The Occasionally-Examined Life

16 Oct 2019

Well, I’m now all caught up on this blog and am now reporting current events. I left O Pedrouzo this morning at 9:00, after having a leisurely pilgrim breakfast at a local cafe. There was no sense in rushing off earlier, as I was only going 10 Kms to Lavacolla. And, by delaying, I was hoping the rain would stop. No such luck: it came down in one form or another, one strength or another, all day long, and there was a mild wind blowing as well. So we were all resigned to being suited up in our rain gear and getting wet.

I pity the mountain bikers in this weather; it’s messy for them, their rain gear blows about a lot, barely keeping them dry, and with no fenders, they get sprayed with cold mud (and other matter) as well.

Cherri keeps appearing. She went into Santiago by taxi yesterday to meet her husband, then they taxied back this morning to the point where she left off so they could walk in together today. Their taxi dropped them off at a cafe and she walks in and – right up to me. I was in there getting some coffee and a stamp for my pilgrim passport. Really – what are the chances of that happening? Astronomical. She pointed out some other interesting points of conjunction: she and her husband lived in McLean, Virginia (a few miles away from me) for some years, and she was born and raised in Salem, Oregon, where my eldest daughter currently lives. Gives me goose bumps…

Despite the rain, there’s now a feeling of pride and jubilation evident in the way people are walking. Many, if not most, that I shared the path with today were headed all the way into Santiago. The rain and wind makes for a less comfortable experience but doesn’t take away from our achievement.

I’m staying tonight in Albergue Lavacolla, a very nice establishment, run by a very welcoming staff who had the whole handling wet clothes-boots drill down to a science. For an extra three Euros, I found myself assigned to a private room that had a single bunk bed in it, with no roommate. Nice. The whole floor of those types of rooms is sparsely populated, so the shared bathrooms and showers are almost private, too.

Tomorrow morning, I’ll be up and out at the usual time, into the forecast rain, for my last few hours on the Camino. I suspect I’ll get emotional when I arrive in the plaza in front of the big cathedral. I’m staying tomorrow night at an albergue in Santiago very aptly named The Last Stamp. So many thoughts going through my mind tonight.

15 Oct 2019

I set out from Arzua at 8:30am, rigged for rain, which was forecast to happen periodically. It was wet but not actually raining when I left, which was encouraging. You could almost, sort of, see the sunrise.

My 19 Km walk to O Pedrouzo would be my last long one. The rain held off until 10:30am and then we had a 30-minute downpour.

Cherri caught up with me on the path (it’s always something of a surprise to encounter someone you know in rain gear – often you can’t be sure who they are until you get full facial recognition). Her news was that her husband was flying in the next day and would join her for her last walk into Santiago. We had a nice talk about what the Camino means and the pilgrims you meet. I’m very glad I met her.

Arca/O Pedrouzo is a “pilgrim town”, i.e. one that pretty much exists for the Camino and I arrived in wet but good shape at 1:40 pm. My hostel was nice but the continuing rain put a damper on everything, really, so no sidewalk bar hang happened. Instead I went to a nearby Dia, the best Spanish supermarket, and came back with the makings of a picnic dinner to have in my room.

During a brief glimpse of the sun today, I took this photo:

Proof that the end is indeed near. Rain is forecast again for tomorrow, but I’ll only be walking 10Kms to Lavacolla. I’m excited now but unsure how I’ll feel when I reach Km Zero.

14 Oct 2019

After a decent breakfast in a nearby cafe, I joined the line of pilgrims heading out of town around 8:40, with 50F. We were all dressed for rain:

And Nature did not disappoint us today. It poured down on us at times and was overcast and threatening all day. What a slog!

The walking strategy gets turned on its head: in dry conditions, we usually look for the least-rocky, smoothest track on the path. But in the rain, that’s often where the path becomes a stream bed, so you don’t walk there. Also, the cow and horse poop we usually carefully avoid is now indistinguishable from the mud. Yuck.

Nonetheless, everyone seems pretty cheerful and keeps on moving.

