Day 17: Olveiroa to Finisterre, the End of the Earth

Olveiroa, the town where we finished up yesterday, is really tiny.  If you had a decent arm, you could throw a rock from one end to the other.  That said, it had three places to stay and three places to eat.  We had an awesome lunch at one place and a really nice room at another.  We also kept seeing young people walking back into town in bathing suits, so last night, we figured we'd investigate.

Boy, did that feel good!

There are crystal clear streams that run along two sides of the town, so we decided to see what our abused feet thought.  The water was cold, but awesome.

There were quite a few well renovated old homes in the town, and a number of the signature Galician corn cribs, called horreos.

Three horreos in one poor photograph.

What Olveiroa doesn't have is a single grocery store.  You have to drive to any of a number of neighboring towns.  How were we going have our six AM espresso shots?  (By now, you know how important those are...)  I asked the bartender in our hostel if they had coffee-to-go.  It's a fair question, because in most of Spain, the answer would be no.  That's not the cafe/bar culture.

I got lucky.  He sold us four small cafes con leche that we took up to our room as if they were gold.

The forecast for today was cold and foggy, so we decided not to start as early as we had for yesterday's heat.  We moved everything back a half hour--got up at 5:30 AM and got out the door by 6:15 AM.

The Camino leaving Olveiroa, beautifully illuminated.  Great little town.

 

It's a good thing that we didn't leave any earlier because that forecast was totally accurate.  The fog was so thick that our headlamps reflected back at us.  It was slow going.  You're going to see a lot of pictures of clouds and fog today.

7:00 AM The sunrise improves visibility.

Less than two kilometers out of town, we walked through the tiny hamlet of Logoso.  It has an albergue with a cafe that was open.  We saw one pilgrim awake, getting ready to leave.  Having just had all that espresso, we just kept walking.  There wouldn't be another town for 13 kilometers.  That's close to three hours.  For whatever reason, that town's named Hospital and it's close to where the road splits to go to either our destination, Finisterre, or tomorrow's destination, Muxia.

Tina filling some big shoes outside the still closed pilgrim office in Hospital.

I know it's just a sign, but you get excited when you see your destination in print. (Fisterra)

We walked for what seemed forever through paths through the woods.  Eventually two pairs of pilgrims and two individual pilgrims passed us.  These were serious hikers, starting early in the morning in the fog, walking faster than us, carrying all their gear.  We couldn't keep up.  Then we reached this:

Meet Vákner, a fifteen foot tall werewolf statue

Galician culture blends pagan stuff with Christian tradition.  They're big into witches, for example.  Today, I learned that they also believe that they have a werewolf roaming these woods named Vákner.  In 1491, Armenian bishop Martir came face to face with him while walking this Camino. (The local townspeople were amazed that he survived.)  Nice day to have all this fog...

It would be another hour before we reached civilization--someplace with Coca Cola and bathrooms.  Four hours.  That was in the dumpy harbortown of Cee.  It's next to a much more photogenic town named Corcubión.  We should have kept walking until there, but I was getting grumpy.  Who designs a Camino without proper rest areas??

 

The historic center of Corcubión

Funny story, approaching this first town, Cee, on a two kilometer down-sloping gravel track, we met a local person walking his dog (a sign that civilization was near).  He says to us in Spanish, "Too bad for the fog, the views from here of the sea and the Ria are amazing."  From this point on, we walked either within sight of the sea or would leave it only for brief periods.

A secluded beach only reachable by a path that connected to ours... not today.

The beach at Langosteira.  That's Finisterre in the distance, under the clouds.

We were approaching the town of Finisterre, a town who's name means "the end of the Earth" in Latin.  The Romans found this place, the westernmost point in Europe.  It put an end to their westward expansion.  The beautiful beaches are usually tucked into rocky fjords, called Rias.  The rocky coastline earned the name La Costa do Morte (The Death Coast) because of all the shipwrecks.

Finisterre was our first of three objectives today.  We arrived in under eight hours, walking about 31 kilometers.  The second objective was to get another certificate for this achievement, called a Fisterrana.  We picked those up at the tourist information office before even checking into our hotel.  The third objective was to walk to the lighthouse at the end of this peninsula, the real end of the earth.  We did that after lunch.

Kilometer Zero, Just before the Lighthouse

 

The lighthouse.  It draws a lot of tourists.

If you saw the movie The Way, this is where Tom (played by Martin Sheen) is supposed to spread the rest of his son Daniel's ashes into the sea.  It's really touching except I couldn't find the spot.  We think that Tina found it on the way back, closer to town.

The lighthouse walk added another six kilometers to the day's total.  My watch currently stands at over 57,000 steps.  No mas!

Tomorrow's our last day on this Camino.  We're walking to Muxia where the Virgin Mary is supposed to have appeared to Saint James (Santiago).  We'll get another certificate for finishing--in case you're wondering.  Tina will let you know how this ends.