Life's a Stitch

22.3k

 

Apologies for the delay, reception has been challenging, and the formatting has been affected. 

 

Guest blog post by Chuck:

We spent the night in the peace and comfort of the Mosterio on a mountainside as Li has described. We knew that by the evening we should be seaside so pretty good chance that we’d be going downhill, ie gravity would be working for us instead of against us for a change. 

 

Our morning walk took us on a path descending along a stream, aptly named the Route of Stone and Water. The tranquility was a pleasant contrast to the mass exodus of pilgrims when leaving the large cities. 

 

The stream dominated our focus as the fairly quick descent made for waterfall after waterfall after waterfall. There were occasional interludes of still water and the sound moved between a babble and the boisterous rush of the falls. 

 

Along the way were the remains of numerous stone structures and channels. Our surmise of flour mills was soon confirmed when we saw the large grinding stones.

Others were not as obvious. We later discovered them to be sawmills. Most impressive is that they were from 500 years ago!

 

Gravity fooled us again with a steep ascent, but the threat of rain subsides and the patch of blue sky grows in front of us as we make our way back down. The path remained ours alone until we neared a village where we were greeted by a couple of dogs taking their masters for a walk. 

 

Finally a glimpse of the sea and our destination for the day. 

 

Without a doubt, one of the most interesting and beautiful walks on the Camino so far. 

 

 

 

13k

 

What a magical day on the Camino. We left the parade of pilgrims to turn onto the Spiritual Variant of the Camino Portuguese Route. After leaving the hotel in Pontevedra, I saw a familiar person in the distance. “That can’t be Robin, can it?” I asked C. Sure enough we caught up with Robin and Marietjie from South Africa.

We walked three kilometres with them before turning onto our new route. 

 

This one took us up over the mountain and all the way down to the sea. 

 

It was a mushroomer’s paradise. We saw shaggies, puffballs, common field mushrooms with their pink gills and my first hedgehog, plus more that I couldn’t identify as edibles. We didn’t pick any as our suitcase is already scented with the refusing-to-dry porcini, my prized souvenir of this Camino

 

Chuck’s traditional pose in a Camino tunnel. He’s added belting out the first two words of our national anthem because tunnel acoustics are exceptional. “OH CANADA!” Doesn’t he look other worldly?

I’ll post the singing part in the future, when we have better reception.

 

We walked through the ever present eucalyptus forest, some recently harvested leaving us with a trek of aroma therapy. Similar to walking through the mint fields earlier on.

 

We stopped in the first tiny village for a coffee con leche and an “opportuni-pee,” where we met a couple from Denmark, now living in Spain. He is an author who has a series of books about the Camino, she a retired therapist who specialized in critical incident stress debriefing. We asked if he was familiar with Chuck’s cousin, also a travel author. No he didn’t but he knew his brother, Michael, the musician! 

 

Michael passed away too young from cancer. He sang at our eldest daughter’s wedding in 2006. Whenever we walk alongside a river on this Camino, C has sung his song, “By the River.” 

 

Was this meeting a coincidence or Camino magic? Her we are with the Danes. Yes, that’s a baguette in my pack.

 

We passed a house even more narrow than ours, which is 22 feet wide. This one had an exterior width of maybe 9 feet. Considering the thickness of the stone walls, the rooms must be 7 feet wide.

 

 

When we hit the waterfront it was low tide and a stream of commercial clam diggers with rakes, barrels on wheels and other shell fishing tools, headed out to work. There must have been 100 of them.

 

After 13k we took a taxi to the monastery in Armenteira, where we are staying in the convent, and we were supposed to check in by 1:30. Due to a power outage it ended up being 4:00 before we were registered by an energetic English speaking nun in a habit and running shoes. She reminded me of some of my Catholic school teachers, the ones we thought were cool. Our room in the convent:

 

We attended evening vespers: seven greying nuns, a young nun-to-be dressed in jeans,  and an ancient monk sang and prayed. At the end they invited the handful of pilgrims in attendance to come up for a blessing in our own language. It was beautiful, moved me to tears.

 

And now we’re drinking hot tea, safe and dry from the cold rain, in a 1700’s era building with 2.5 foot thick stone walls.

I can’t believe on our last Camino we didn’t have a rest day until after 10 days of walking. This is our second rest day. Perhaps it’s due to the repetitive incline, maybe the heat, rain and humidity. Regardless, it was needed.

