Palas de Rei

We left Portomarin this morning and walked 15.4 miles to Palas de Rei.  Up, up, up a mountain climbing the ridge to Sierra Ligonde.  We had a bite to eat in the small village of Eirexe just over the top.  

Today we had a day of varied terrain, the thing that really bothers us both are the rocks on the path.  They have been killing our feet!  We very rarely have a smooth dirt path the walk on.  The rocks are a blessing and curse here on the Camino.  When it rains they keep the path from eroding and turning to mud; but when it's dry all we can do is curse at the rocks as they hurt the bottom of our feet.

Last year Lee did a fundraiser for a group called Family Matters in San Diego.  For her birthday month (October) she walked 290 miles in 30 days.  We all thought she was SuperWoman for doing that.  This year she topped that!  It's the end of the month and this October she has walked 443 miles!  Her personal best!

Palas de Rei has a population of about 3,600 mostly engaged in the dairy industry and the well known Ulloa cheese.  I doubt if we'll get out much tonight to check out the town, too tired for site seeing.  We are meeting some friends for dinner in the restaurant located right here in our hotel.  Tomorrow we are headed to Arzua...and the forecast is calling for rain from here to Santiago. Great!

 

Portomarin

Today we walked from Sarria to Portomarin, close to 14 miles.  The weather was perfect!  We met several newcomers starting their very first day on the Camino and ran into some old familiar faces too.  Below is a picture of some South Korean's we have seen nearly everyday for the past 10 days.  The gentleman is a PHD in physics and teaches at an alternative energy school.  He is taking several of his students on the Camino to show them the different ways Spain uses alternative energy and to get them away from the traditional classroom and computers for a few weeks.  

Another charming couple we have been running into is Bridget & John, both Germans living in Mallorca.  We said goodbye to them yesterday as they are on a time constraint and need to head back home.  We have also met Remi from Paris, he walked out of his house 77 days ago and also has just 4 days to go.  Then there is a young 20 year old girl from Geneva, Switzerland that has been walking even longer than that! Amazing!  We think we've walked along way and then we meet them. Incredible!  I will try to get pictures of them today.

We have left the Leon Region of Spain and entered Galicia.  There are strong Celtic ties in this region and it is evident by their music which sounds very much like Irish music; bagpipes and all. We have been walking through farm lands with rolling hills and everything is green here. I imagine it looks a lot like the Irish countryside as well.  Below are some pictures from our day.  Check out the snake that crossed our path and the lizard I found sunbathing.  

We head to Palas De Rei in the morning. Only four days to Santiago!

 

Sarria

Choices, choices, choices...once again this morning there was two routes to Sarria from Triacastela. Once again we chose the route over the mountain.  You'd think we'd learn by now, but we really prefer the woodland paths and the beautiful views you have from on top.  The route we chose was a few miles shorter than the other however had a steep climb.  We climbed to the top of Alto Riocabo and crossed the Rio Ouribio today. We walked about 12 miles through mostly farm lands, some forest and through several straggling villages.

We are in Sarria tonight.  We are expecting the Camino to get a whole lot busier starting tomorrow as this town is a major starting point for pilgrims with limited time but anxious to pick up a compostela in Santiago.  Starting from this town a pilgrim can walk the requisite 100 km to the Cathedral in Santiago and receive their certificate/compostela.

We now have only five days left to walk!  I can't believe we have come this far.  I am starting to get a little emotional as I get closer to the finish.  We have met so many wonderful friends along the way, seen so many interesting things, experienced joy and some pain, laughed a lot and even learned some Spanish.  The few paragraphs I write each day only gives you a small sampling of our experience on the Camino and the pictures are just snap shots of our journey.  The Camino is much, much more than that.  There is a saying here "The Camino choses you, you don't chose the Camino".  If you are one of the lucky ones that get to walk it some day you will live and experience it as we have and perhaps know how we are feeling as the end draws near.  We leave tomorrow for Portomarin...over yet another mountain!  We hope you enjoy the pictures from today and the "cow jam" we got ourselves into.

Triacastela (Three castles)

Todays hike was only 12.9 miles, the majority of which was across the crest of the mountain range.  The vistas were beautiful from the top.  We started to drop down off the mountain after walking about 10 miles and into Triacastela our final destination of the day.

Because of yesterday's fiasco, our travel agent moved the remaining of our reservations up a day giving us and extra night in Santiago. Tomorrow we walk to Sarria with only 83 miles to Santiago.

We hope you enjoy our pictures along the route today.

Why take the easy road?

