It was supposed to rain today, but it was only overcast when we were breaking our fast. This was the view out the front of the Hotel Suiza as we ate our toast and drank our coffee and fresh-squeezed orange juice.
I'm not exactly sure how to interpret it, but it seems pleasant enough, given the surroundings!
It had rained at some point as there was still water on the cars and streets. We had talked about taking a cab to our next lodging, as it was only 2.5 miles away by Google Maps. And the only reason we were changing rooms instead of staying here for two nights was that although the room rates go up the closer you get to Santiago, in this case the quality had gone down. It was ok, but not worth 15 euros more than the night before!
We finally decided that since we were so close, we would just walk, even though we had our loaded backpacks with us. We had gotten used to sending them on ahead and even though Sharon's weighs in about 14 pounds and mine about 18, they do get heavy! You must call the night before so the transport service knows to stop by and pick them up. We have seen the transport service vans a time or too, and it must be quite an endeavor picking up all the bags in one town and carrying them onward to the next stop. And so far they have always arrived, usually before we do!
It was about 11:15 a.m. when we started walking, and even with our backpacks, we were filled with high hopes and good spirits. The sign leading out of town certainly contributed to that:
Santiago, 36! Why, we could probably walk that in one day if we really, really wanted to! What's that, about 22 miles?
Although we only walked a short distance today, it was packed with adventure. The trail was wonderful, level for the most part and on soft dirt, through thick eucalpytus forests. Occasionally the Camino would break out onto farm land or a hillside, but mostly it was forest.
We were passed by two young Spaniards on bicycles and they were feeling in grand form! They were singing at the top of their lungs and weaving back and forth. Very shortly a third one came by so we burst into a short chorus of "We are the threeeeeee amigos!" They didn't stop to listen.
Soon we heard sounds behind us and it was a car on the camino, a nearly new Audi! We stepped aside and let it pass, and a short time later it returned. We soon found out why, as the trail narrowed and there was no room for it to pass.
There weren't many pilgrims out, either because of the time of day or the weather, but we spoke with a few. Very shortly we heard sounds behind us again and this huge white dog came bounding towards us! He seemed friendly enough, but he didn't really pay any attention to us, just took care to mark the trail a bit.
And before long we heard sounds again and turned around to see a pilgrim coming towards us on horse back.
It was a young Spanish girl riding the horse with a man at the lead. As the trail came up to the paved road, we saw the same Audi that had passed us earlier waiting for the trio. The girl dismounted, said her farewells and gave the horse a kiss. Her ride was over.
I passed on by the horse being careful not to walk behind it and Sharon waited as the man took the girl's place on the horse's back. The horse wasn't happy at all with this change and the man had some difficulty controlling it. He resolved his difficulties using the whip in his hand, but I say if you have to hit a horse in the head with your whip, you're doing it wrong! After much stopping, starting and some backing up, they finally were off and we were glad to see them go, though sorry for the horse's sake.
I assured Sharon that at any minute, we would see a sign advertising our hostel, for which we had reserved a room for the night. I'll save the name of it for after we have checked out! But we never saw a sign.
We came up to a beautiful hillside overlooking a lush crop of corn, and I had to take a picture or two (or three or four). They don't do the scene justice.
If the clouds looked foreboding, it wasn't long before it began to drizzle. We had been walking nearly an hour and should have made it to the trail that would lead to our hostel, which was half a kilometer off the Camino.
No sign of a trail to the right or any indication towards our hostel, but plenty of signs of rain. The drizzle turned to a sprinkle and the sprinkle to a rain and when we crossed an open part of the road that was under construction we were not protected by trees and were blasted by wind. Luckily we had our ponchos and we needed them!
We saw other pilgrims doing the same as we had done, pulling out their ponchos and putting them on. We were beginning to feel sorry for ourselves until we saw someone who was obviously in worse shape than we were in!
At lease we weren't sleeping in a small tent in somebody's open barnyard! All the pilgrims we saw stopped to take this same picture.
At long last we came to a little coffee shop and it was packed with soaked pilgrims. The cafe was hardly much bigger than a shoebox, but we crowded in with the others and I managed to get up to the counter. I asked one of the girls working there if she knew where our hostel was located and she pointed back up the road. It was a ways back. We had walked past it! But she offered to call and see if the innkeeper wouldn't come pick us up so we gratefully accepted her offer.