 

We took it easy, walking a bit to run errands. Yes, even on the Camino we have errands: C needed a haircut, I searched for an additional phone cable. 

 

The Hotel Comercio, although dated, has been comfortable and the staff outstanding. We had difficulty arranging details for the rest of this pilgrimage as we are going to follow a less travelled route and the front desk staff were successful in accomplishing everything we needed.

 

I was pleased to avoid the hotel on this coming route that was described as “a good place to have an extramarital affair.” That rooms are rented by the 12 hours. It might have been the same motel that somebody surmised was a brothel with red leatherette doors and a red light on the outside indicating the room was in use. Our first night is in a convent, hopefully no red leather there.

 

For lunch at the hotel restaurant we had our favourite Galician soup, Caldo Gallego, and calamari. Meh. We’ve had better on both counts.

 

Pontevedra is home to the pilgrim’s church  built in relatively modern times, 1778.

Tonight we attended the pilgrim’s mass.

 

Tapas was the night’s dinner: chorizo, sheep cheese, rice with a tomato based sauce and fried eggs, then shrimp in oil and garlic, accompanied by a bottle of vino tinto. 

Tomorrow’s plan is the road less travelled, the Camino Portugues Spiritual Variant. 

20.6 K

 

We woke up dark and early, and used our pink kitchen one last time. The cupboards are really pink, not painted. 

It served us well. I made pork chops and pimientos last night, we ate two and used the leftovers for sandwiches for lunch. For brekkie we had bread, cheese and jam along with delicious rich Galician yogurt. C tried the Santiago tart flavour, a traditional pilgrim cake that should have tasted like almonds, but really didn’t.

I packed my umbrella despite reports of no rain, but 99% humidity. I used it. I’m learning. 

 

The route today joined one we walked last time, but not before a significant hill. We learned that there is room for beauty while in pain.

I didn’t remember the significant stretch on Roman roads that included ruts from the wheels of ancient vehicles. Some of these roads and bridges in Spain are 2000 years old and are still in use today. 

 

Given that Galicia shares some of the same rainforest characteristics of British Columbia, we were bound to find mushrooms. Right at the side of the path, passed by hundreds of pilgrims, were these beautiful boletes, a variety of porcini.

 

They are now cleaned, sliced and drying in our hotel room. 

 

We spent a good amount of time talking with two brothers from Puerto Rico. They are not yet retired, but this is this fifth Camino for one of them. We chatted about Puerto Rican food, how popular genetic testing has broadened our knowledge of our Puerto Rican families and current politics that have devastated the island. 

 

Pontevedra was our destination, where we’ll spend a rest day tomorrow. We took the longer alternative route on a trail by a stream through a park rather than alongside the road. 

Our cheap hotel is right out of the 70’s. 

It’s really tired, but clean, just like these pilgrims. Good night.

15.5 K

 

Camino lessons learned today:

 

1. You can pack a lot of incline into a shorter distance.
2. Sometimes you have to make the same mistake over and over to learn your lesson: don’t trust Accuweather.

It was a tough day, initially in the rain, followed by high humidity. It felt like we swam to Redondela, an uphill swim for most of it, followed by a quick steep bit downstream.

 

When we hit the first village there was a heavy police presence. A woman officer was blocking the stairs to the restrooms. They were giving no details. 

 

Nearing the top, I knew I didn’t have enough energy to complete it well. We stopped for our remaining backpack food: cheese, cured ham, an airline packet of pretzels and some trail mix. It was a perfect lunch that fuelled the last push, which ended up being way shorter than expected. 

 

I suppose it would be helpful to have a detailed guidebook. As we planned a different route, our book for this one is at home on the nightstand. We tried to buy one, but crazy enough, it’s not available here. And there’s no Kindle version, so we’re relying on websites, not always accurate.

 

On the way we met a Camino busker. The region of Galicia has strong Celtic influence. She stamped our credencial with a homemade bagpipe stamp.

 

There was one more uphill that we didn’t plan – the fourth floor walk up apartment we booked. It’s nothing to write home about since it’s one of the higher priced rooms we’ve had, although still quite reasonable. Bonus – a washer! When you only have one change of clothes (plus extra socks and undies lest you think we’re really grotty pilgrims) a washer is sooo much better than hand laundry.

