Author: Wynette

We have heard that energy is very expensive here in Spain. People are careful to turn off lights and they are frugal with indoor heating. Charlie and I knew that we were coming when the weather would still be cold but all we really thought about was how we’d feel hiking in the cold weather and decided we had enough to keep warm and dry while hiking. Turned out we barely did. I threw in a light-weight fleece hat just a few minutes before we headed for the airport. I had packed two buffs and had some misguided idea they would keep my head and ears warm. I’m so glad I threw in that hat. I’ve worn it nearly constantly. But, basically, we haven’t been too uncomfortable hiking in the cold. It’s the hotels and hostels and pensions and albergues and B&Bs that are the problem. And restaurants and bars to some extent.

One strange thing was that on our first night on the Camino, in Bercianos del Camino, there was a large radiator in the room blasting out heat and we couldn’t figure out how to turn it off. We were way too warm that night. The next morning the owner proudly asked us if we were warm enough. I smiled and told him “yes, thank you” and held back saying “way too warm!”. Now I know why he was so proud of providing a warm room. Just about everywhere else we’ve stayed has been cold. Some better than others and some just barely tolerable. After we checked into our Airbnb here in A Coruña and our landlady showed us around I asked her “hay califacción?” She showed us two electric space heaters (the kind that look like little radiators). So, the first thing we did the next morning was shop for something warm to wear in the apartment. Our landlady told us about Decathlon, an inexpensive chain that sells sports clothes. We found some warm but not-too-heavy fleece shirts that work nicely and we’ll be able to take them with us back to the Camino for the cold hotels. Charlie also bought some big thick fleecy socks at a China store that he can wear around indoors.

PS. We’ve blogged about the China stores in previous years. They are all over Spain. There is one just down our street named, in Spanish, “Store of Gifts China”. They are crammed with stuff, just about anything you can imagine. Most is low quality and quite cheap. But sometimes you can find just what you need. And they always seem to be open even when all the other stores are closed during the long mid-day break.

We mentioned earlier that we have not had a lot of fears about covid on this trip and that we have decided to trust the vaccines. I wanted to add it’s a lot more than that. Back home, even up to shortly before we left, I was reluctant to go anywhere without a mask and only would dine in restaurants if they had an outdoor area. That was difficult in our cold Albuquerque winters but luckily a few had patio heaters. (Thank you Holly for indulging me on that!)

We also stopped feeling so fearful because Spain has a high vaccination rate and, like the US, is in a low point with respect to number of covid cases. A lot of people got Omicron so we figure that there’s probably a lot of immunity out there. Also we took a plane trip to California in January at the height of Omicron. Four or five days after our plane flight there, I had a mild sore throat and felt very tired. I took a home covid test and it was negative and luckily no one I was around got sick. But I was kind of convinced that I had a very mild case and/or reaction to an exposure either on the flight or in wait in Phoenix Airport. Somehow surviving that trip made us feel a lot more confident.

This might all be crazy thinking. I’ve heard stories about over-confident people getting extremely sick or dying from covid.

It certainly would be a drag to get covid here, even a mild case, because of needing to quarantine. But one amazing thing is that Galicia, the Spanish region that we are in, will pay for all medical care for anyone who gets covid including tourists. Galicia is trying to get their tourist industry going again and this is part of it.

One more thing I wanted to write about: In the landing outside our Airbnb apartment (above photo), there is some hand sanitizer and a bin for shoes. We hadn’t noticed the shoe bin but this morning, our landlady, Margarita, pointed it out, not to ask us to use it but to tell us how at the beginning of the pandemic she and everyone thought it was important to sanitize our hands and not to track covid into our houses. She said that now they know it is transmitted through the air and not (or rarely) through surfaces. So now she doesn’t ask people to take off their shoes.

