Day: April 26, 2023

Yoga pilgrims

This is the first group of pilgrims we saw on the Camino this morning. When we see people we often make up elaborate and completely fictional, stories about them. All couples do that, right? Here goes.

This photo shows less than half of the group. They were all women.

Some things to notice: the are all walking together, they all seem similar in age and general look, they all have poles in their packs, most of them have rolled up mats in their packs, their packs were small. They had pilgrim shells on their packs. Clearly this is a guided pilgrim group where you sign up for a Camino tour. They are having their luggage transferred for them. Their common bond is yoga.

We went on speculating and Wynette said if we catch up to them and they are in tree pose we could be sure we nailed it. A little while later we were looking for a bar and I speculated that we might find it full of yoga pilgrims who all wanted special herbal teas and we would not get our cafe con leche. It seems we dodged the bullet though because we went a little off the Camino and found this bar, completely free of tea-drinking yoga pilgrims on a packaged tour.

The bar did have several old guys though, as you would guess.
This Eron coffee brand was new to us but it is excellent.

A poem lovely as a tree

Post by Wynette:

Eucalyptus trees in front of a small farm near Bares

I wrote a while back about how eucalyptus trees were introduced in Galicia in the late 1800s and they have somewhat taken over. 10% of the trees in Spain and 30% of the trees in Galicia are now eucalyptus. They out-compete the native trees and about the only plants you see growing under them is a very common fern.

Now, when I see a different kind of tree, I think “this is what the eucalyptus is replacing.” Here are some beautiful trees we have seen lately:

Trees overlooking the sea at Teixido
We tried to identify this but had no success. (That’s what Charlie is trying to do on his phone.) It seems to have a beard growing down its trunk. This is actually part of a grove of trees. Several trees here. Also in Teixido.
The grove from a distance, probably a dozen or more trees.
This one certainly isn’t native to Spain but it stopped us in our tracks on our way out of Narón this morning. We used Google Lens to identify it. It’s a magnolia tree, native to the American south! It was huge. I imagine the truck had a circumference of 12 to 15 feet.

Grand routes

There is a system of “grand routes” in Europe with names like GR55, GR 34, etc More info here. They all have route markers that are two horizontal bars. In the photo you see blue over white. The GRs overlap with Caminos in many places, as you see here this part of the Camino Ingles is also part of the blue over white GR (I’m too lazy to look up the number) the thing that is interesting is the blue and white arrows on the sidewalk just past the sign. This is, I assume, based on the famous yellow arrows of the Camino. I have seen a lot of GR signs and this is the first one I have seen that uses this arrows thing.

Benches and things

Kind of low and in the weeds
These students have the right idea, just stand on them.
More in my series of of overgrown benches
Not sure what dictators they are worried about
A Camino bench
The town of Fene has a rainbow theme, here, on trash cans, maybe other places.
They made a Camino arrow out of Camino shells
Wynette filling her water bottle at a Camino fountain decorated with a Camino shell

An amazing garden

We were walking along in a small town near Fene and saw this flowering shrub of a beautiful orangey color. We stopped to take a photo and talked to the woman standing outside the fence working on the hedge. We asked her what it was. She wasn’t sure but then her husband came and she told him we had a question. He couldn’t remember but said that we should identify it with a phone app. Wynette started taking a photo through the gate and he said, come on inside the garden and get close, so we did.

Our first view of the garden, side fence
Standing at the front gate
The shrub that drew us in
A closeup for Google Lens to use for identification
More of the garden
Wynette and the master gardener each on their flower identification apps, trying to identify the blue flower
It turns out that “bird of paradise” is the same in Spanish, but in Spanish of course
He was a sweet, cheerful, friendly man. He told us keeping a garden like that is a lot of work. His wife said the same thing. And we believed them.
The variety was amazing

Spanish plumbing

We have stayed in 15 places already and I have noticed several things about the bathrooms. The toilets…

…all seem to be square now. I don’t keep up with bathroom trends in the US, maybe they are all square there also.

The showers: in higher-end places (which for us is the €65 to €80 range) all have rainfall showers above paired with a handheld sprayer which can also be used as a shower head. The control on the left chooses which head and the water volume and the control on the right sets the temperature.

The lower-end places (for us, an incredible €30 last night to €55) just have the spray/shower head.

Liquid soap is in and tiny little soap bars are out. Less than half the places have soap bars. The modern casa rural in Teixido had three liquid dispensers in the shower: shampoo was a blue liquid, body wash was a yellow, and conditioner was white.

Most places have separate shampoo and body wash but who really believes they are different except for the dye? One place had an honest, single shampoo and body wash.

Only one place so far has had a fan in the bathroom. Strange because it is mucho humido here and a fan would help.