Day: April 21, 2025

Changing caminos today

View from the bus stop in Caldas de Reis. It’s a neat town. I wish we could have spent more time there.

Up to now, we’ve been walking the Camino Portugués de la Costa. That Camino starts in Porto and ends in Santiago. We started in Porto but ended in Caldas de Reis, about two stages early. (Or 4 of our short stages.) This was our plan all along. Today we took a bus into Santiago and then another bus to Lugo.

Lugo is on the Camino Primitivo. (So named because it is the first camino.) Tomorrow we’ll take a bus and then a taxi to Grandas de Salime. We’ll walk from there to Melide. That should take us about 8 walking days. We are starting kind of in the middle of the Primitivo. The first half of the Primitivo is too difficult for us to contemplate. Long distances between towns. Huge elevation changes. But this later part is doable and we are excited to get to experience it.

Our expectations: The Camino Primitivo will feel very different than the Portugués. It will be more rural, through lots of small towns that might no longer have inhabitants if it weren’t for this Camino passing through. We’ll probably see lots of pilgrims but not as many as before. Certainly, there will be more ups and downs, and, of course, we won’t be walking along the ocean. We hope to find lots of fabada beans to eat.

The weather forecast is good! Not a lot of rain. Quite a bit warmer. You’ll probably hear us complaining about getting over-heated again. (Sorry.)

Melide will be the end of our walking. That’s where the Primitivo meets the “main” Camino Frances. We won’t continue on to Santiago from there. (We walked that distance on our first Camino in 2013. ) Instead we will catch a bus to Vigo and spend a week there before heading home to New Mexico. Charlie’s grandnephew Noah is in Spain right now doing a semester abroad. He is going to spend some time with us in Vigo. We are looking forward to that.

View from the bus on the way to Lugo. Galicia is so green, especially after all this rain.

WynChar Diary, April 21

  • Travel day: Caldas de Reis to Lugo. We finished the Camino Portuguese at Caldas. We didn’t want to do the final legs into Santiago since we had done them in 2016. Tomorrow we will start walking on the Camino Primitivo, called that not because it is primitive but because it is considered to be the first Camino.
  • We left our spacious apartment and walked to the bus stop. Going out of our building we let in the Correos pack transfer guy who picked up two bags from people staying in the same building.
  • We had coffee at a pastry shop across the street from the place the bus was going to stop. Wynette ordered a large coffee for me and a regular for her. The waitress converted that into a regular and a small. See photo for the sizes we got.
  • We took the bus to Santiago, 90 minutes. It was late and we missed the 11:00 bus to Lugo so we took the one at 1:45. We had lunch at a cute little Chinese snack bar, very good. The name of the place was literally “Snack Bar”, in English. Then a bus to Lugo.
  • Right now we are blogging at a deli/bar inside a grocery store. It has a small deli selection and it also offers coffee and drinks like a normal bar. We have not seen anything like this before.
  • Miles walked today so far per Wynette’s watch: 4.22. But we may walk around Lugo a bit more.
The Correos guy transferring somebody’s luggage. He had to park way at the end of the street because they were sitting up an outdoor market in the street.
Large and small coffees. They threw in a bunch of pastries.
Waiting for a bus
Back in Santiago once again. We zipped into the train station (right next to the bus station) because they have a better cafe.
View while blogging: Grocery store cafe/bar/deli. You can see the huge grocery store in the back. They call these stores.”hipermercados”.