Portomarin to Palas de Rei, 19.08

Today is my birthday. I usually spent it with close friends or family and that is the way I want to celebrate my birthday. When it comes to that I guess I am 6 years old. Therefore I knew today would be a tough day and I actually felt it already yesterday evening when I was missing my loved ones.

I wanted to walk alone today so I headed off around half an hour earlier than I normally do meaning I left at 5.45. It was very dark and I had to go uphill on some very uneven paths so I was happy that I managed to walk between two people with head torches so I could see where I was going. 

I passed some funny things along the way: 

At least I felt better than him. ;-)

Ever since Sarria phone numbers for taxis are frequently written all over the path. It is tempting at tones but I have walked so much already so I am not stopping now!

After Sarria more and more people are only carrying a daypack and are then having their backpack transported to the next albergue. I will try not to express what I think about them.

Graffiti along the way.

Coffee breaks are crucial. Not only for getting a caffeine fix but also for letting legs rest a little.

A cemetery on the way. Not quite how it looks in Denmark.

Already early on I started receiving messages from friends and family wishing me happy birthday so I shed a few tears along the way. I was very fast and efficient today so I guess walking when emotional is not that bad. ;-)

We wanted to stay in Palas de Rei as it is a slightly bigger place where we hopefully would be able to get anything else than the normal Pilgrim Menu (I'll elaborate on this in another post)

I reached Palas de Rei at 11.15 already (I walked around 25 kms in the fastest pace so far. I also had very small breaks) and the private albergue we had planned to stay at was full already although they had 100 beds (the private albergues you can book whereas that is not an option with the public ones) I walked on and was worried the same thing would happen as in Portomarin where we couldn't get a bed initially and had to wait  three hours to get a bed!

I walked to the public albergue and found it easily since there was a long line of backpacks in front of it. In other words a line. The albergue has 60 beds and by my quick measuring I was around no 40 so I should be able to get a bed. By then it was 11.45 and the albergue didn't open before 13.00. Luckily the sun was out so I took my time wandering around town and figuring out where to eat. That's the good thing about queuing with backpacks. You don't actually have to be there all the time. 

At one o'clock it finally opened and they started stamping and registerating. It took forever and the line hardly moved.  Find it hard to stand after having walked since my feet and hip start aching so it was a nightmare having to wait an additional 50 minutes before I was finally appointed to my bed. 

I forgot taking a picture of the backpack line but here is one of people waiting to get their stamp and bed.

The albergue was €6 and was very central and in general worth the wait.

While waiting I texted Siobhan and Carlo and told them they should stay at the albergue one km before the town as they wouldn't get a bed in Palas de Rei.

A few days earlier we had lost Phil and Norbert but all if a sudden they were walking past me. They had planned to go to the next village and stay thee but when they heard it was my birthday they went back to the albergue one km before town so they could celebrate birthday and walk with us again.

Shortly before dinner time Siobhan came by with a present her and Carlo had bought me along with a card.

A pilgrim key hanger and a bracelet with the Camino shell.

It was such a nice thought and it made me very happy.

The five of us went out for dinner and I had planned I wanted a bottle of Cava. Unfortunate they didn't have that (wtf?!) so instead I ordered a glass of Rioja Reserva. Cava must be in Santiago instead. ;-) 

Thru didn't have that much to order but I opted for the tortilla. A Spanish omelet with potatoes. It was HUGE! 

I couldn't even finish half of it but the skinny Italian finished it when he was five with his pulpo. I hate people who can eat whatever whenever and still be skinny as a stick. ;-)

Curfew at the albergue is 22.00 so the dinner ended when dessert was eaten. I will celebrate some extra when I reach Santiago I am sure.

Thank you for all your lovely messages. They cheered me up on a bad day. :-)

Sarria to Portomarin, 18.08

It was very hard getting up today and maybe the wine consumption of the others also meant that we got up later than usually thus just started walking around 8.30. By the it was clear that it is going to be busy all the way to Santiago since there were so many people on the road.

When we took off it was very clouded and extremely humid and the poor weather made me feel miserable and sweaty. To make it even worse my cheeks (and I am not talking about the ones in my face unfortunately) were extremely sore so walking uphill and downhill was very challenging for me.

Horrible wether walking out of Sarria. It also drizzled a little. I was not a happy camper.

Around noon we stopped for food and then the sun finally appeared making me happy.

What made me even more happy was seeing this sign: 

Less than 100 km to go! :-)

Walking in Galicia has brought us through many small farming villages and today was no exception.

Cow pretending to be a giraffe? 

Hungry cow.

An ostrich?! Have I walked all the way to Africa?

The place we wanted to stop at was full so we carried on to Portomarin even though that is one of the guide book stops so we knew it would be busy and since we started late we might not be se to get a bed. After 23,5 kms (where many of them were downhill. Steep that is. My poor bum!) we reached Portomarin by crossing a bridge.