 

We are noticing differences from our first Caminos. Is it that we’re a few years older or a hillier route? Unrelated is C’s rotator cuff problem, which after a week felt better than ever. Today it took a downturn, so he’s in the bedroom icing after a dose of Spanish ibuprofono, much stronger than at home.

 

On the Camino, restaurants open at 8:00 p.m. Sometimes there are a couple that cater to pilgrims and offer three course meals throughout the day. At 3:30 we were famished and went to a place that advertised pilgrim’s meals. We’re pretty good with our Spanish, but we’re in Galician territory. We ordered a bottle of wine and were brought so many tapas we couldn’t think about eating any more. We headed to the grocery store with dinner, brekkie and lunch in mind. We found a few interesting items. No longer for me, lol, but this was on the tea shelf:

 

M, I found this. Looking forward to trying it compared to the Chinese and Canadian variations.

 

An interesting Coke combination:

 

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, as my mother would say, tomorrow looks like a tough day. At least we’ll approach it with clean clothes.

 16.1k

 

When we walk such a rural route I can’t shake this preschool song in my ear: I say good morning to the sun, good morning to the hills, good morning to the chickies and the hens….” The ear worm today should have been The Rain in Spain. I am so thankful for my lightweight hiking umbrella that I can attach to my pack so I can still walk with poles.

C with his ground score brolly:

 

 

Our first break today was at a cafe crawling with pilgrims. Tui marks the spot on this route with the minimum distance allowed (100k) for an official Camino Compostela  (certificate). The prospect attracts many pilgrims who have less time. We will enlist our crowd control strategy from last time: try not to follow the stages in the guild book, as most do, and leave later in the morning. The good thing, though, is that at the cafe we ran into both the South African and Latvian couples. So nice to catch up. And our country count went up by two today: Taiwan and Poland.

 

We walked in heavy, misty, drizzly conditions, through a park, forest and some rural residential areas. 

 

Galicia’s horreos granaries are growing in number.

 

Here’s a Roman Bridge with a pilgrim we admired. He was an older gentleman taking it slowly but surely. 

 

We arrived in Porriño to Cass Lolita, a nice old small house centrally located in the old town. The host explained that the Galician Food Festival was in progress. We are always happy to find accommodation right on the Camino. Then find out a festival is on. Then notice the huge sound stage behind the house.

Then hear the fireworks. At midnight. This time earplugs helped tremendously, as well as comfortable mattresses. 

19.1 k

 

Through farms and countryside,

along a brook, a waterfall, over more Roman roads and bridges.

It looked as though the planes were playing aerial tic tac toe.

 

We stopped at a traditional churrascarro for our last lunch in Portugal. I think we’re eating our weekend meal too late, as for the second time, the house specialty (roast pig) was sold out by 2:00 pm. Instead we split what was called a small (read huge) order of ribs, salad and the usual rice and potatoes, this time fries. We spent the same as we would have on a Pilgrim’s meal. So far, this Camino, we are noticing the prices haven’t changed since 2015.

 

Our hostel was about a hour’s walk, through the city of Valenca, around the impressive Fortaleza,

over the tall bridge

and into Tui, Spain. 

 

 

Up the hill, of course, we found our hostel, Ideas Peregrino. It’s kind of a funky artsy place

with shared kitchen, bath, washer and something I’ve never seen before in Spain, a dryer. We picked up something to warm in the microwave for dinner and decided to do laundry. The problem for us were the fact that the laundry had designated hours, the washers here take two hours and Spain is in a different time zone. So by midnight we had wet clothes and no way to dry them. We hung them in the room and went to bed.

 

Notice I said bed, and not to sleep. We were located near the main square and being Saturday night, the Spaniards partied on. And on. And on until 3:30 a.m. when it stopped in an instant, like someone pulled the plug.

 

We got up at 7:15 to dry the clothes and went on our way.

18.9 K

 

The Camino has taught me two things today:

1. Don’t trust Accuweather, there was a reason we dubbed it Inaccuweather on our first Camino in 2015.
2. Don’t label any day the toughest yet, the most challenging, the wettest…because the Camino has more in store for you.  

We looked  at today’s weather and saw 70% cloud cover, but no rain, so we packed off our rain gear with trail transport. It was spitting by the time we hit the bridge. You know how the Inuit was 100 words for snow? I have dozens for rain, I lived in a rainforest for 30 years, after all. 

 

And remember that mountain from a couple of days ago? Turns out it was in our future, with this stage’s elevation gain of 540 meters while inappropriately dressed for the constant mizzle turned to showers. 