We are taking a week off from the Camino! A few days ago the forecast was for day after day of unrelenting cold, cloudy, rainy weather. In a moment of weakness, we started looking at the forecast for Southern Spain (Málaga). It was about 10 degrees warmer there but still rainy. And a 9 hour train ride. We’ve always wanted to see A Coruña in northwest Spain on the Atlantic coast. Its highs were 5 degrees warmer than where we were on the Camino and its lows were 15 degrees warmer. And it was a 2.5 hour bus ride away. Hmmmm. We decided to head for A Coruña, hoping that in a week or so, weather on the Camino won’t be quite so uncomfortable. We reserved an Airbnb for a week in the historic district of A Coruña and caught the bus here yesterday morning (Monday). We spent yesterday getting settled into our charming B&B, going grocery shopping, and exploring the city a bit. Today we had a breakfast that couldn’t be beat in our kitchen, then went shopping for some warm fuzzies to wear around in our rather chilly, but still charming, Airbnb. And then had some yummy tapas for lunch.

Right now, the weather forecast is looking quite a bit better on the Camino than it was looking a few days ago. Weather here in this part of Spain changes so quickly and we’ve noticed that forecasts even for the same day end up being incorrect.

We are thinking we’ll probably return to where we left off (Villafranca del Bierzo) and start walking from there again in a week or so. But, who knows. We’ve even considered walking a different camino: the Camino Inglés which starts in A Coruña and ends in Santiago. Or, we might go back and walk some of the Ruta Cantábrica which we walked in 2019. Or maybe we’ll end up in Málaga!!

We woke up this morning to sunshine! It was a beautiful day and we even took our coats off around mid-morning. So lucky to have this good day. Cacabelos was shining in the sun when we headed out. What a charming town. Wish we could have stayed there longer. The walk was beautiful through hills covered with vineyards. This is the El Bierzo region famous for its wine we are told – – perhaps you have heard of the El Bierzo wine? We went through a small village with many derelict houses but very charming. Then we came to vibrant Villafranca del Bierzo where we are staying tonight in the Hotel Posada Plaza Mayor. Every town has a Plaza Mayor which means “Main Plaza”. So we are right on the main square in the thick of things. The weather was so nice, we were able to walk around and explore the town.

We decided to skip walking a section because of weather and logistics. This was the beautiful section across a mountain range between Astorga and Ponferrada in which we would pass the Cruz de Ferro – – the highest point on the Camino – – about a mile high. The weather forecast for the places in the foothills of this mountain range was for rain and near-freezing weather. We couldn’t get a good forecast for the mountain towns (they are too small) but we expected it might be snowing. In any case, we didn’t like the idea of walking through that area on wet gray days. Some of it treacherous downhill even in good weather (we remember it well from previous caminos – – very challenging).

One thing I’ve always loved about doing a Camino is that you don’t let the weather stop you. At home, if it’s raining or windy or snowing, I seldom carry through with doing my usually-daily walk. But on the Camino, if it’s rainy or windy or snowy, we just put on our best protective clothing and head out. Well, that’s been true for us up till this Camino. We couldn’t face that track through the mountains in this weather. There turned out to be great bus service from Astorga to Ponferrada and we made the trip across the mountains in 70 minutes in a warm comfortable bus instead of walking 5 or 6 days in cold rainy weather.

From Ponferrada we took a taxi part way out of town and then walked into the wonderful town of Cacabelos. (Don’t you just love that name?) In the rain. We were so cold we just checked into our sweet little hotel and then found lunch and then went back to the hotel and hunkered down trying to get warm.