In another one of those weird Camino occurrences, I was overtaken on the trail by Cherri, whom I hadn’t seen in 10 days, walking with Susan! It was nice to see Cherri again and we all laughed about the Camino joining people together in spooky ways.

Another effect of the rain is that you just don’t have as many places and opportunities to take breaks. In fact, I walked all 14 Kms today without stopping, which was dumb.

Just as I got into Arzua, a cold, hard rain came pounding down and suddenly I was wet right down to my toes. It was too early to get into my hostel so I took refuge in the first nearby restaurant: Cafe Teatro (“The Theatre Cafe”) where opera was playing on the jukebox. Weird coincidence, eh? Rather than being angry with me for streaming water into her place, the owner welcomed me, took pity, and revived me with hot chicken soup. Wonderful!

Later, the staff at my hostel was equally on the ball weather-wise, and in no time I’d had a hot shower, my wet clothes were in the washer/dryer, and I had heat in my room. That called for a celebratory beverage, and I chose a bottle of Peregrina, a craft beer brewed in Santiago. It was a pretty tasty lager.

I’m very cognizant of the fact that the days are winding down. In three days I’ll be in Santiago and I’m trying to process all sorts of feelings. Tomorrow is my last long walk, 19 Kms, followed by two deliberate, make-it-last 10 Km shorties.

13 Oct 2019

It was still dark when I left the Pension Eirexe at 8:00am and crossed the road to the cafe for breakfast. Susan was already there and breakfast was meager: cafe con leche and toast. The sky was overcast and ground was wet, 52F, rain forecast periodically throughout the day. I was headed for Melide, 22 Kms away, expecting to arrive around 2:30. As it happened, there was no real rain during my walk, just some mist and occasional sprinkles. Hooray!

There are a variety of rain gear strategies. The pack-covering poncho (my fave) is very popular, followed by the pack rain cover and jacket. Asian pilgrims seem to like carrying an umbrella!

I like the poncho because I can put it on easily and quickly, it covers everything (including pack shoulder straps), it can be progressively removed for better ventilation as conditions improve, and it can be put back into its stuff sack without breaking stride.

Of course, just because it doesn’t actually rain doesn’t mean you’re not going to be wet. The “steam bath” effect ensures that your clothes will be wet and need cleaning/drying.

Melide is a large, dense city and the streets were busy with markets and traffic, so navigating through it to find my hostel was a challenge. I succeeded and the rain held off until I did. The real rain began after I checked in; which complicated getting lunch/dinner as I have limited extra clothes and only open-toed sandals to wear outside the hostel.

The Pension Pereiro staff was kind of terse, possibly Russian, and the place was new but odd. For example, the interior courtyard separating the rooms from everything else was a nice idea but didn’t work well when it was raining. And, there was no heat that night, which meant some of my clothes didn’t dry completely. All in a day’s progress on the Camino.

12 Oct 2019

It was a clear 54F when I left Portomarin. Albergue/hostel owners save money, I guess, as their season starts to wind down by not firing up the furnace. The radiator in my pension room was cold as stone all night long, so there was no heat when it was needed. I see more and more pilgrims in the morning now, a long snaking line of day-glow colors. Judging from overheard conversations on the trail, since Sarria, there have been many more Germans, Frenchmen, Italians, and Spaniards added to the mix.

After the climb out of town this morning, it was easy walking through small villages all day. And it ended 18 Kms later, around 1:30 in Eirexe, a small bend in the road that features a pension, an albergue, and a cafe. While having a cocktail at the cafe, the owner of this interesting vehicle stopped in:

He said it was entirely human-powered and a real workout on some of the hills. I guess I’ve now seen it all on the Camino now: this, tandem mountain bikes, jogging strollers, rickshaw-style cargo trailers, horses, and of course the regular pilgrim.

I walked today with Susan from Seattle, a tennis enthusiast, whom I met a few days earlier sharing cocktails with Ken, Kerry, and Christie. She was staying where I was in Eirexe, so we had cocktails there too, and she asked if I’d had any epiphanies so far and we discussed the effects of Camino, and how people appear during your walk. Neither of us reported any great insights but we agreed that who you meet along the way means something.

