Surprisingly, unlike the other posts on the blog, I actually wrote all the Camino posts sometime in March, a couple of weeks after returning. So why wait so long to post them? Well one thing was, I was too lazy to go over 1500 photos and try to find the best ones, secondly I wanted to post in chronological order, so quite a few posts from year(s) before had to be done before. So TLDR, most of the text was written right after returning, when the feelings and memories were most fresh, now (in October) when I updated the posts with photos, I only fixed some grammar mistakes (or made some new) and inserted the photos.
Now (October) it’s more than half a year after we returned from our trip, my world irreversibly turned upside down by now, and I often find myself remembering about the happier times, when the three friends went on an amazing journey both spiritual and physical. It brought us closer together than anyone could imagine, it tested our physical limits and sometimes patience, but in the end it was one of the best experiences of my (our) lives. We still often talk about some peculiar situations that happened to us on the trip with a big smile on our faces. Today, it feels almost like remembering my lovely Luleå.
The question that comes out of this is, why even go on such a journey? Is it really so great walking in bad weather for hours, that one should go and do the pilgrimage? Are there any religious motives behind it? Thinking about it, it’s not that easy to answer. For me, at least at the beginning, it was about the challenge, the ability that I can later say to my grandkids, “When I was young, I walked for 350 km through Portugal and Spain”. However, later I discovered it’s not about the destination, but about the journey. The distance at the end is just a point on paper, but the journey, the memories, the experience is what stays with you forever.
In the beginning, for the first couple of days I was still under the mindset of walking the furthest distance in the shortest amount of time, but at some point on the journey this changed. I started enjoying being in nature, chatting with Jakob and Aljoša and other friends we made on the journey and also about being with my thoughts. It is hard to imagine how calming it is to walk through rural Portugal and Spain, between pastures, past orchards of lemons, oranges and mandarins, over the rivers and through the forests. Being able to disconnect from the digital world, to leave all the worries behind and just do one thing day after day is priceless.
Besides getting to know my friends better, it turned out I learned more about myself. Walking for hours on end, gave me time to think about my life, what I am doing with it, what I am happy about and what I would like to change. The journey gave me new motivation, new goals and ideals to strive for, for when I came home. The trip was truly priceless for me.
In the end each individual has his own goals, desires and expectations of the pilgrimage. I would say that majority of pilgrims don’t go on it because of the religion. But in the end, the journey is about what you make of it. For me, as it turned out, it was about finding myself and spending incredible time with my friends. I am profoundly thankful, that they invited me on this trip, shared their thoughts, food and wine with me. It’s true what they say, you can buy a lot of things but not friendship.
We started the day as you should, with a plate full of pasta, of course. It might sound weird, but we actually noticed we had more energy after eating like this. Guess walking the whole day burns some calories (although not as much as people seem to believe). 🙂
Kitchen area was quite impressive.
Last breakfast before Santiago.
Nothing like pasta …. for breakfast.
I’ve noticed quite a lot of low -fat , no sugar, fitness etc. drinks throughout Spain and Portugal. I’m not sure if they are just so health conscious, or is this the new “hit” with food. Anyway wasn’t complaining, ate more than my share of them.
This was the last stage (or was it?), of our Camino de Portuguese journey. The day was nice and sunny, and we just breezed over the landmarks showing 20, 15, 10, 5 and finally 0 km to the cathedral. Well, that is not exactly true, there is no 0 km sign at the cathedral. The path, especially toward the end was a bit tedious, as the last couple of hours were through the big city. About an hour before the end we saw the cathedral in the distance and in the early afternoon we reached it!
Stopping in a random store and seeing this, just had to take a photo. As we discussed later, much, much later, Aljoša thinks he and Jakob actually ate part of pigs head in the dinner on the first night.
Mr. Goose on a parking near Albergue.
Blast from the past.
We actually saw a couple of posters with similar theme all across the Portugal and Spain.
One of the last stops, about 2 hours away.