Well, I keep going on and on about the food. I hope I’m not being too boring. This post is mainly about what a great bargain it is. I don’t think I’m exaggerating too much to say it is about half the cost of food in the US, at least in the smaller cities and towns. This morning, here in Astorga, we found a bar/cafe/restaurant for breakfast that had the best coffee we’ve had so far. It was more expensive than usual: 1.30 euros. (1 euro right now $1.10.) So that makes the coffee roughly $1.50. In the states a coffee this good would be about $4.00, I think. This place actually advertised that they served “English breakfast” (as well as the typical coffee and a roll European breakfast) so we ordered that. We weren’t sure what it would include. Turned out to be two fried eggs, LOTS of bacon and sausage, bread, a generous glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice, and a coffee, all for 4.90 euros. Keep in mind any price I quote any time includes tax and tip. (Well, they don’t expect to the tipped here in Spain. Sometimes people leave a little extra change if they get some extra change after paying.)

This morning, when Charlie paid for our English breakfasts, he left a 2 euro tip just because it seemed so ridiculously inexpensive. He walked away and I saw the server look at the money he left on the counter and point it out to the other server/cook. They both looked over in our direction. I felt like we had done something wrong based on how they looked at us. I guess people might think that we assume they are needy. Waiters and waitresses in Spain get paid better than they do in the US and don’t depend on tips.

Yesterday we stopped at a bar/cafe and had fried eggs, toast, coffee and they also threw in some Spanish tortilla (omelette) and more bread and the total cost for BOTH of us was 7 euros. I don’t understand how they can make any money at these prices.

We are loving the Spanish “homemade” food. It’s hard not to eat too much of it and we end up eating a lot of meat and bread. Some great salads and some vegetables, too, but not as many veges as we’d like. We are staying an extra day in Astorga, a vibrant city on the Camino. We’d bought fruit, nuts, oats for a muesli breakfast tomorrow and there was way too much so we decided to have it for lunch today as well, despite all the good restaurants here in Astorga. We grabbed a pre-packaged salad and a tomato to add to the lunch. How’s that for a menu? Muesli and salad and fruit!

These strawberries are amazing. They were only 1.49 euros for 500 kilos (more than a pound) and are huge and very sweet. They come from the south of Spain.

We chose to come in early March for two reasons:

(1) To beat the rush. We expect the Camino to get crowded with pilgrims, perhaps as early as April. This is because of the pent-up demand of people not being able to come because of covid the past two years. Also this is a holy year on the Camino. The definition of a holy year is a year that St. James’ (Santiago’s) birthday falls on a Sunday. Actually, last year was the “real” holy year but, as Charlie says, it’s up to the pope to determine what is a holy year and he made this year a holy year since last year was pretty much a bust because of covid. The number of pilgrims goes way up in holy years. (Double or more.)

(2) The other reason we chose to go early was because we decided we’d like to get home before holy week, the week leading up to Easter. It’s even harder to find places to stay and eat that week. (We found that out the hard way in 2019.)

Now we are finding out the downside of coming so early.

(1) It’s been quite cold. Every morning we wake up to freezing temperatures. Actually it was something like 34 this morning, the warmest morning we’ve had. But it was also the grayest/drizzliest day. Even in the afternoon, it’s so cold and breezy in the shady tunnel-like streets of the little towns that we have very little inclination to stroll around and explore.

(2) We’re meeting very few other pilgrims. There’s been only one that we actually had a (brief) conversation with so far. He was from France. We met some bicyclists this afternoon but we were all freezing and rushing to get indoors and out of the drizzle and wind. Most of the places we’ve stayed had few other guests and as far as we could tell, no other pilgrims.

(3) Because of the scarcity of pilgrims, many place aren’t even open. We’ve been amazed to call for a reservation to places that looked like a wonderful place to stay to find they are closed. We are starting to dread hearing the word “cerrado” (closed) as much as we used to dread hearing the word “completo” (full). It’s not just the hotels that are closed but many bars and restaurants.

