Day 18

The guidebook we chose for walking the French route of the Camino de Santiago seems to be the most popular. We have John Brierly's abridged version containing mostly maps and locations of albergues. If you use this guide, you'll go from St. Jean to Santiago in 33 stops. The stops range in distance from 18 or so kilometers to over 30. Each stop is pretty much at a major city or hamlet, but you can actually stop anywhere in between that you would like. We've been breaking Brierly's stops into half-stops, so today at Portomarin we're back at a full Brierly stop, and that means it's a small town filled with rooms, lodgings and lots of pilgrims!

Portomarin is a pretty little town of about 2,000 people. It sits on the banks of the Miño  River and probably the most interesting fact about the town is that when the river was flooded in the 1960s by the construction of a new dam, four of the oldest buildings were disassembled, the stones numbered and the buildings were rebuilt on higher ground. It gives the feeling of being in an older town when in reality most everything was built in the 1960s or later and the actual old town lies submerged under the new bridge.

We had left Casa Morgade around 8 a.m. right after breakfast. The two gentlemen and lady from Madrid with whom we had visited the night before came down for breakfast about the same time we did and we enjoyed visiting a bit more.

Just before we left the lady came over to our table and we compared notes for the day ahead of us. We were all headed for Portomarin. She confided that she and her husband were traveling with a friend and she said we might have noticed that he had problems. He had fallen some time back, hit his head and been in a coma for three days. He was doing better now but still recovering, so they had invited him to accompany them on the Camino. She didn't mention it, but it's been said that miracles occur on the Camino. Perhaps they were hoping for one. We bid them farewell, buen camino, and told them our paths might cross again.

As we set out from Morgade, the sun was just coming up and the temperature was in the upper 50s. The morning mists still hung on the hillsides, but they were beginning to burn off. As we set off up the hill we came to a gorgeous view across the way:

It seemed strange to see such an old farmhouse with a television antenna and a car parked outside, but such is life in this part of Spain--the old and the new continually intersect here.

We passed through another "enchanted forest" and we could almost imagine the limbs reacing out to grab us, but we weren't really on our way to Oz so we passed through unhindered.  

Just a bit further along the Camino we came to Cruce Momientos with its 12th century Roman church building. We stepped inside the gate for a look, but the church door was locked. Still, it made a nice picture in the early morning light.

We continued along the path, amazed at the difference it had made choosing to ship our backpacks ahead to Portomarin. We carried only our belly bags with water and a few basic supplies and that was plenty.

Along the way we were joined by a pilgrim from Italy. As we both spoke Spanish as our second language, it took some adjustment before we were able to communicate. We told her where we were from and as many pilgrims have observed, there must be many Spanish speaking people living in our part of the U.S. now for us to speak Spanish so well!

I asked her where she was from and she told me the name of the city in Italy, but it didn't register.  I commented that we were now under 100 kilometers from Santiago and closer to getting our compostella, the official document issued by the Roman Catholic Church that absolves its recipients of all of their sins from birth up until the moment it is issued. I observed that we were getting our compostelas mainly as a souvenir.

She gave me a look and said she had not walked 800 kilometers to receive a souvenir. She had walked all the way from her hometown and was closing in on Santiago.

"Why are you walking the Camino," I asked her.

She looked at me and responded, "No saben." And then she was off, leaving us behind.

What does "no saben" mean, I asked the Spanish teacher accompanying me.

"It means, 'You don't know.'" And that was the end of that conversation!

We stopped a few meters outside of Mercadoiro at a small alberque as we had agreed to stop about 10 for a short pause. We are supposed to get our credentials stamped twice a day now that we are under the 100 km mark, but I managed to forget to have that done. It was a pretty little place and I would have liked to have spent some time right here:

Soon we were moving along again homing in on our target and hoping to make it by mid-day. We had two livestock encounters, though nothing like the previous day. At one point as we were walking up a paved road we looked and here came a herd of sheep AND cows. I always thought the two didn't mix, but they seemed to be getting along fine.

