Miles: 8.4 miles, 13 to 400 feet, up 673 feet, down 545 feet, 6 hours on the trail including stops for breakfast and, later, cold drinks
Mexican restaurants: 1
Breakfasts eaten: 2 each
Difficult-on-the-knees climbing gates to get over: 3 or 4
Blue albergues: 1
Italian pilgrims met: 2
Another day of beautiful views, this time going right by the ocean looking down 100 feet cliffs to the surf crashing against the rocks.
Our hotel included breakfast this morning but (1) the coffee wasn’t too good, Wynette didn’t even finish hers and (2) it was a minimal pastry and juice-type breakfast. So, we stopped after about 3 miles and had eggs and toast.
When we were checking into our hotel tonight, the woman said she had immigrated from the Dominican Republic with her family when she was 16. She mentioned how “tranquil” Spain was compared to the Dominican Republic. Spain is a very safe country, a stable democracy and has a good economy. We have often thought that young people from Central and South America should consider moving to Spain since there would be no language problem. Spain, like all the first world countries has a low birth rate and needs more people.
I am continually amazed at the physical challenges you guys deal with on the trail. I suppose that is part of the allure of the Camino?
Hi Ella, well most days aren’t too challenging. Just a matter of putting one step in front of the other till we get there. But, yesterday did have some challenging moments. I needed help getting over those stiles (Mom remembered the word for them) and was only able to get down a couple of places on the trail on my bottom. The step off some rocky places was just too high for my knees to handle.
This was a particularly hard day. The stile you saw Wynette standing on took us several minutes to get over. Even harder was a path through the rocks and gorse where we had to remove both backpacks which I took separately. The problem was a step of over two feet down which doesn’t work with bad knees.
Normally the days are pretty easy, only walking 7-9 miles. We really wanted to see the ocean views though.
I think you’ve hit on a good idea for solving the immigration problem.