Stage 31: Portomorin to Palas de Rei (25 km--24 degrees)

Our early start today allowed us to arrive at our destination before the sun reached its peak. The hottest part of each day seems to be around 3:00 and we were already done doing the bedbug check by 12:30.
It felt dreamlike walking early this morning as the path was full of perigrinos by 5.45 many of whom did not become visible until the sun rose. We passed many different types of fences today--some filled us with awe over their workmanship and others with fear over what they promised. The sign warning of the vicious dog actually had their fence wide open and the vicious creature partaking in siesta. It did remind us though of a recent pilgrim dog biting incident that occurred in one of the villages we 
walked through. Most dogs are left to wander and we joke that our day hasn't really 
started until we hear a rooster crow and see a village cat and a dog.

This  Grid is for all the gardeners or flower lovers. I have never seen such large hydrangeas or such variety of colour!

We are interacting or observing many different types of pilgrims now that we are within 100 km. of Santiago. A couple of days ago we met our first family travelling with a baby (toddler). The father carries the little girl on his back and the mom who is 5 months pregnant carries the backpack. This morning we passed our first two-wheel bike camping set-up. They were still sleeping though the sun was long up. We also passed and was passed by a young man carrying a guitar. Later in the day as we passed an outdoor restaurant he was playing and singing while other pilgrims video taped his performance. Finally we ran into a fairly large group all originating from the same village in the Andalucia region in Spain. They seemed to walk in two distinct groups--one group of young children with two adults and one group of four with a young man, Mario, in a wheelchair. One group would call out and the other would answer. Jim pushed Mario for about a kilometre and talked to him and his brother Anthonio. The last 100 km seems like a different Camino.

Stage 30: Sarria to Portomorin (25 km--30 degrees)

We had a hot but relatively quiet night's sleep. The twenty plus school students who checked into our Albergue at 8:00 and woke the baby in the next room had quieted down by 9:00 and the baby had cried herself to sleep.  Distant drumming and undulating waves of muted cheers provided the soundtrack to a deep sleep, so deep that we slept an hour longer than we intended.

We quickly roused ourselves and completed our morning routines with the focus and attention of zombies.  Breakfast, foot care, sunscreen, teeth cleaning, ablutions --all carried out in perfunctory silence. I barely stopped myself from brushing my teeth with Voltarin.

We wended our way through Sarria up to the church and ancient quarter. The streets were littered with straw and adorned with beautiful cloth banners and heraldry.  It soon became apparent that we had slept through the Primera Fiesta Irmandiña de Sarria, a medieval festival celebrating a peasant revolt that occurred in the 1400s.  It looks like we missed a great party!

As we left town it was clear that something had changed--we were not alone.  Hundreds of pilgrims now filled the trail, like the ants that had crossed our path on the meseta, marching in columns and carrying loads several times their body weight [note to self: fact check ant--back pack comparison].  Sarria is the closest city to the 100 km radius of Santiago de Compostela and therefore the minimum distance for a pilgrimage to qualify for holy certification. Most of the additional perigrinos are Spanish and they, now,  far outnumber the rest of us.  The trail is no longer quiet and pensive, but exciting and festive.  The subtext of the conversations, unintelligible to my ears, was "we can do this...we will do this!"  By mid morning we were walking though hay country and saw an old gentleman farmer raking his crop by hand.  We also marked the 100 km point with a group photo.

As we descended to our destination of Portomarin we were impressed by its setting beside the  dammed Rio Miño. In the 1960s the river was dammed to create the Belesar reservoir, putting the old village of Portomarín under water. The most historic buildings of the town were moved block by block and reconstructed in the present site, including the Church of San Juan of Portomarín.  To make sure that the reconstruction of the church was faithful to the original in both appearance and engineering, workers numbered each stone. (The funny thing is it still looks like a kid put it together with Lego!)  Some of the numbers are still visible on the blocks today, as well as some mysterious etchings that date back to the days when the blocks were originally quarried in the Middle Ages.

Stage 29: Triacastelo to Sarria (35 kms -- 35 degrees)

The Longest Trek and the Hottest Day . . . 

The Wayward German Pilgrim, the Barking Dog, and the Small Miracle . . . 

Amazing Samos . . .

Only Mad Dogs, Englishmen, and Canadian Peregrinos Go Out in the Mid-day Sun . . .

So many captions could describe Stage 29, it's impossible to choose one -- let me just start at the beginning ...