Tomorrow’s weather is rumored to be wet, so it was frustrating to discover that the WiFi signal didn’t extend to my pension room (and barely existed six feet from the router in the common room) and that I had no cell data signal at all. Wow! Modern existential crisis: unable to determine weather on Camino using mobile phone!

I decided to see what tomorrow delivered…

11 Oct 2019

I had a good night’s sleep (perhaps the cocktails helped) and left Sarria at my usual 8:30, in clear, 46F weather. Today was going to be a long one, 22 Kms, to Portomarin. It became a gorgeous, clear Fall day, into the mid-70s, with no humidity.

I passed a lot of this stuff growing by the path: yes, that’s cabbage but the tall stalks seem very unusual. It’s used in the this province, Galicia, for their signature “Caldo Gallego” or potato-cabbage soup.

They also grow a lot of these, but I think this is the first photo of Elsie I’ve taken:

With this kind of weather and path surface, I could walk all day:

And, our helpful Camino marker/milepost says, I have less than 100 Kms to Santiago!

Just outside Portomarin, I encountered Kerri and Christie in a roadside cafe but I said just hello and kept on going. We never did run across each other that night in Portomarin.

Shortly after that, I came to a place where the trail split. Which way to go? There was a helpful sign, saying the new slightly longer path was much easier, while the old, original shorter path involved some nasty clambering down rocks. Definitely the new path for me! But guess who misread the sign and went the old way? I did, of course, and found myself on the Portomarin “Billy Goat Trail”, literally on all fours going down very narrow rock chutes. Luckily, I made it safely through, though my legs were incredibly tired. And, I arrived at the foot of the bridge into town in double-quick time:

My hostel was quite near the main plaza and the fortress-like church. According to my cafe/bar place mat, in 1956 the entire church was relocated from a zone being flooded by a new dam, stone-by-stone, and rebuilt here.

I mentioned Caldo Gallego earlier, the regional soup, and here it is, along with my main course:

Now that we’ve passed Sarria, we’ve also been advised that we need to get two stamps per day in our pilgrim passports. So I have to remember to do that. We’re urged onward by the local statuary:

10 Oct 2019

I’m up and out of Triacastela at 8:40, with clear skies and a bit chilly at 44F. I feel exhausted and my back is sore. I also have a new blister on my right big toe, probably due to all the descents, but I put a Compeed plaster on it and it feels OK.

All my clothes and boots dried real well overnight and I had a good breakfast that included bacon, eggs, and a banana. There will be no services available for the first 10 Kms of my 17 Km walk to Sarria.

As the day progressed, it became sunny and then went back to foggy and cold, prompting constant clothing changes. I finally arrived in Sarria at 1:30 with a nice sunny 65F, and encountered a super-steep stairway of about 60 steps to get up into town. Do you think that’s a medieval defense system? No one in armor (or even just a backpack) could dash up those steps and then fight. It’s what I’ve come to call the “last slap in the face” that ends so many of these stages.

I stayed at the lovely Aqua Rooms and, of course, found you-know-who at the nearest bar:

Sarria is 110 Kms from Santiago, the minimum distance the church has decreed that a pilgrim must travel in order to receive a Camino completion certificate. So this is where a lot of pilgrims start. It’s also where tour companies begin dropping off clients for the daily walking part of their “Glamino” package. Net effect for me: more pilgrims on the trail and in the bars and cafes.

The guidebooks warn that the number of Camino scammers (had to be some) will increase from here, too: people accosting you on the trail for “donations”, for your signature on petitions, and so forth. We’re advised to “just keep walking”.

Personally, Sarria means there’s just one week left before I arrive in Santiago. Holy cow – I can hardly believe it! I’m not sure what to feel: elation, pride, sadness. What will Life After the Camino be like? I’m not sure I can handle having eight pairs of underwear to choose from again.

9 Oct 2019

I awoke in my warm attic room to wet and chilly conditions: 43F with fog (but not raining). After packing up, I met Jackie for breakfast downstairs before we set off.

