You may have heard on the news that there was a big power outage here yesterday. Spain and Portugal and even parts of France. The area where Charlie and I are was without power for almost 24 hours. That included virtually no cell phone service (no cell data) or wifi. So, we didn’t do any blogging last night. I wrote up some notes on my phone so will copy them here.
NOTES FROM YESTERDAY, APRIL 28:
Charlie and I both agreed that today was the most boring walking day on the trip so far. 90% of it was along a small paved road with no shoulder. Very little traffic but enough that we couldn’t let down our guard. We did walk through a couple of tiny sweet villages and lots of farm country (wheat?). A few cows. A couple of horses. A cat. No places to stop for food or coffee or bathroom. It could have been worse. E.g., urban industrial. We’ve been lucky to be able to avoid that on this Camino, so we are spoiled.
The boredom turned to intrigue and disruption of our firmly established routine when we arrived at our place for tonight, a really nice tourist apartment (Apartamentos de San Roman), and our proprietor, Alberto, told us immediately “the electricity is out all over Spain”. I thought “surely he is exaggerating.”
We are lucky in that Alberto has a generator and turns it on and off so we have electricity on and off. But internet isn’t working. Luckily we can get some in and out phone service when we walk down the road to the local tavern. Their business is hopping. Lots of pilgrims.
Later Alberto told us he heard that electricity is also out in Portugal and parts of France. As I write this we still don’t know what is causing the outage. You may know before us via the international news. I’m writing this just on my phone, no internet right now. Will transfer it to the blog when we get service back.
We hear banks, airports, other transportation are in disarray. Alberto said his credit card machine isn’t working and asked if we could pay cash. We did have enough cash but that would have left us nearly cashless for the next few days. (We are in a very rural area with no banks.) He understood and graciously took our credit card number and will charge it when he’s able to.
He told us that tomorrow is very up and down walking but the prettiest day of walking on this part of the Primitivo. So, we are hopeful for a nice walking day tomorrow.
Internet withdrawal is real! I never heard if there was an explanation of how it happened.
Great that some people have generators. I wondered if power outages are common? Maybe not that magnitude.
I do I think this is one of the bigger power outages ever. Maybe I’ll do some research about that. It amazes me how one glitch somewhere can wipe out such a huge area.