Jakob pointing toward the cathedral. We were still about an hour away, (I didn’t saw anything)
It is hard to describe, how we felt! It actually is somewhat of an achievement what we did, in total the distance we hiked was 260 km, and we did it in 11 days, through sun, rain, over the hills and rivers, the experience was truly magical. I’m probably going to make another post about the psychological aspect of the journey – pilgrimage.
We did it, 240 km in 11 days. Looking back at it, it was really amazing, I’m truly grateful for Jakob and Aljoša, to invite me with them, to spend two of my best weeks with them, for all the pains, secrets, blisters we shared. I’m truly honored and greatfull to have such a good friends in my life.
The cathedral was truly amazing, enormous, sadly the front was being renovated, so our final photo was a bit screwed, but it didn’t matter in the end, the important thing for us was that we did it. The only thing left was to go to the official Camino office, where we got our final stamp and certificates of the taken journey. After paying about 10 € for two pieces of paper, we were proud owners of the official certificate, written in Latin, with our Latin names.
last stamp.
We were quite good at collecting them. It’s like pokemon, you gotta catch them all.
Official certificate
Official certificate
Posing infront of the cathedral.
We hanged out a bit more in front of the cathedral, after a while we came across some other pill grams, that we knew from the journey before. The only thing left now was find a place to sleep for the night, strangely there were no official albergues in the Santiago, but we found a really nice hostel, that was more or less used only by the pilgrims. It was even better than albergue and the cost was only 10 €.
Each bed had its own light, usb (and regular) charger and a curtain to cover it. It actually felt really snug in it.
The only thing left now, was to have an official last dinner, to celebrate our journey. In the evening we met up with two of the girls we befriended during the journey and went into a restaurant in the city centre, which after a lot of googling I determined is the best place to have paella in.
Cathedral during the night
Inside the cathedral, sadly it’s renovated, but you could still go and visit all of it. It also has free entrance.
Saint Jakob’s coffin.
We felt a bit out of place, as the restaurant was moderately fancy, and we were all wearing sports clothes, since we didn’t have anything else, but the waiters didn’t care, I guess they were used to pilgrims coming to eat there. Oh yea, one more thing I forgot to mention, if you are not familiar with Spain, Spaniards have weird habits of eating really late, so most restaurants open after 8 or 9 pm.
Jakob and Aljoša.
Damn, dressed so smart!
The traditional food of Galicia is octopus. We tried it for the appetizer and I must say, it was truly amazing. It was served with baked potatoes and garlic. Really a must-try. The main dish was paella, not really traditional for Galicia, but more around the Valencia, but as it is one of my favorite dishes, I managed to persuade all the others to have it. To be honest, it wasn’t that hard, a big plate of rice, after eating so much pasta sounded great! 🙂 Sadly, it was just ok, nothing truly amazing. One of the reasons might be, that they made it in one pan for 5 people, so the rice didn’t cook enough / properly. For dessert, we decided that we need to go back to traditional food and what can be more traditional than Tarta de Santiago?! Again, we weren’t sorry, it was really excellent, or maybe we were in dire need of sugar in any case. All in all the price for all together was much steeper, than what we got used to, about 25 €/person, but hey it was last dinner. (Now that I’m writing this, I’m sorry we didn’t try to take a photo posing as last dinner).
Some locan wine, to go with.
Traditional octopus, it was really amazing and I’m not saying this just because I was so hungry.
in a blink of an eye, it was all gone.
Infamous sea fruit paella, one of my favorite dishes in the world.
Yea, I think Aljoša, Jakob and I could eat whole of it alone.
The traditional Santiago Cake
I was almost sorry I didn’t order the cake as well, it looked and smelled amazing.
This was our last day that we were all together, Aljoša sadly had to leave next day, as he had baby on the way, while Jakob and I could afford to stay for couple more days. We decided that since we were here already, we will try to reach the Fisterra. This is regarded as an extension of the Camino de Santiago, the last leg, where you walk to the ocean. It is about 90 km from Santiago, and we decided that we want to do it in 2 days.