As we left Villafranca del Bierzo this morning we had a choice...to take a walk through the Valcarce Valley (the easy road) which was relively flat but had traffic noise or climb up and over a mountain. The description of the hike up the mountain said we would be rewarded with "stunning views".  So, we choose the mountain route which end up being the hard road.  The stage today represents one of the steepest of the whole pilgrimage.  It took us about 3 hours to climb to the top of Alto Pradela.  The ascent was the steepest and fastest elevation gain we have done.  My legs were burning! Today really tested my fear of heights...and all I could do was a lot of praying and self talk.  At one point I was not able to look out over the horizon as we seemed to be so high up.  In actuality we weren't as high as the other day, it just appeared to be since the drop off the sides was so much steeper.  The decent down was steep through a chestnut orchard and we had to be careful, as they can be like stepping on marbles!  Below is a map of our route and some pictures along the trail.

Once we came off the mountain, we had lunch in the town of Portela.  The pilgrim statue below was out front of the cafe we ate at.

The schedule our travel agent gave us said we were to hike to O'Cebreiro that day, close to 19 miles.  To tell you the truth, I was done walking after we came down off that mountain! By lunch we were only half way there.  I couldn't believe our travel agent would schedule such a strenuous day for us. The road gradually got steeper and steeper. We past through Valcarce, Herrerias and struggled climbing to La Faba.  The sun was going down and Lee's ankle started bothering her.  We were both pretty wiped out by that point and for the first time on this trip called for a taxi.  We only had 3 miles left to climb to O'Cebreiro but it was all up hill and we were beat!  The taxi came and hauled us up to the very to of another mountain range to the small secluded village of O'Cebreiro.  We went into the hotel and they said we didn't have a reservation for that night, we had one for the following night?
What? How could this be? We asked them if they knew where our luggage was, they called the luggage transfer service and they said it was in our hotel in Herrerias at the bottom of the hill! One of the town we walked through about 3 hours earlier! Mucho Problema!  Luckily the hotel at O'Cebreiro had one more room available.  We called our travel agent and explained our predicament to her and she had our luggage transferred to O'Cebreiro where we checked in one day early.  It was either that, or take a cab back to the bottom of the mountain where our luggage was, spend the night where we were supposed to in the first place.  If we did that, it would mean hiking to the top of O'Cebreiro the following day and there was no way in hell we were going to do that again!

It was already dark by the time we got things squared away.  We were sitting in the cafe/bar of the hotel waiting for our luggage to arrive.  There was a couple of Spainish men playing their harmonicas, and Lee decided to pull her mini harmonica out of her pocket and go play along with them.  It was a site to see and hear and everyone was really enjoying themselves!
Below are some pictures from our day.  Tomorrow we head for Triacastela.

I thought we'd never get to Villa Franca del Bierzo!

Yesterday's post was short, partly due to poor internet connection and a larger part to fatigue.  Yesterday's hike was like Heaven and Hell.  It was one of the most beautiful hikes we've had yet on the Camino.  The weather was perfect and the scenery from on top of the mountain was spectacular!  Looking down on all the trees that had their autumn leaves reminded me of a patchwork quilt.

I have a confession to make:  I have a fear of heights, and I worked myself into a frenzy all worried about how I was going to get up and over the mountain without having a panic attack.  As we hiked higher and higher I just kept looking out over the beauty of the landscape and my anxiety slowly went away.  The top was nothing like I had imaged as usual and I had no problem whatsoever being up there.  On the very top is a monument called "Cruz de Ferro" marking this gateway on the Camino. It's a tall weathered pole with a cross on top.  It is customary to leave a token behind at the foot of the cross.  Lee spread some of Peggy's ashes there and also left a San Diego AA token and I left two white rocks, one for each of my daughters and a "believe" token given to me from my friend Sheena for this trip. See pictures below.

We stayed in Molinaseca the following night after coming down off the mountain.  Our hotel room was right next to a river and we could hear it rushing by.  I can say one thing about Spain...they seem to have plenty of water and it isn't even rainy season yet!  We have crossed rivers every day on the Camino and it's very refreshing for us Southern California girls to see as we are experiencing a drought back home.

We left town early this morning, and it as cold for the first hour or so.  There was a blanket of fog rolling over Ponferrada as we approached.  We stopped in the center of town at a cafe right across the street from the Castillo de Los Templarios.  This 12th century Templar castle was amazing to look out and see from the cafe!  We continued on and walked through the villages of Componaraya and Cacabelos.  We walked a long 19 miles today to Villafranca del Bierzo, I thought we'd never get there! We arrived finally right before 6pm and we had dinner reservations for Lee's birthday dinner at 8pm.  A couple we met in Leon from Alberta, Canada (Yvonne & Terry) made reservations to stay in our same hotel just so that they could join us in the celebration.  They are such a sweet couple and we are so glad that got to get to know them this past week.  See pictures below of today's walk.  Tomorrow is our second and last rest day for this trip.  We just did 16 straight days of walking and we really deserve this break!