View from bridge:

Siobhan singing in the bridge:

I wonder if the mayor of Portimarin thought "how can we challenge pilgrims that just walked 20 something kms and welcome them to our town?! Let"s make stairs for them to climb!" D'oh:

By popular demand a picture of yours truly (and Ursula the good woman):

We went into the first albergue and was told there were no beds in town! The next place was 8 kms away and they would probably say the same. We talked about staying outside but that thought made me sad since it's my birthday tomorrow and I simply don't want to wake up to it in a park like a homeless person. It is bad enough that I am far away from my dear ones and will have to celebrate "alone". Due to the above I have also been a little sentimental tonight and actually felt a little homesick. For the first time ever!

We were told we could go to the albergue since they might open s nearby school for the many pilgrims that were missing a bed. That meant we had to stand in line and wait:

After 3 (!!!) hours of waiting they finally let us in and I got a bed. Yay. Then we ventured out to have a look at Portomarin and it is a very nice place:

Then we went and had a pilgrim menu (a 3 course dinner including wine for the price between 8 and 12 euros) This is the first time I had it as it usually comes with bread, rice, pasta or fries. I had a simple salad for starter (lettuce, onion and tomatoes) and salmon and salad for dinner (same salad as starter) I skipped dessert.

A local dance group was entering us while eating: 

That is all for now.

I will now go to bed and wake up a year older.

Fondria to Sarria via Samos, 17.08

In order to get a certificate in Santiago de Compostela saying you have walked the Camino you have to have walked at least 100 kms or have biked 200. Sarria is 111 kms from Santiago thus making it a popular place to begin if you want the Compostela with least effort. Besides that Spain is having their main holiday in August meaning August is I'm generally a busy month with lots of peregrinos on the Camino.

I haven't really experienced that since I have taken off early and I have stayed "between the stages" meaning not followed the suggested routes mentioned  in guide books. So far this has also meant that getting a bed hasn't been a problem besides in El Acebo.

We didn't want to end the day in Sarria since we knew it would be busy there do it instead we wanted to be a village or two behind hoping that would give us better options for avoiding to many crowds and more importantly getting a bed.

When heading off we decided we would stay in Calvor. We always talk about this because then if we for some reason lose each other we know where to catch up with the rest of the group.

Going to Calvor we could either take the shortest route (about 22 kms) or go an alternative route passing a beautiful monastery in Samos which is 8 kms longer. We all agreed we would most definitely do the shortest as anything would be stupid.

Sunrise on the way to Triacastela.

Still in the mountains.

Morning light over Triacastela. Hard to capture but was very beautiful.

And after 9 kms Triacastela was reached. Apparently it means three castles but there isn't even one in the city. Go figure.

We had our morning coffee there and then we went on. It is in Triacastela the road divides into the longer route so we were all talking about making sure to go the right way. The place we stopped for breakfast only had bread so I wanted to quickly wanted to go to the supermarket to grab some food. Siobhan wanted to come with me and the two guys started walking slowly so we could catch them again. The supermarket was closed so we were quickly back on the road. Found the cross road and was very aware of not  going towards Samos. Either we misread the signs or somebody was being "funny" but to make a long story short (I guess that is too late now? ;-)) Siobhan and I was waking towards Samos. We discovered this after around two kms.

We agreed that us fit girls could easily do an additional 8 kms and carried on. The hike was beautiful but very challenging with some steep inclines.

The monastery was gorgeous and so was Samos.

Monastery.

Samos.

Leaving Samos we had planned to go to Calvor to meet the boys but since Sarria was the same distance (on a busy road though) we thought it would be stupid to "go back" since Calvor is around 6 kms before Sarria. So we walked and walked and walked what seemed like forever until we finally reached Sarria. By then it was 15.30 and we had walked around 33 kms. Since it was kinda late we were wondering if we could get a bed since we were now in Sarria that we had tried to avoid all along. The first albergue was full but we were pontes to another one two minutes away and they had beds for is. It was a private one and was €10 but it was so nice and it smelled very fresh and clean. The place was called Albergue Mayor.

Our room. Only four beds. Total luxury.

The Albergue.

After having rated there for half an hour we thought we heard Carlo's laugh but thinking that couldn't be since they where in Calvor. Then a few seconds later we heard Phil's voice and then e were certain it was them. What are the odds that they end up in the same place as us when there are several to albergues to choose from and the originally had planned to stay in another village?! They were quite surprised to see us too and told us they had waited for us for an hour and a half. At a wrong place though so even if we had taking the right turn we probably would have missed them anyways.