Last group photo before I went to bed. Because of course, what did Jakob do on the night, before walking 60 km? Well I don’t know, but I can tell you what he did not do, sleep!
We started the day with a nice breakfast in the historical center of Pontevedra. I wanted to try churros for quite some time and finally got the chance to do so. Hm, what can I say about them? They were very good, as all fatty and sweet food is :). I was wondering what it was, but after trying it, I’m sure it’s something my grandma calls “štraube”, and usually makes them around Mardi Gras (pustni torek), although to be fair, they do look a bit better than my grandma’s but in the end it’s just fried dough. So while we were sitting in the coffee place and dunking churros into the hot chocolate it started to rain, again, so another day of walking in the rain ahead of us. The path on this stage was nice, it was mostly out of the urban area.
Morning selfie
Mmmm
Churros and hot chocolate. Really go well in the morning, although not something I would recommend doing every morning.
Supper good, warms you up in the cool morning.
Interesting statue
Interesting fountain with drinking water.
Another interesting sculpture
We haven’t forgotten about you.
Walking in the rain
Around noon, we walked through some small village, and like in a cartoon, amazing smell of roasted pork, flew around the corner. It was like in cartoons, when smell actually calls people inside, haha. Aljoša is still joking about it today (October). After smelling it, we couldn’t help but follow the smell back 100 m and enter the restaurant, that looked like the likeliest candidate of being the source of the smell. I’m mentioning this, because this was probably the best price/performance of any restaurant that I have been in past 10 years if no more. For merely 10 € you got the following:
Hot soup with vegetables
Roasted pork ribs with baked potatoes
Dessert
1l of wine (yes, each one got a bottle of whine, haha)
The restaurant is called As Eiras, if you are in the vicinity, by all means go try it out.
The best meal of the trip.
You know, how they say the world looks better with a full belly? In our case it actually was true, the weather cleared, and we reached our next destination in Caldas de Reis early afternoon. There is no official albuerge there, but a private one, for the same price (8€ in Spain) was waiting for us. The town is known for its hot springs, but I think everything was closed at that time of the year.
Rain stopped in the afternoon.
Time to dry the shoes. Next time I need to remember, not to do it inside a room.
A frountain with spring water in front of the albergue
Despite being private, it only costs 8 € per nigth, as with the official ones. Although it was not as nice as the official ones in Spain.
Thermal water (it was actually warm) from hotsprings.
The town had several stores, so we were able to raid the necessary supplies, including some super cheap, but good (ish) wine. Before we started preparing dinner Jakob tried his best to persuade anyone, who would listen to him to go swim with him to the hots pings – basically it looked like random fountain outside, in the end surprisingly he didn’t persuade anyone but managed to annoy everyone, so he actually went alone. While Jakob was swimming in the rain I did other stupid extreme and went for a run, well at least I didn’t try to persuade anyone to follow me.
After good lunch it’s only natural that even better dinner follows. Well, I can’t say about the quality, but I can definitely testify about the quantity. This became the day, know as the day, the three of us, ate 1kg of pasta in one sitting. I’m not sure, if we should be proud of this or not, but damn haha, it really gives you energy.
Wine less than 1 € in glass bottle. I don’t understand how this is possible, probably the flask is more expensive than tha.
Well, if you are hungry…
… really, really hungry …
… you got to eat.
3 sauces
couldn’t eat so much plain pasta, had to put some tomato sauce onto it
… we actually did it! 1 kg of pasta between the three of us. Although to be honest, I think Jakob did 0.5kg and me and Aljoša the rest.
Next morning we were flying toward Padron, the last stop before Santiago. We barely made one short stop in the middle, to eat a snack on this 19 km stage. This leg of the journey was one of the best, most of the path was going through the forest and fields, if it wasn’t raining again, it would have been perfect. The albergue in the town was in an old monastery beside the church and it was again really nicely maintained. It must have been renovated not so long ago, the interior was mostly wooden and there were plenty of heaters provided so it was nice and warm.
Mandatory selfie in the morning.