We are in the small town (population a little over 1000) of Hospital de Órbigo. It is one of my favorite places on the Camino. There is a long beautiful bridge leading into the town. I copied this out of wikipedia: “In 1434, the Leonese knight Suero de Quiñones held a tournament in which he or one of his companions challenged all men of equal rank who wished to cross the bridge here to a jousting tournament, Suero holding this bridge in the name of unrequited love. By 1434 the skill of jousting was not a standard part of military training but the challenge was taken seriously. Since 1434 was a Jacobean Holy Year, the traffic upon the Road of St James was considerable. The tournament lasted from July 11 until 9 August and Don Suero claimed to have broken 300 lances by the end.”

The bridge does bring up images of knights and romance.

We loved our private room experience in an albergue last night, mainly because of the nice interaction with the hospitaleros, but one problem is that there was no heat in our room and it suuuure was hard to get out of bed this morning. Close to freezing outside and dark and gray and drizzly. We had booked another private room in an Albergue tonight here in Hospital so we were nervous but, luckily, this room is heated and also it’s charming and sunny (even with gray skies outside). Well, it could be warmer but we are huddled next to the heater sitting at a table blogging (Wynette) and reading our news feeds (Charlie). Not too bad.

We walked 10.3 miles today. It was quite cold and drizzly and breezy (talk about wind chill) . We sure were glad to get here. Not exactly fun walking even though we passed through 2 charming towns and saw lots of storks. We had to walk 6 miles before we got to our first coffee stop. Whew, it was a relief to find them open. EVERYTHING else in that town was closed. Very few bars, etc. open here in Hospital either. But we did find one open bar/restaurant and had an excellent lunch. Charlie suggested while we were eating that, so far, we’ve been having better food on this Camino than ever and I think he’s right. I guess possibly it helps that we look at our phone for places that get the best Google reviews and choose one of those places. But we didn’t have many choices for lunch in Hospital today.

We’ve been eating a late lunch (around 3:00) and not eating dinner. They give you so much to eat we wouldn’t have room for dinner. The things we chose from today’s pilgrims menu (10 euros) : Charlie: trout soup, ham with red peppers, cheese cake. Wynette: mixed salad, garbanzo bean/shrimp soup, cheese cake. We share everything actually. Everything was incredible. Especially the two soups. We couldn’t believe how good they were. I can’t imagine how they manage to make them so flavorful. The woman who served us was also the cook. (I asked her if she was the cook and she said yes.) We found the same with the incredible lunch we had yesterday in a little bar in Villar de Mazarife. Both women were young. Man these Spanish women know how to cook. They proudly tell us things are “casera”, or “homemade” and there’s no question that that is true.

This is where we are staying tonight.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/MZnYuKUTnowuCf5D7

We walked 9 miles today to get here. I’m still working on toughening up my feet so was very happy to arrive. Last night we called the place we had chosen to stay (Tío Pepe’s) and they said they weren’t accepting any guests until March 15. So we called this place. They aren’t accepting pilgrims in the dorm (multi-bed) rooms but are accepting guests in the private rooms – – which is what we wanted anyway. We were thrilled to get a spot here. We stayed here 8 years ago. It wasn’t our first choice for this year because we couldn’t remember for sure if they provided sheets and towels – – and we did NOT bring those this year. But turns out they do provide them in the private rooms and we are very happy to be here.

The people who run the albergue are volunteers from Barcelona but they are here a lot and we remember them from when we were here 8 years ago. Very friendly people and the husband claims that he remembers us. That is so hard to believe. We just found some photos of us with them 8 years ago so maybe….

She told us that starting April 1, when they will officially open, all their private rooms (eight doubles, I think) are fully booked until October 30. Incredible. Tonight we are the only guests here.

They’ve been closed the past two years because of covid. She told us horror stories of what they’ve been through. She said the community here (Villar de Mazarife) has only about 450 residents but many many people died. The 58 year old man next door got sick on a Monday and died on Wednesday. In the hospital without his family. They are so grateful for “la vacuna” (vaccine) and are looking forward to a normal year.

This afternoon/evening, we are hanging out in the big dining room where, in normal times, they cook a big vegetarian paella for the pilgrims every night. There’s a warm fire.