Day 22

We saw three people go down on the Camino in two separate incidents today, the first we have seen since we began walking. 

We had gone less than an hour out of Melide when a group of about six Italian ladies passed Sharon, then passed me. Five of them were walking more or less abreast and one was just behind them. The lady in the rear caught her toe on a rock jutting up from the trail. It probably would have been just a stumble, but as she lurched forward she careened into one of the ladies ahead of her and they both went down. I was literally a foot away from her when she stumbled but all I could do was watch. Fortunately neither was injured. The lady who stumbled was aware of what had happened, but the lady she "tackled" never saw it coming. After she hit the ground and looked to see what had happened....well, let's just say that if looks could kill!

The second was a near-fainting spell that happened to a lady from Austria. I had been talking with a Spanish gentleman who was walking with a little girl. We parted company but just up the road I saw him helping the lady get down safely to a resting spot.

We didn't know what had happened, but as we arrived on the scene she spoke English and said she was just tired. The man offered her water but she had a bottle. Sharon offered her some of our trail mix with raisins and she was glad to accept. Perhaps it was low blood sugar. But the lady insisted she was fine, just needed to rest, and urged us not to stay, so we didn't.

Sure enough, not a quarter-mile down the road the Austrian lady caught up with us and we walked together for a while. She was from the south of Austria, near Italy and asked if we had ever been there. I told her I had once trained across Austria en route to Bovec, Slovenia and she was familiar with the area. I didn't mention that I had once seen the Most Boca in Slovenia, as I didn't want to brag and certainly didn't want to imply that Slovenia is prettier or More Boca than Austria.

We had a very nice conversation and she told us she was travelling with a group from Belgium.  She had been pushing herself too hard on the Camino and intended to have lunch and rest at the next stop. When we crossed the river at Ribadiso we sat down for lunch inside the little coffee shop and afterwards discovered that she had been dining outside. When we got to our place of lodging for the night, who should we see sitting out front but the nice lady from Austria! The Camino is a small world!

We had started about 8:15 this morning and it turned out to be one of our longest days. Just outside of Melide we stopped to have our credentials stamped at the little church of Santa Maria. Though it wasn't large or ostentatious, it dated back quite a ways. The doorkeeper who stamped our passport told us that the baptistery font was from the 14th century and the wrought iron works behind it from the 12th. The fresco behind the altar was from the 14th century and had only recently been restored to its original colors. I inquired about the statues on the wall and while he explained who the figures were on either side of Mary and Jesus, the names didn't mean anything to me. I noted that Mary was wearing her crown as "Queen of the Universe" and a diminutive Jesus sits in her lap. It is always astounding to me to think that people were coming in to this church to worship God long before Christopher Colombus was ever born or dreamed of discovering America!

It was overcast most of the day and we crossed a number of rivers. Two of them were over Roman bridges, but the most unique was a makeshift crossing with stones stacked across the crystal clear water. There was a man sitting at the crossing who pointed me towards an area where I could get an unobstructed view of the bridge. While I moved over to take the picture, Sharon kept visiting with him and they compared shirts and jackets. Our jackets, of course, are in Portuguese and proclaim Jesus as the only way. The t-shirts he was selling said Cristo viva em mi, and Sharon discovered that he was a missionary from Spain with the Assemblies of God church. We wished him well as we parted company, as we had not seen many evangelicals on the Camino. 

The other bridge we crossed was over the Rio Iso as we came in to the little town of Ribadiso. A plaque proclaimed it to be the oldest documented bridge in Galicia, serving between Lucas Augusta and Aseconia, as Santiago was formerly known. Fransiscan nuns had operated a hospital at the site for centuries to attend to the needs of pilgrims making their way to Santiago. 

We stopped in Ribadiso for lunch, thinking we were perhaps a mile or two from Arzúa and our hotel. When we left the cafeteria, the sun had come out and the countryside seemed to have been transformed as well. There were more beautiful flowers than I had seen in one short span of time.  My friend Jim will be proud of these pictures:

It was definitely farming country as well, and we saw sheep, cows, hayfields, corn and some chicken houses. A time or two we even passed milking sheds and at one point saw a line of cows being milked. There was an absolutely gorgeous panorama at the top of one hill!

This cow had its head stuck under the fence and was reaching for the furthest sprigs of green grass it could reach, but of course it pulled its head back and looked at me as I prepared to snap its picture.  There is a surprise in this picture that you might miss if you don't study it carefully!

Did you spot the surprise (and no, it's not Sharon!)? Just to the right of where the cow is standing in this picture is a small stream running. About 20-30 feet beyond where the cow was grazing, someone was gazing intently into the water, perhaps waiting for a fish to come by!

Like most of the cats we have seen, this one paid absolutely no attention whatsoever to us. We called to it, made cat noises, the whole works, but it never looked our way. We wonder if the cats in Galicia are deaf! We left it to its fishing and continued our walk.

We always look forward to our first stop of the day, and again this day it was quite a ways to the first stop. The cafe was nearly brand new and had been in operation for just two years. They had some delicious looking pastries!

The day wore on and on and owing to one section being quite steep, I developed a bit of a catch in my hip and Sharon's ankle was bothering her. We thought we would never get to Arzúa and were a little disappointed that the Hotel Suiza where we are staying was on the far side of town, about a kilometer off the main drag. It has not been our favorite place to stay, but it is home for the night and we plan to sleep late tomorrow, perhaps find another lodging in this town for the evening or go one little bit further. Tomorrow will definitely be our day of rest, as our bodies both declare they need one!

As we got back from dinner (and we took a taxi both going AND coming) I told Sharon I wish I had never started this blog. But of course, we are both glad we did, as even now stops and people and views are all running together. Over dinner, I asked Sharon if she remembered when we had seen the Assemblies of God missionary. She looked thoughtful and was trying to remember, when I said, "It was this morning!" It seemed days ago!

The greatest encouragement of the day was hooking up to wifi, updating our Google Maps and discovering the following:

We are only 23-24 miles away from our journey's end! We hope to walk Sunday and Monday and then arrive Tuesday morning in Santiago. We will spend Tuesday afternoon and all day Wednesday there before taking the train Thursday from Santiago to Vigo, Spain, on to Oporto, Portugal and finally to Lisbon. The end of our pilgrimage is finally in sight! What will it be like? What will we have learned? Let us wait and see!