minds prevailed.

Sure enough, at 6 AM it was pea soup outside and you could hear the condensing water droplets falling off the tree leaves like rain drops.  We had a cafe con leche at the hotel bar and headed out with headlamps on.  It was a new moon, and the fog was so thick that Tina switched her head lamp to the low beams because the higher setting was reflecting back too much.

Even still, as we walked slowly down the path through the forest, we passed a pilgrim in the dark with no lamp!

Our objective today was ambitious: to finish two days in the book.  First to walk 20 kilometers to the town of Triacastela and then to walk another 18 kilometers to the city of Sarria.  It sounded easy.  (Note, these distances didn't account for the amount of walking up and down hills we did.  Think about it.  You can be a mile away from something, but if you have to walk up a mountain and down the other side, you might walk two miles to get there.  We ended up walking over 41 kilometers again...)

The first thing we were able to positively identify was this famous statue of a pilgrim a little more than three kilometers out of town.  It was a good thing we had coffee before leaving, because the first town we walked through, Liñares, was totally asleep.

Pilgrim statue at the Alto de San Roque in the fog

We kept walking in the fog, first along a highway, then along gravel paths alongside, finally through the woods.  What we could see was gorgeous.  Galicia receives a lot of rain annually, and everything is covered with moss, lichens, and ferns.  This is not the arid Spain that my father talked about.

The sky lightened, allowing us to see our path

Eventually, the sun peeked through the clouds.

This is Celtic Spain.  Yesterday in O Cebreiro, there was a wedding and the traditional band they hired had bagpipers, gaiteros.  They also believe in witches and have a fun custom of mixing together all of the spirits in the house, setting them on fire, and drinking them.  It's called a quaimada.

This tree reminded me of why they believe in witches.

The ground here is really rocky, full of slate.  The houses in this part of Galicia are largely made of pieces of slate, piled on top of each other and held together by gravity.  Many old structures are falling down.

The towns we walked through were agricultural.  The paths we walked on were shared with many animals--you could tell by droppings on the ground.  Tina's best line of the day: "I'm becoming the doo doo expert."  At one point, in the late morning, outside Triacastela, we came face to face with a bunch of cattle as we walked on a path with a stone wall on each side.

At midday, we stopped in the town of Triacastela for a Coke and to plan the rest of our day.  Triacastela means "Three Castles", but none remain, so we'll have to take their word for it.

We decided to go another 18 kilometers to Sarria, the end of the next chapter in the guidebook.  Since it was already past noon, we decided to call albergues to reserve two beds.  I called at least seven, and they were all booked.  The towns in between were tiny, and not practical for the rest of our plan.  I called the one four star hotel in Sarria, and of course, they had a room.  (You couldn't book a Hampton Inn at home for this price, but when albergues are ten Euros a night or less, your perspective changes.)

This photo looks better than this fountain does, outside of Triacastela

I can't explain why I took this photo.

We didn't take a lot of pictures during the second part of the hike because the sun was out, it was getting hotter, and frankly, we were just on a mission to get to Sarria and take a shower in the expensive hotel room.

The old town in Sarria.  We'll be walking this street in the morning to follow the Camino out of town.

A Camino marker next to the main church

The church of Santa Mariña dominates the old town, and the old town is on high ground visible throughout Sarria

We got to Sarria at 4:30 PM.  Our day lasted over ten hours with only two breaks.  We showered, had a beer in a cafe along the river Sarria, and had a really nice dinner in our hotel.  Oh yeah, we made a reservation at an albergue for tomorrow night, so we don't get stuck like this again!

One final note about Sarria, and it's a big one.  To get a diploma for completing this walk, called a "Compostela", you have to walk at least 100 kilometers of the Camino.  Sarria is where most people start.  As we sat in that cafe, we watched all sorts of people pulling roller bags, carrying day packs and fanny packs, all sporting scallop shells that identified them as tomorrow's pilgrims.  They will pay a service to lug their bags from albergue to albergue for the next 100 kilometers as they stroll the Camino...

The guide book tells us to not get pissed off.  Now, you get an idea why we couldn't book a room here!  Also, when I walked the Portuguese Route four years ago, you couldn't use the internet to book your room.  Now it seems that everyone is using Booking.com.  I'm not sure that this is progress.

Tomorrow's plan is 37.5 kilometers.  Hopefully, they hold our room!  Tina will let you know how it works out.