A Long Day's Hike

Tuesday, May 29 -- Palas de Rei to Arzua -- 28.9 km / 17.9 m

Well, this was planned to be the longest day of the hike, just shy of 18 miles.  We had  been doing between 12 and 15 miles per day so it was in the ballpark,  but psychologically, it felt longer.  At our meeting on Monday evening we agreed that a few folks would be dropped off by the bus a little into the route to be sure that they could finish.  The rest of us decided to take on the challenge and try it all.

Palas de Rei is a mid-sized town, maybe a few thousand people.  There were not hotels that had enough rooms for our group (9 rooms) so we stayed in a new Pension -- the rooms were nice but it did not offer breakfast nor was there a very nearby cafe.  So we decided to leave at 6:45 am and walk into town because a number of the cafe's opened at 6:30 AM and I had seen one with one of those fabulous Spanish orange juice presses -- fresh OJ at the touch of a button.  We got to the cafe in short order, had our cafe con leche and zumo naranja (OJ) and I had an order of tortilla espanola (kind of an omelette with potatoes, served at room temp), figuring that I'd need the energy for the long day ahead.  And I did, but it sat kind of heavy for the first hour.

Roy and I stepped off together with vigor at about 7:15.  We have a similar stride and so we walk well together.  At the edge of town, we passed the local bakery and the delivery person was filling his little truck with the wonderful Galician breads, and croissants, etc.  The aroma was out of this world.  In a few minutes, we caught up with Pete and Pat Tigchelaar and walked with them for a while.  I capture a phone of Pete standing next to the sign for the village of Casanova -- you draw your own conclusions.  Some afterwards Ken and Sharon Piers and Cynthia Slagter caught up with us so we walked more of less together for a while, talking among ourselves and commenting on the lovely cool (about 55) and foggy/overcast weather conditions we had to hike in.  

Not long after this we met Enzo Pallotta, an Italian pilgrim that I recognized from our day hiking to Sarria via the Samos monastery.  Today he was carrying a pack and he had stopped by a stile in the pueblo of Pallota -- almost the same as his name -- and he asked Roy to take his picture next to the stile.  Very soon, he and Roy struck up a conversation.  Enzo speaks some English but wants to learn so he took any opportunity to practive.  He walked with us continuously for about 90 minutes and asked us to spell works for him if he didn't know them.  Have you ever tried to explain the word "scare-crow?"  Well, Cynthia did and he finally understood and some fun pantomine among us all.  We say him a couple of times later in the day but didn't get the chance for the protracted conversation.

Many peregrinos start their hiking about sunrise, as we did today. so they also all arrive at the first cafe at the same time.  And we did, too.  We stopped the first available place after hiking almost 5 miles in about 2 hours.  We stopped in the very little pueblo of O Coto (really it's just crossroads with 2 cafes and about 3 hours) for cafe con leche and a bathroom break -- you have to buy something to us the "servicios"  Our break was quick, because we know we had a long day ahead and, at 9:30, the fog was lifting so we knew it would get warmer.  

Our continuing walk over the next couple of hours took us through woods and fields in the small city of Melide.  Melide is perhaps best known for the local bars and restaurants and pulperias that serve the regional specialty, pulpo (octopus).  We stopped to see it being prepared in one restaurant but at 11:30 it was a little too early to face that for lunch.  David and Susan Hoekema stopped there, they were behind us, and said that they enjoyed it immensely.  After a stop at the local church to get a sello (stamp) in our pilgrim credentials, we continued on for over 3 more miles until we reached Boente and had lunch there in a little roadside cafe at about 12:30 and, more importantly, took our shoes off for a while to give our feet a rest.  Pete and Pat T joined us so we had a fun time together eating our bocadillos.  

After lunch we encountered the first of many eucalyptus groves.  They have an invigorating aroma that permeates the leaves and the bark.  We journeyed on and met Leslie Matthews who walked the rest of the day with us. The path was mostly through fields and forests until we reached Ribadaiso.  Many pilgrims end their day at this point, but there is only a pilgrim hostel and no hotel so we needed to journey on. I must admit that the sight of earlier arrivals playing in the stream along the camino looked pretty inviting, compared to another 4 km of hiking, especially because the first 2 km was moderately steep up out of the river valley, and in full sun.

The reward for that climb was the arrival in the outskirts of Arzua and a growing realization that we would, in fact, conquer the formidable 18 mile day.   Linda McFadden and Ken and Sharon Piers had passed us earlier in the day so they were in Arzua when we arrived at about 3:30.  We were weary from the last hour of hiking in the full sun, but feeling very good that we had made it through the day.  We arrived in the town square to find other colleagues already there and we poceeded directly to the nearest cafe for lunch -- right on time by Spanish standards.  The bus came from our nearby casa rural to bring some folks back.  The rest of us enjoyed some rest in the shade of the cafe umbrellas and went back to the casa a little later.

After showers and getting settled in, we had our regular evening meeting of devotions, de-briefing the day, and planning the next.  After that, Ricardo, our bus driver, gave us a brief tour through the grounds of the case -- this was, at one time, a working farm -- and into the museum of old farm tools and implements that the owner has collected.  We also explored the beautiful gardens and saw an immense eucalyptus tree in the garden.  It was so large that it took 7 of us holding hands to completely encircle it.

It was now about 8:45 and time to walk down to the restaurant on the property.  Ricardo was teasing us about eating "so early" when we sat down at 9:00.  By the clock it was a little late, but with the sunset after 10 and twilight until almost 11, the environmental cues were a little less jarring for the North Americans.  We had a lovely meal, at a leisurely pace, and enjoyed our walk up the hill under the crescent moon and the stars.  And, it wasn't too hard to get to sleep right away, at least for me, but I'm sure that 18 miles of hiking had something to do with that.