Day 21: Soto de Luiña to Luarca

I left the hotel in the little town of Soto de Luiña at 6:10 AM, and was immediately aware of the morning dew.  You think of dew as something you find on the lawn in the morning,  but it's just another form of precipitation.   Put on a head lamp in the dark, and you can see it.

If that's blurry it's because there was moisture on everything. 

All morning,  it was on-and-off showers.  This was made worse by the fact that I put the ugly blue poncho away wet and now it stank of mildew! Gross!

The walk starts out nice enough for a day with a 50+% chance of precipitation through early afternoon. 

So, I'm walking along, parallel to a highway,  when at 7 AM, I come to this:

That yellow arrow on the left clearly says you must enter that black tunnel.   There was no light at the other end. I didn't sign up for this!

The tunnel was so dark because it had at least two doglegs.   It was long too.  With my head lamp on high, and my hiking poles held out like swords, I entered and walked slowly through.   I'm not exaggerating.  I was really scared.  It sounds dumb now.

Eight minutes later, following that highway, by the town of Albuerne, I became aware of the presence of the ocean.

It would be there all day.  I could have filled this blog with pictures.

Today was a hard walk.  The path would leave the road to go through the forest, down slopes and back up.  With the overcast skies and the tree canopy,  the headlamp didn't come off for a while.

Nice enough rocky path... until you reach this:

and this:

and this:

I don't want to spend my day in wet shoes.  This takes some strategizing,  and that takes time.

Three hours into the walk, I reached the town of Santa Marina.  I check the map.  That's only 9 kilometers!  I should have done 15 that early in the day! This is going to be a long day.  Fortunately,  there was an open bar:

and seated there were two British guys Tina and I had met early in the Camino, Dave and Andy, plus 3 younger pilgrims they were walking with.  I joined them and got the usual breakfast, coffee and omelet.   It turns out that they'd left the same town 11 minutes before me and had all the same experiences. 

We all walked together for a while.  I realized that it's hard to be alone with your thoughts in a group.  The time gets filled with conversation. 

The group purposely ignored a Camino marker that would have steered us away from the beach (again).  This was our reward: 

I took a panoramic shot of the scene.  It was breathtaking. 

At this point,  I separated from the group to walk at my own pace.  It bothered me to have made such poor time.

Then again, I'm easily distracted.  Why do snails do this?

I mean, there's nothing to eat on a metal pole...

The wildflowers on the Camino can be beautiful...

Hey look! There's a baby horse nursing!

I told you they had udders!

So the plan for today was to walk two stages out of the guidebook:  Day 25, 18.9 kilometers to Cadavedo,  and Day 26, a mere 16 kilometers to Luarca. I actually hoped to finish by 2 PM so I could have a Spanish midday meal followed by a siesta.  It didn't happen.

I don't remember what time I passed through Cadavedo, but I can tell you that by 12:20, I noticed that the trees looked different. 

The eucalyptus forest had burned,  just like Tina said it would.

The more I walked, the more burnt forest I saw.  This fire had been huge.  It jumped highways and crossed corn fields.  I just have no idea when.

At 1:45 PM, I came across this sign.  

Ten kilometers!  That's gonna take at least two hours! Probably more...  I walked and decided to just stop in the forest and eat something. 

I had the last of my free fruit and some nuts and water.

A Spanish family passing started asking me about the Camino, all aspects.   As we spoke some of my morning companions passed.

I resumed the walk. It sucked.

Can you tell how steep this is?  Or how narrow this is?

That's maybe 14 inches of path next to a steep drop.

A short while later, I ran into Dave again. He had made a wrong turn.  We decided to walk together to Luarca in search of a cold beer.  We needed motivation.

It worked. It was almost 4 PM, but after a cold one (or two) that didn't matter as much.

Now I'm checked into my hotel (last one, I promise! ) and there's a Socialist Party rally going on outside my window.

Tina told you about the big election coming up.

Next for me is dinner followed by a call with Tina to plan out the end of this walk and to see if she can resume.  More to follow!