Yesterday may have been the most perfect vacation day ever. I took a cab to Redondela, and you've seen the cute apartment I stayed in. After throwing my clothes in the washer, I sat in a lawn chair in the sun and read. Once the laundry was dry in the dryer, I spread it out on drying racks in the sun, (European driers never fully dry your clothes), then donned my bathing suit and asked the Senora in charge how to get to the beach. I am finding these mountain-dwelling Spaniards tend to underestimate distances. “Just two kilometers” is always at least 30 minutes. She told me to go down a route between houses towards the sea.
So I dutifully walked this route til it dead -ended, leaving me to walk back uphill again.
Another route looked more promising:
It led me down a very narrow path,
That ended in a set of precarious looking steep stone steps.
But I was on the beach! Which was underwhelming. The strip of sand was covered in dried seaweed, and the water looked murky. So I climbed up to some kind of a national fish agency which had benches in the sun. I just sat there on those benches, drinking in the sun and reading.
Eventually it was time to leave. I googled the route back to the hotel. I walked for a while, enjoying the sun, until my climb of the day before reminded me that my body was tired. I sat by a traffic circle and called a taxi. But I couldn't tell him where I was! There were no street signs. Finally I asked Siri where I was and she kindly sent me a map. The taxi arrived, and it was home for a shower and a nap. Dinner was near the apartment, and I was prepared for another day of climbing the next day.
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| The sunset after my day at the beach. |
The next day I woke up at 7:15, packed up, and hit the Camino. It was still early in the morning and a fine mist laid over the mountains.
This was the hardest, but most beautiful walk so far. The first 2 1/2 miles were uphill. Straight up hill.
The slope leveled out for a bit,
But then it turned uphill with a vengeance.
By mile four, I was at the top of the mountain. It was raining steadily by this time.
Now came the long trek down, which was particularly treacherous because it was very steep and the path had many embedded rocks that were slick with rain.
Whereby, your dear narrator slipped on a granite gutter and lay on her back like a beetle in a pond.
One nice thing about being really slow on the Camino is that all the jackrabbit Pilgrims pass you by early on, and you’re alone to ponder and wonder at the beauty around you. Though that solitude is less pleasant when you’ve fallen beetle-backed.
I stared at the rain and pondered my existence for a moment, then took off my (heavy) pack, rolled on to my good knee (which by now has done yeomen’s service on this trek) and slowly found my vertical. Nothing like a moment of humiliation to keep me grounded.
Today’s trek took me five hours to go five miles, so when I hit civilization at the half-way point, I called it quits and called a taxi.
There are three more stages to my Camino. I won’t know if I can do tomorrow until I wake up and assess my body.
I’ll leave you tonight with some of the sights I photographed today:
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A Pilgrim’s shrine, where travelers leave personal momentous
Another shrine, that was built in 1387, if you believe the sign
A nearby grocery store aisle
A rare selfie of me, at the mountain summit
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