Sorry, I didn’t take a single photo today!

My wet foggy start turned into a nice cool and sunny Fall day, with the trail moseying through little farm towns, often on cow poop-covered farm paths. Jackie is a faster walker and soon left me behind, a future reunion left to the whim of the Camino.

I ran into the Aussie couple with the nanny and 5 yr-old in a jogging stroller again – awesome people. Mrs. said she worries her daughter won’t remember the trip. I assured her she would.

The descent into Triacastela was long and steep but mostly on paved roads, so nothing like horror of descending into Zubiri in my first week. I arrived at 1:40 after a 20 Km walk. My room at Hotel Duerming Casa was new and nice, naturally I ran into Kerry and Christie for cocktails, and I finally found the razor blades I’d been looking for.

Tomorrow is significant: I arrive in Sarria, gateway to Santiago.

8 Oct 2019

I had high hopes when leaving Trabadelo, despite a forecast of rain, because there was no rain to be seen. The planned walk was 17 Kms and it was 50F at the start. In fact, I was with a small group of pilgrims and everyone was in a great mood. After all, Santiago was less than 180 Kms away now.

Sadly, as the morning progressed and we climbed into the mountains, clouds and other hints of what was coming appeared.

Still, the ascent and weather were tolerable, until the town of Vega de Valcarce. That’s were the on-and-off rain, fog, and poor path quality started. Let’s go to the graphic of the elevation changes:

As you know by now, suffocating rain gear + hard ascent = steam bath. My least-favorite state of affairs. Then the weather degraded in a hurry, even when the path surface improved temporarily.

The steam bath, weather, and sheer exercise of climbing for hours was really fatiguing. I was running on empty when the rain paused and I entered the little town of O Cebriero. The Wise Camino app describes it as having “grown from a small and ancient village of dairy farmers into a small and ancient village of large-scale tourism”. There’s nothing quite like a few tour buses disgorging folks at the top of the hill to make the agony of my last few hours seem pointless.

I stumbled onward, looking like I’d just emerged after having been thrown into a swimming pool, in search of my hostel. Who should I find at the nearby bar, looking calm and collected while enjoying a fresh beverage? Yes, folks, Kerry and Christie. Too tired to stop and chat, I stumbled on.

I finally found my accommodations at last and my hosts were very kind about my drowned-rat appearance. However, when they showed me the “stairs” to my attic room, I thought at first they were joking:

I really had to summon up some reserves to get my legs to take me up there.

After my rejuvenating pilgrim routine, including rigging a clothesline to dry everything, I went down to the bar part of the establishment. Jackie, an artist from Bristol, U.K., whom I’d met a few days earlier, walked in and we had dinner together. She’s a fascinating woman who, among other things, is a free-lance illustrator of children’s books. The good company and warm food did wonders for me.

Tucked away in my attic room, I was plenty warm that night and absolutely everything dried out. The forecast for my start the next day was for more of the same weather and a famously steep descent into Triacastela, so not that encouraging. Feet and legs were exhausted but not damaged. I was sooo tired I slept like a rock.

7 Oct 2019

Trabadelo is literally a one-street village backing a truck stop at a bend in the road. I set out from Cacabelos at 8:30 in 52F for my 18 Km walk to Trabadelo and arrived at 1:15.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the Camino authorities occasionally toss in a new “alternate” route and that was the case today. I, however, took the traditional route which ran mostly along the highway and I was not alone. The day was absolutely gorgeous.

My walk took me along highways and underneath some amazing elevated super-highways. The Spanish are really good at building these overhead roadways through the mountains.

When I arrived in Trabadelo, after I checked into the Nova Ruta hostel and did the usual pilgrim routine, I popped over to the only bar in town:

Where I was greeted warmly by the bouncer:

And then Kerry and Christie showed up and Cocktail Hour commenced.

My walk tomorrow may be very hard – the ladies reported that there are supposedly some killer ascents and that rain in is the forecast. “Waiter! Another round!”