Knowing that it would be a scorcher of a day, and intending to avoid the hottest part of the day, your three peregrinos headed out good and early at 5:45 am.  It was dark, but the stars shone, the path was parallel to the road, and our trusty headlamps showed us the way.  Few cars were travelling yet.  We had mapped out the scenic route; yes, a few kms longer than the main route, but more shady and it would take us past the medieval Benedictine Monastery at Samos.  We were looking forward to the trek!  

Our progress was, indeed, smooth until we arrived at the small and sleeping village of San Cristobo, down in the still-dark valley bottom.  The shuttered stone houses were silently crowded along the ancient cobble-stoned main road through town; we quietly wended our way along and crossed the narrow bridge.  A rooster crowed.  Now we were confronted by a Y in the road before us -- were we to go left or right?  We couldn't see any trusty Camino signpost or yellow arrow, which always show us the way.  Suddenly, to our surprise, in the semi-darkness on the branch heading rightward, we spotted our first fellow-peregrino of the day, a middle-aged German woman plodding up the road (we recognized her from our Albergue last night; she certainly had headed out extra early this morning).  So, naturally, we followed in her footsteps and then, with a merry "Buen Camino" greeting to her, we moved ahead of her on the path.  Soon we left the village, walked through some trees, and then up past a farmyard, where a dog began barking loudly.  It was not a friendly sound; he was making it clear that he was a watchdog on duty.  We nervously made our way past him and continued a ways.  Wait -- let me reassure our readers, here, that the dog was securely chained!  Now we began to wonder if we were going in the right direction, so we stopped and consulted our cell phone maps.  No, we were supposed to be following the river!  Therefore, we would have to backtrack to the village, past the barking dog again!  Meanwhile, the German woman had caught up to us and, so, we were able to inform her that she was headed in the wrong direction.  We all trekked back down, and looked again at the Y in the road -- now that the light had improved, we were able to see a very faded yellow arrow directing us leftward!  And so, we all continued on the correct path to Samos.  Though we were delayed by the detour, we realized that it had resulted in saving a lot of time for the German woman!

Our path to Samos, along the river, was shaded by large old trees with wide gnarled trunks, many covered in ivy.  Both sides of the trail were lush and green, dotted with brightly coloured wild flowers.  We felt as if we were walking through the magical woods of "The Lord of the Rings."

We spent a couple of hours in picturesque Samos, having breakfast at a sidewalk cafe, attending Sunday morning mass at the Benedictine monastery, and taking a guided tour of the monastery.  It's a very large, beautiful, and peaceful complex, but today has only eight resident monks, and one novice monk.

Leaving Samos, we followed the yellow arrows but somehow ended up inadvertently taking the longer alternate route to Sarria.  By the time we arrived, our kms for the day added up to 35, making it our longest trekking day ever!  And, it was the hottest day, too, at 35 degrees!  As you can imagine, we were very relieved to reach our Albergue in Sarria.

Stage 28: Linares to Triacastela (23 km -- 25 degrees)

Week of Lasts
We have begun our week of lasts. Each day in the week marks the last day of the week that we will walk together to Santiago so today is the last Saturday. Last night I took a picture of the moon outside my bedroom window. As you can see the moon is visible in broad daylight and it made me realize that I have not seen the sun set since I arrived in Spain. I know that it gets dark because we have watched the sunrise almost every morning. Our shadows are long in the morning and this morning we realized that these shadows represent that we have travelled a 'long' distance in the past several weeks and only have 132 km. left to cover.

Once again the walk today was perfect. Even the early morning breeze was mild enough to have Jim remove his jacket and the bottom of his pants before we left the village. The hills in this region are covered with ulex,(the yellow flowering shrub that is the national flower of Galicia) foxglove and heather.  As the sun rose, the hills were ablaze in colour.
Much of our journey today was pastoral and there were several instances when we had to share the route with cattle. It is fascinating to watch the herds person and the dogs move the cattle. At one point, just as we were entering Triacastela, our end destination for today, there appeared to be as many perigrinos on the road as cattle and this seemed to confuse both sets of travellers!
I am still amazed at the size of some of the tree trunks. I half expect to see fairies and goblins peaking out from the many crevices. Maybe I have been walking too long...