We started the day with the girls, but soon split and went our own tempo.
Red shrubs
Red shrubs, not sure what plant they were. It looked quite cool in the winter.
Not sure what surprised me so much in this photo, just find it funny.
So, how does one spend whole day of walking?
You talk a lot, but once every so often a bit of change is necessary.
I managed to read (actually read) the last two Witcher books on my kindle and listened to first book of Stormlight Archives. Especially audiobooks make it much easier to read, and I liked the story a lot.
Couldn’t go without the rain
Walking way in front. I find it great that there were 3 of us. We could take turns in talking to each other in pairs or all together. If we were just two, it might have gotten boring soon, but as it was we always find interesting topics to talk about.
34 km left
Oh another waypoint, wait what?
Taking a snack break in the middle of a bridge.
Albergue, from the outside it looks horrible, but on the inside it was really great and new.
As usually it was mostly empty, so we had our pick of beds, where we wanted to sleep.
All in all I have to say that albergues in Spain are really superb. Especially if you account that they only cost 8 € a night, but more on this later.
Next morning Jakob and I went through the old city again, as I didn’t saw it yet. It was truly magnificent, haven’t seen fortress on so many levels before. After about an hour of walking on the high wall and through some tunnels and underpass we were on the other side, the only thing separating us from Spain was a long bridge over the river. Soon after we were able to say ¡Hola Espagne!
Eating breakfast before leaving. As usually, we were the last to leave.
Bought some weird apples (at least for me, the weird part was, how big they were).
We are still laughing about this lemon today (October). He carried it for 5 days at least, and not only were there thousands of lemons all over the place
… it was half rotten.
Old town.
not sure what I was trying to achieve here.
Load up!
River separating Portugal and Spain.
It took us 5 days to reach Spain, about 125 km were behind us and about 140 ahead of us. The first city on Spanish side was Tui, we didn’t spend much time there but continued walking. We were pretty lucky with the weather so far, it has been more or less clear sky, well until now. The weather forecast for today was some scattered storms, luckily it wasn’t as bad as we were afraid. It only rained on us enough, so we unpacked all our rain coats and waterproof gear and then it stopped after about 10 minutes. Still, we were happy when we reached our destination, O Pporino, it was relatively easy day, just 20 km.
Welcome to Spain!
Half selfie, as Aljoša was ahead of us, since he already saw the old city.
Some nice murals in spain.
120 km to go
An interesting statue.
Eating some Spanish pastries in the middle of the forest. Mmmm.
Pilgrims art.
Preparing for rain.
Haha, Jakob looks so funny with that hump from his backpack.
Ready for rain.
Walking toward the rain.
This was an optional stop, which at the beginning we weren’t planning to make, but since the weather wasn’t the best and the next stop Redondela, was additional 15 km away, we decided there was no point in hurrying and stopped here, and wow, we weren’t sorry.
We were back to CET timezone, which meant it was getting dark one hour earlier.
The albergue in O Pporino was amazing, it must have been quite new, no more than 10 years old, had actual floor heating! The downside was, that it had no kitchen utensils. Supposedly people didn’t clean them enough and people started to get sick, so there was some law, that forbade albergues from having them, supposedly for whole Galicia – which is basically the whole north-western part of Spain. Luckily in a couple of days, this turned out not to be true. Though we were quite sad about it, and since we knew that Spain was more expensive than Portugal, I was already carrying couple kgs of pasta.
Albergue from the outside.
Arbergues in Spain were 3€ more expensive, but man, were they nice. This one had floor heating, and couldn’t have been older than 5 years.
Next day was nothing truly remarkable, the weather was so-so, so we had to walk a bit in the rain, nothing too bad though. We reached our next destination Redondela in early afternoon. What was exciting about it was that the albergue was in an old defence tower in the city centre. We were quite excited to sleep in it, although to be fair, when we actually saw it, it wasn’t as poetic as it sounded.
Mandatory selfie in the morning.
If everything was nicely set for pilgrims in Portugal, it was nothing compared to Spain, here it was truly amazing.