She hung up and said the innkeeper was busy, but he would be here in about 20 minutes. That would give us enough time to grab a bite, as it was a little past 12:30 and we had been walking, mostly in the rain, for over 90 minutes. Sharon's spirits were damp, to say the least, and when I asked what she wanted to eat, she told me to just pick something. I pointed at something in the glass display case that turned out to be tuna empanada. There is obviously a surfeit of tuna in this country, as we have seen it and eaten it with many, many meals! Two bottles of water, a tuna empanada, a package of Oreos, some mixed nuts and some hazelnuts turned out to be lunch for the day!
After eating, I stepped outside the cafe to see if our innkeeper had arrived yet, but there was no sign of him. Sharon asked me to hold her bag while she visited the loo. I stood under an umbrella, watching a young Dutch couple talk with another young Dutchman wearing a rainbow cap and smoking a handrolled something when a late-model blue Mercedez-Benz van pulled up. It was our innkeeper!
We were glad to pile our wet things in the back of his Mercedez and take the short hop back in his vehicle. His Spanish wasn't exactly Castillian, but it wasn't exactly Galician either. But of course, my Spanish wasn't really Spanish, either, but we still were able to communicate.
When we drove up to the hostel we were delighted that it was new and modern and immaculately appointed. There were wooden floors in the rooms, which were large with a spacious, clean bathroom. All three floors were very nice and well appointed, with a common living room, kitchen and dining room. There was original art on all the walls. The only thing the place lacked was people! It was just the two of us and the innkeeper, a pleasant enough little fellow who said he was 55.
We asked if we might have a cup of coffee and he said he would turn on the machine, but first he had to run an errand and would be right back. We were welcome to relax, enjoy our room, wash our clothes, whatever. He drove off in the Mercedez and we just hoped he hadn't gone to talk to his mother who lived in the house on the hill!
The room had a comfortable double bed, three windows on one side, a built-in cabinet stocked with blankets and an extra pillow (you cannot imagine how nice this is, as we have only had the one double-wide pillow to share for the last few nights!).
We threw all our dirty clothes into the washer and Sharon jumped into bed, pulled a blanket up over her and opened up her Kindle app to continue working on the murder mystery she has been reading. I couldn't help but notice a little door set into the wall a few feet away from our bed. It was a little over three feet tall, with only a keyhole, no handle or any way of opening it from our side. Here's what it looked like:
I had propped my walking stick up beside it without paying it much attention to it, but now it caught my eye. It was right in the corner of the wall, and there were scuff marks along the wall in front of it.
"I wonder what that little door is for," one of us asked, innocently. Sharon glanced over at it and seemed to notice it for the first time.
"Hmm," I mused aloud. "I bet it's so the little guy can open it from the inside and come into our room late at night while we are asleep." As I was coming back from the bathroom, I couldn't help but notice that Sharon had gotten out from under her warm blanket and was placing a chair in front of the door, like so:
"That probably won't do any good," I said helpfully, pointing out the scuff marks along the wall in front of the door. "Looks like somebody has tried to do that before!" I don't remember the rest of our conversation.
The innkeeper was really a pleasant fellow, said he ran an appliance store in Arzúa during the week, came here when he wasn't working. We talked about our hometowns, where we were from, and I pulled out my phone and showed him Arkansas to help him distinguish it from Kansas. Almost everyone we've talked to about our home state has confused it with Kansas, and one gentleman had even observed that we must have much wheat there. No, we don't.
He told us about his children, and said that one of his daughters was studying psychology and she was the one who had painted all of the pictures throughout the hostel. I was particularly drawn to this one, which was located down the hall from our room:
Actually, as the afternoon wore on, more pilgrims began to arrive and it was somewhat reassuring to know we weren't the only ones in the place. There doesn't seem to be any place to eat nearby, but the little coffee shop has a pizza menu and the friendly innkeeper said he could even make us a salad if we would like.
That sounds delicious! One with tuna fish, perhaps.
When we went down at 7 the tiny cafe was nearly full. A French couple and two Italian ladies were speaking a mixture of French, Spanish and some Italian. There is a sporting event of some kind on the television.
It's really a nice place to stay and we would come back again sometime. We are at least 2.5 miles closer to Santiago and we plan to go to O Pedrouzo on Sunday night. From O Pedrouzo we will walk to Villamaior, which is on the Santiago side of the Labacolla Airport that serves the famed city. Then Tuesday morning, we plan to get up and walk in to town and arrive at the cathedral in time for the noon mass. What a trip this has been! And it is not quite over yet!
No comments:
Post a Comment