After having rested a bit and the boys had watched YouTube clips about squids being eaten while still alive in Korea (wtf?!) we headed out for dinner. Galicia is known for pulpo (squid) so Phil and Carlo were determined to get that. This meant we walked around to several places to find a good pulpo place. Once we finally tracked the place down (as if we don't walk enough during the day!) it turned out it didn't open until 21.00! I love Spain but I am not fond of their siesta and the late dining times. By then it was 18.45 and there was no way we would wait that long. Well, us girls wouldn't. We walked back and finally found a place and had the damn pulpo. ;-)

The others had wine and we had the pleasure of having company of a young South Korean and had the privileged of experiencing Asian eating habits and drinking habits. I won't go into details but let me just say that drowning 4 glasses of red wine in something like 5 (!!!) minutes is not the European way of drinking wine. ;-) Not surprisingly he got tipsy/drunk and almost fell asleep on the table. Anyways, the pulpo was nice but I couldn't really get my head around eating the tentacles. The tasted fine but the texture was weird.

We ended the evening sitting on a square enjoying the warm weather before finally being back at the albergue by 21.30. This I didn't have time to update on the day it took place.

P.s only 111 kms to go! It can be done in four days (meaning I would have walked 320 kms in eleven days and three less than planned) but we will probably take it a little slower enjoy the last kms and do it in five days.

Ambasmestas to Fondria via O'Cebreiro, 16.08

Yesterday I had dinner at a nice restaurant. It was actually my first time if eating out while In the Camino since so much bread, pasta and starch in general is served. I usually go to a tienda (a small supermarket) and buy cheese, chorizo, tuna or something similar. Then I know exactly what I am having. Besides that I munch in nuts along the day and the occasional piece of dark chocolate. When walking 6+ hours day after day you need some extra energy.

After dinner I started having stomach aches and they only got worse during the night which ended in me getting only a few hours of sleep. Besides that I was extremely cold so when I woke up this morning I was not exactly feeling ready for a challenging day where the highest and longest mountain on the Camino had  to be conquered! 

It was such a cold morning and to make things worse my stomach was still acting up. I quickly felt that my energy levels were low and that it would be a day more about getting through than anything else. I walked my own pace and took my time so for most of the day I was on my own. A few times I tried to eat but every time it came back up. :-(

The walk from the albergue to the bottom of O'Cebreiro was up and down for around 7 kms. O'Cebreiro is at around 2200 metres of altitude and it is around 6 kms getting to the top. In other words it was STEEP and I made so many stops along the way because I kept feeling dizzy and lightheaded.

The walk was beautiful though. The first few kilometres were the steepest and was in a forest so it was hard to see how much climbing had been done already.

But then I came out if the forest and the most amazing scenery appeared.

But I was still nowhere near the top and unfortunately I couldn't enjoy the scenery as much as I wanted to because I had to focus on putting one foot in front of the other.

A cloud on the mountain. That is how high the mountain is. I ended up walking in that cloud.

When I was finally at the summit there was a flat section before coming into O'Cebreiro. And all of a sudden this was in front of me:

I had finally made it to Galicia and Castilla Y Leon is now behind me. Santiago de Compostela is situated in the region of Galicia so that means I am getting closer to my destination. :-)

And then I reached O'Cebreiro. It is a small village with the oldest church in the Camino:

Unfortunately it is also very touristy and there were so many busses parked along the road.

It was cold up there as it was cloudy and windy and I was absolutely knackered after the 13 km walk on very challenging sections on an empty stomach. I tried eating some cheese and that helped a little. We had planned to stay at Fondria which meant around 16 kms from the summit. The guide book lead us to believe it was a flat road getting there or at least downhill. That was stretching it a bit and I am glad I could keep the cheese down otherwise I think I would have had to stop earlier on.

On the way I was talking to Sue from Australia about their issues with aboriginals (she is a police officer so she knows what she is talking about) and later on I was talking to Siobhan from Ireland about abortion and euthanasia. That is one of the thing I love about doing this. Talking to people I would never talk to otherwise and get another perspective of things. And you don't know if you are walking next to a student or a CEO and it seems like your job doesn't define you out here like it normally does in society. Me like. :-)

It is clear that Galicia is an agricultural region since I passed so many cows along the way and the smell is definitely landly. ;-)

The final climb of the day which was very steep and not mentioned in the guide books. I think we were all swearing over that since we thought we were done climbing.

We are staying in a very small village called Fondria which we reached at 14.30 after having walked 29 kms. The albergue here is very nice.  It is called Reboleira and is €8 a night.

It even has a living room so one doesn't have to lie in bed all day long.

 

The view from the living room is also not bad at all.

My stomach is a little better and I managed to nap a little when I got the Albergue so I am hoping I will be fine again tomorrow. 

We are only 140 kms from Santiago which means I have walked 160 kms in 6 days!!! By our calculations we will be there by the 22nd of August which is two days earlier than I expected. And the least days are even going to be easy with less kms every day as I have done do far.

Thanks for reading. :-)