Sign for alerting drivers of pilgrims
100 km to go
Don’t remember what store was selling, but you could get the stamp inside.
Pit stop on a bus stop. Don’t know how, but I remember we were discussing how much milk a cow produces and how long it can do so. It ended up, that Aljoša had to call Ajda (his wife) to settle the dispute. The numbers are amazing, or scary, depending how you look at it.
If it isn’t a…
…bunny?
Interesting poster
The albergue was without kitchen utensils again, so we decided to try to buy a pot or at least pan in the local supermarket. As it turned out, it was mission impossible. As it seems in Spain they only sell kitchen utensils in some specialized stores, and since it was Saturday afternoon when we went on this mission they were all closed, as opposed to the supermarkets that are open until 9 or 10 pm. I must say, I was really annoyed but it, much more than Aljoša and Jakob, maybe it was that kg of pasta that I was carrying for 35 km already.
Since it was still early afternoon, and the sky cleared up, I again went for a run on a nearby hill with nice views. In the evening we sat down the table and played some games – yes, Jakob actually brought Settlers of the Catan board game with him, not the whole box, but just playing pieces. We were laughing at him about it at the beginning, but I must admit, it felt pretty awesome to play the game, in the following days we actually managed to though the game to some other pilgrims.
The tower – well, not really sure if this can be called tower.
Views from a hill above the city were really great. It was worth running up again.
Playing board games in the evening. Also LoL, I’m in my jacket, with a winter hat on me, while Aljoša is besides me in short sleeves.
By this time, we were already quite friendly with some other people, primarily women, that were hiking approximately the same tempo as us. While during the day each group walked separately, we were hanging out in the afternoons / evenings. It was really fun.
Jakob slicing some salami. It was quite fun, and way too much wine was drank this evening.
The next day was nothing exceptional either, the path lead us through some villages, near the coast. It rained for most of the day, so that took all the joy from the hike that day. When we reached Pontevedra in about 20 km. The albergue was again very nice, with floor heating, but what was even better, it had kitchen utensils! I don’t remember, when was the last time I was so happy to eat pasta – plain pasta without a sauce that is. Note:I have (or rather had) something of begrudge against it (all kinds of pasta), since in my childhood, we ate it literary every other day... We spend the evening playing the board games again and talking with our friends, it was a nice end to a mediocre day. Also, Aljoša bought a couple of slices of the expensive Iberrian prosciutto in Redondela and today was the day we tried it!
Mandatory selfie of the day.
I think this was used as an outside store house. They were all over the place.
Iconic photo, I think I saw photo of this before in Slovenia, when I was reading what the hell Santiago de Compostela pillgramage even is.
Jakob pretending to play video games.
Starting to rain, time to change into something …
… less comfortable
Luckily it never really rained hard, and it often stopped.
Visiting random bar on the way. It was like in the movies, when we entered everyone looked at us strangely. We were the only non-locals there. After ordering a glass of wine, they seemed to accept us.
A whole store with snacks for pilgrams.
All the important stops on the way.
Iberian prosciutto. This thing on the picture costs like 20€.
Plain pasta, finally! Was carrying it with myself since Ponte de Lima.
I finally managed to win, and not only once but twice.
In hte evening it was time to dry everything. Luckily the Albergue was nice and warm. I really didn’t know Spain even has heating, let alone floor heating.
We arrived to Porto in the late evening and were in our hostel in around 11PM. To ease into the hiking culture, we decided to make a ho(s)tel reservation for the first night, with a private room for the three of us.
Last checkup on my gear in the hostel, on the morning of first stage.
Next day (Sunday), we got up at 9, went to the main cathedral in Porto, where we got our pilgrim’s credentials. With the credentials you get the “ability” to sleep in special hostels called Albergues, that are open only for the pilgrims and are very cheap 6€ in Portugal and 8€ in Spain, that is at least for the state run ones. Of course, you can go into the private ones that give you more amenities but are much more expensive. The problem is, however, as the February is the least touristy month of the year – it’s supposed to be the rainiest month in Portugal/Spain of the year, most of the privately owned Albergues are closed, so the only choice are the state ones.