Not too much further along we were walking a portion of the Camino that was lined by stone walls on either side. Suddenly at the curve ahead of us in the narrow trail we noticed a black-and-white cow. And then another and another and another! The whole herd was heading our way and there was nothing to do but step to one side and hope they continued along. We looked behind us and there was a troop of Italian bicyclists who were having a worse time with the cows than we were. They were soon past with no harm done, however.

Finally we rounded a corner in the trail and saw our small town off in the distance--Portomarin! We could hardly wait to get there, but as has been the case, the longest part of the day has been that section when you can see where you are going but you still have to walk the last couple of kilometers!

As we got closer, I couldn't help but be reminded of the town of Rivendale in The Lord of the Rings, and I hoped we would be safe from the Nazgul here. We passed the three young Italian girls we had met earlier, and a guy was helping one of them with her shoe. The sole had pulled loose from the upper portion and had been flapping, or "talking" as the guy observed. With the European equivalent of duct tape he soon had her walking again.

We reached the bridge to town about the same time they did and enjoyed the view as we crossed the lake into Portomarin. The height of the bridge was troubling to Sharon, but the steep staircase at the end of the bridge leading up into town worried both of us!

We managed to skirt around the stairs after crossing the bridge and were soon in the middle of the little town. Sure enough, there stood the tall church. It must have been a daunting task to take it apart stone by stone, numbering each stone as they went so that it could be rebuilt higher up on dry ground.

We soon found directions to the little pension where we were staying and sat out on the patio while the young innkeeper busied himself getting us checked in. Our bags hadn't arrived yet, but they should be in soon. We enjoyed sitting on the patio and soaking up the noon-time sun.

Finally our room was ready, and we discovered it was around the corner and about a block up the street. We hoofed it up there and discovered we had not only a tremendous view of the lake, but again a nice shower with multiple jets. It must be all the rage in Spain!

I journeyed into town to grab a couple of bocadillos for our lunch. I had pork and Sharon had a cheese sandwich, as her tummy had been a bit queasy. We ate in our room, took a short nap, then set out to finish exploring the town.  

The city was teeming with young tourists, and it seemed there were albergues on every corner, in addition to the rather large municipal one. Right next to the municipal albergue we found the city's monument to aguardent. See if you can figure out the meaning of that word from the device that is used to produce it!

Let's see: agua is water, ardente means burning, or fire. So aguardent would be firewater! I believe this exists back in Arkansas as well!

It's a pretty little town, though being built on the side of a hill means everything is either up or down. There were quite a few shops and lots of coffee shops and restaurants, but for some reason the people here just didn't seem as open or friendly as they had been elsewhere along our Camino. Maybe it was just the fact that it was Monday! We enjoyed our visit nonetheless.

Back at our room waiting for dinner time, we found it fascinating to watch the Iberian eagles soaring over the water and town below them. I took several pictures with my Lumix and I hope they turn out well. Here's one:

Finally it was time for dinner and we ate fairly early, just after 7. Sharon had a cheese omlette and I had heard that we just had to try the polpa Gallego--the Galician octopus. I enjoyed mine, but I must confess it did not live up to the grilled squid we had enjoyed two nights earlier in Sarria. You can most likely tell from the photos that it was delicious!

We seemed to have discovered the most comfortable way to do the Camino for us. We asked the young man at our hotel for a recommendation in Ligonde, but he suggested we go just under a kilometer further to Eirexe, where we would find another nice pension with private room and bathroom for just 30 euros. We arranged to have our backpacks shipped tomorrow also, as the cost is just three euros per bag. It saves our backs and speeds up our transit time!

So here's our route for tomorrow:

There's a pretty good climb ahead of us, according to Brierly's book, as we go from about 300 meters in altitude to 720 when we crest the high point. We also will need to walk about 16 kilometers tomorrow, or a little over 10 miles. We have been blessed with good weather for most of the trip and hope that it holds out tomorrow as well.

Why are we doing this?

¡No saben!