Stage 27: Las Herrerias to Linares (13 km--20 degrees)

The Albergue de Los Herrerias was a clean and restful place to spend the night.  The communal supper was a vegetarian delight and would have been perfect with a little chicken or beef.  When we departed in the morning, we were sent on our way by an Albergue volunteer from Colorado.  It was her last day and then she, too, was beginning her pilgrimage to Santiago.  Today's walk up to O'Cebreiro would be the last challenging segment of the Camino and the village of Los Herrerias capitalizes on this fact by offering a couple of ingenious short cuts.  First, you can rent a horse to carry you up to O'Cebreiro and apparently this is kosher with the Pope and the Camino referees as horses have been around since the this whole pilgrimage thing  began.  Second, you can arrange to rent a bicycle in O'Cebreiro and glide all the way down to Tricastela, 23 km away.  Although bicycles are relatively new (circa 1817), they too are a sanctified form of transportation, mainly because they resemble a horse and because the Italians pilgrims find spandex too uncomfortable to walk in.

We started out with a pack of perigrinos, a few of whom were familiar and many, including a Spanish school group, who were new to us.  In a short while we had all spread out and we were alone with cows and herd dogs.  The trip lived up to everything the guide books promised and we felt like we were hiking to the top of the world.  Betty stayed on the inside track and only opened her eyes once or twice to make sure we were still beside her.

O'Cebreiro is a Gallacian village that is right out of an Asterix cartoon complete with thatched stone houses.  We stopped for second breakfast and ordered the local specialty, pulpi con cachelos (octopus with potatoes).  The waitress was suspicious at first, but once she was convinced that we knew what we were ordering, she went back to the kitchen and yelled at her husband to make a supper entre at 9:00 in the morning.  It was delicioso!  We continued on a few kilometres down the road to Linares, a sleepy town with a country hotel and a church that leaves its bell tower unlocked.

Stage 26: Villafranca to Las Herrerias (24 km--24 degrees)

Three routes led out of Villafranca this morning:  one along the highway all the way, one up a big hill for the first part and then along the highway the rest of the way, and one which avoids the highway completely by going over several hills (the Dragonte route).  We chose the second option, and had a lovely hike to our destination of the day.  Our path immediately started uphill, taking us through trees as well as some open areas.  Soon we were walking along the hilltops/ridge, higher than the power lines and we could see beautiful scenery all around us.  Down in the valley below, we observed other peregrinos following the highway route.  All of a sudden, on the path in front of us, was standing a deer!  We approached quietly and she jumped into the grass to our left; we couldn't see her anymore, but the buck was standing there peering at us (for a moment)!  In a few kilometers, we reached a quiet village located on a hilltop and surrounded by huge, lush vegetable gardens.  We stopped for a coffee and the very hospitable owner served us her delicious homemade chips with garlic mayonnaise and chestnut cake (all main ingredients which they grow themselves).
From there, our path descended and then began to follow the highway.  It's a secondary highway, following the valley bottom, and the traffic was light, so we found it ok.  Nearby, we could see the autoroute, going through tunnels and along highly elevated sections way above us and the villages.  I've tried to give a sense of the height of it in one of the photos.  We were so relieved that we didn't have to walk (or drive) on that!
Our supper was a tasty vegetarian meal, enjoyed communally with other peregrinos from Canada and Italy.

Stage 25 Ponferrada to Villafranca del Bierzo (29 km. -- perfect temp 20 degrees)

We left Ponferrada equiped with headlamps, followed the markers and lighted pathway until we hit the 200 km marker!!! It is hard to believe that we are three quarters of the way to Santiago. The core of Ponferrada seemed tired and run down while the outer areas had beautiful huge homes. There was a noticeable difference between the struggling inner core and the wealthy outer limits. This is different from the other larger centres we have visited which seem to have a fairly vibrant centre.

Everything about today's journey was perfect! The weather pleased everyone, the trail was easy on the feet and there was just enough ups and downs to please Jim and not enough to displease Laurel and I. We walked along rivers, through vineyards, picturesque villages, and felt like we were above the clouds are times. I had the opportunity to buy a baguette from a baker's truck that delivers fresh baked goods to the villages. Trucks drive up and down the street honking their horn to alert the townspeople of their arrival much the same as our ice-cream trucks. We also stopped at an unique coffee shop where Jim enjoyed his second cup and Laurel and I drank fresh watermelon juice-Delicious!

'The fruits of some one's labour and a taste of the stolen'
We are certainly back into wine country however there are many other kinds of fruit grown in families' yards. Below you will see grapes, pears, peaches, cherries, limes, unknown but surely a fruit, passion fruit and I threw in one blooming potato plant for my mom. We also tasted some of this fruit when one of us happened upon cherries close to the path.