Last photo, before walking to the start point.
After getting our credentials, the journey started, we were at km 0.
0 km, 240 km to go.
In general the way is well-marked with the yellow arrows, and blue seashells – emblem of the pilgrimage., despite it, it can be a bit confusing in some places, so not long after starting we got lost a bit but with today’s phones it was not too hard to find our way back on track. Ah, one more thing I should mention, on the last day, we found out a great app for the pilgrims, that shows you the different paths you can take, information about albergues and such – Kamino Ninja.
Aljoša told us, we actually worked (our department at JSI) on a program that helped put together mosaics on this building.
Interesting building desings in Porto. Not quite sure, how safe it is at the top.
Getting lost right from the star.
There are 3 ways to reach Santiago from Porto, Costal, spiritual and central path – because of the month we were travelling we took the central path, as it is the most popular, so basically the only one where even the state Albergues are open (more or less). Although from the information we read the coastal one might be the most interesting/beautiful.
Crossroads for coastal and central path
Crossroads for coastal and central path
Crossroads for coastal and central path
On the first day we walked for about 26km, so when we arrived at the monastery in Vairao, it was already dark. We were lucky, as we found the woman, who was taking care of the Albergue – in this case monastery, already preparing to go home. As it turned out, we were the only ones sleeping there for that night. It was an interesting experience all in all. The monastery was not heated, the walls were thick at least 2 m, so it was cold and moist inside. It was actually warmer outside, so we let the window open during the night, but I was really really happy I had my warm sleeping bag with me.
Sun already went down, when we arrived.
It was freezing cold.
So how to Albergues even work? This mainly applies to the state ones, although the private ones do not differ much. You can only stay in them for 1 night, you get a stamp in your pilgrims credentials and then you have to move on. They are basically a stripped version of ho(s)tels, normally with bare beds, so you have to have sleeping bag with you, and the majority of them have kitchenet with kitchen utensils (however, this does not apply to the first couple of them in Spain, as there are some laws that prohibit them from having kitchens utensils in hostels – something about people not cleaning after themselves and then getting sick). During the summer, in the most popular months they get full quickly, so people usually get up in the middle of the night, so they can arrive at the next albergue before 14.00, when they usually open. It is impossible to make a reservation in advance so if it’s full you are basically left with not much choice but to continue until the next town (which can be 10s of km away) or go into a private one – if they still have some room. Luckily in our case we were at most 10 people, usually even less. And despite having to sleep with total strangers, it doesn’t feel that weird or bad, you are all there with the same reason – pilgrimage, so it’s easy to talk to others, meet new people and you don’t feel like someone is going to murder or rob you in the middle of the night .
Street performers, doing a show during a red light.
First stop on the first day. At the beginning, we, (especially Jakob) had a lot of food from home.
Some homemade ham(?) and cheese.
There was also a fountain with drinkable water where we stopped.
If we got a bit worried / scared at first, we kind of got used to these kind of greetings later on.
First day, the majority of path lead us through the city, or suburbs. We rarely saw some open fields. And for some reason, all the roads were made of granite blocks, which fun at the beginning was quite tiring toward the end of the day.
Doing a pilgrimage is a bit like being a Pokémon master, you have to catch stamps, at least 1, later even 2 per day, to get a diploma at the end. Usually they are found in stores, bars but from time to time, we found one in the open, by the road. This was our first stamp.
First stamp, the ones before were actually already printed and mark the start point.
Aljoša preparing breakfast on the second day
After surviving our first freezing night we continued to Barcelos. The path took us over some picturesque bridges and villages, but the vast majority was done on the roads through some urban areas. After about 28h we arrived to Barcelos, where it was dark again. Due to some miscommunication, or maybe because we were tired, who knows, we decided to just find the first Albergue we could and sleep there – as it turned out this was a privately owned on. It cost 10€ / night and I can’t really say it was much better than the state owned ones. Here we also met with another pilgrim, Nina, from Germany, with whom we basically synchronized our walking stages almost until Santiago, but more on this later. Since it was late, we went out for a quick bite and then quickly fallen asleep. Waking the whole day really tires you and the next day was supposed to be a hard one.