 

Cold from the wet, I made a shrug from a silk scarf my daughter brought me from Thailand years ago. Silk is perfect – light in weight, warm, and the rain beaded up on the surface keeping me dryish. Here I am keeping dry in a winemaking shed about a quarter of the way up.

 

Most of the climb was in wet rock through eucalyptus and pine forests:

 

 

The weather cleared as we approached our accommodation, a casa rurale about 1.5k off the Camino. Could this really be it? It has its own church? This property is larger than some of the villages we’ve walked through.

La Quinta Gandra was spectacular. Large rooms, private baths,

impressive commercial kitchen and dining room, but they only serve breakfast. For dinner the cheerful helpful hostess, Isabella, drove us to a nearby restaurant, Bon Retiro, which sounds appropriately like good retirement to me.

 

The restaurant catered to pilgrims with a lengthy reasonable menu. We sat with a couple from South Africa and shared good conversation. We were driven back to the Casa with another couple from Latvia (the country count now stands at 19).

 

Isabella met us in the dining room with a bottle of Port for the six of us. When her shift ended she left an additional bottle just in case.

One glass is all I could handle.

I’m falling behind on my blogging. Lack of wifi, being sick and full days are my excuse. 

 

This recovering pilgrim stayed in bed until nearly 10:00, feeling much better. After noon we decided to explore the town. Ponte de Lima, located on the Lima River,  is Portugals’s oldest city. Their rambla was lined with huge sycamores:

 

It was perfect for my wood lover. Look at the size of the camo patterned trunk.

 

C was hungry so we went for a pilgrim’s meal at a local restaurant, where we could sit outside and admire the river view. 

 

7e each bought us these main courses:

plus soup, bread, a cappuccino, and your choice of beverage, “anything but whiskey.” I had an agua con gaz (sparkling water) and C had a cider. C ate his entire meal plus a good deal of mine. 

 

We returned to our mansion (how often can you say that?) To plan our next five days. We will turn off at the “spiritual variant” of the Portugues Camino, where there is a convent that accepts guests whose goals are consistent with their culture, and are not just pilgrims seeking a place to stay. I sent a request and received a reply in the morning that we were accepted.

 

Back to our accommodation, which we had all to ourselves, here are some pictures of the rooms.

My major complaint that can’t be resolved in buildings this age was the sewer odor, particularly at night. It’s consistent with other older European construction. 

 

Back on the trail tomorrow. I hear it will be a tough one.

 

 

 

 

 

13.8 including 1.8k diversion to a grocery store.

This day was the most challenging yet, at least for me. At 2:30 a.m. it hit. Major GI disturbance plus a fever, which lasted all night long. I was torn – take a cab to the next destination or attempt the walk.

C made sure that we could stay until the later checkout time of noon and was sent back to our “stall” with lemon verbena tea. I went back to bed with some Tylenol, which brought down the fever, and some other appropriate meds.

I thought of the two pieces of advice KC, my SIL, gave us before this Camino. When faced with tough times you can ask yourself what a pilgrim would do and if the going gets really tough everything is solvable by going a bit above budget. At 11:30 I elected to be a brave pilgrim knowing we would be going through several villages where I might be able to call a cab.

One guide book described this as the most beautiful point on this Camino and I couldn’t bear to miss it. C slowed his pace for me. I was so relieved we scheduled a rest day tomorrow in Ponte de Lima. Initially I thought it was too soon to have one after only five days.

It lived up to its reputation.

On the Camino, the sight of mountains in the distance gives you that uh-oh feeling. You squint your eyes looking for the tracing of a vertical trail populated with what looks like ants going upward, really pilgrims in the distance. Looking on our map there is a steep climb in our near future. 

it was a relaxing trek past cornfields, vineyards, olive and walnut groves, the only traffic was the occasional farm tractor and trailer filled with vats of grapes.

And there were mushrooms! If I wasn’t so sick to my stomach and if I knew we had kitchen privileges in the next town, we might have picked some of the puffballs. There was also chicken of the woods, but it was beyond its prime. This is a picture Marcus took yesterday.

The presence of St. James, the namesake of the Camino  de Santiago, appeared regularly.

We arrived in Ponte de Lima at our guesthouse, an old two story stone building about the size of a school with 20 classrooms. A wing has been converted to five guest rooms, but we had it all to ourselves.

Tomorrow is a much needed rest day.