Finally going through a short forest
Another day, another dog.
Door in the middle of nowhere
Old brige
Ruins of mill
Walking during the second day, took place away from the paved roads.
We later found quite a few of this, random houses provided drinking water and some local fruits for pilgrams, for free.
A stop at a really really small, old school store.
Taking a close up …
… of a rock?
Stop in a bar, for a quick afternoon snack. I found out, that carrying a variety of nuts, is the most efficient calories/weight food I could bring with me, although after a couple of days, I got bored by them and switched.
In the evening we had dinner for pilgrims, it was surprisingly good and cheap.
We also got a stamp.
Jakob doing his best to persuade us (and Nina), to play some games after walking the whole day. Surprisingly, there was no interest.
The path on the third day was a bit more convoluted thorough side roads and paths, so it was nice to walk, as opposed to walking the whole day on the main road. What I really liked about it was how the natives were used to the pilgrims and everyone you saw greeted you with “Bon Camino”. Some even left some fruit / water in their yards for the pilgrims and there were plenty of orange, tangerine and lemon trees along the road, full of ripe fruit, just asking for the taking. During the first days, we must have eaten kilos of oranges and tangerines.
Mandatory daily selfie
Despite path being of religious origins, you don’t see much signs of religion, except churches in every village and hills.
Did not expect to see that.
Having backpacks packed so tightly with everything needed for hiking, it was sometimes hard to find space for food and as we later found out, we could not count on being able to buy new food supplies each day. Well at least designers of this backpack thought of everything and installed nice external baguette holder. 🙂
Graphic road sign (bottom right)
From time to time, we found drinking water fountains, which we took advantage of. It would not be possible to carry enough water for whole day with us.
Reconfiguring watter bottles
190 km left.
mandatory horse pet.
another dog.
Tangerines were growing basically everywhere.
Mandarines
We continued walking for the better part of the day, until we reached Vitorino dos Piaes, where the next albergue was supposed to be. We must have read the information wrongly, as the town only had privately owned albergue, which was closed on that day. So with terror, at 5pm, we realized we need to make it to the next town – Ponte de Lima, about 15 km further and over a hill. This was by far the hardest day we did, for the last 2 hours we were walking in the dark, luckily we had some flashlights with us. We barely reached the albergue, again, just before it closed, and I must say my legs really really hurt after the whole day of walking, I can’t imagine how Aljoša and Jakob must have felt, not to brag- but I was by far in the best shape of the three of us. In total, we were on our legs for about 13 hours and did about 36 km.
… well hello there, wuf, wuf!
Third day, we were walking quite a bit outside the urban areas, through fields and forests.
stone bridge
The first days were quite warm, I actually got a bit sunburned over my neck. It was nice, to cool our feet in the river. This was still before, we realized how much we have to walk yet.
Another guard.
Stand full of cookies, you took a package and left 1€, – quite cheap. Though I have to admire them, no-one was there to check if you paid. I’ve heard stories that in Japan, they have whole markets in the countryside running on that mentalities.
wuf, wuf
Why does this tree have number on it?
because it is cork oak! How cool, I’ve never seen it in real life before!
Realizing how far we have to go, and to top it off, we had to go over a hill, through the forest, so it was darker even sooner.
Stopping after crossing the hill. Don’t need to say, our spirits were not high at this point.
Last rays of light.
Statue of pilgrams.
Checking out, how much further we have to go, to reach the albergue and hoping, if it’s still open by the time we reach it.
Had to run (literary) to the store 3 km away, to buy some pasta, since we had exactly nothing to eat. Barely made it back in time, before they closed.
Pasta
It was much better than the monastery the first night. Nice, cosy and warm.
The hardest part of the Camino was behind us – or so we thought.