Author: Charlie

Found in the common room of our hotel in Pontevedra.

We have talked about, okay complained about, the rain in this blog but we have seen blue skies as well. It stopped raining in early evening and we were able to go out for a walk without raincoats. There were lots of others out walking, too. Somehow that doesn’t show up in these photos.

• Camino walking: Pontevedra to Caldas de Reis, 7.0 miles in 4:06, moving 2:49
• Note on walking versus moving: our app, wikiloc, automatically keeps track of pauses. I walk a little faster than Wynette so when I get 50-100 feet ahead I stop and wait for her. Wikiloc records this as a pause. So the moving is my moving. Wynette is probably moving more than that. The pauses also count coffee stops.
• Elevation: up 68 feet and down 233 feet, a pretty flat day.
• We didn’t do pack transfer today because our destination was an apartment with no one to receive it. But it was fine, only seven miles and pretty flat. And Wynette graciously carried some of the weight I usually carry. And no Japanese liqueurs. And we ate all the granola and fruit for breakfast so didn’t have to carry it.
• We were walking along the trail and we came upon this large tree across the trail with no easy way to get around (see photo). It must have just fallen since this was the central Portuguese Camino with hundreds of pilgrims passing through. We managed to get over it, despite our advanced age. We had gone maybe 200 feet and we heard a truck pull up, looked back and saw two more pilgrims climbing over it. A minute later we heard the chain saw start up. I’m sure they made quick work of it. We saw this same pair of pilgrims several more times during the rest of the walk, at each coffee place we stopped at.
• And one of those coffee places was a real gem, the Oasis Cafe. It was in a private home right along the path. It looked like they had converted, and expanded the garage. Run by a family, we were served by the grandson. We had coffee, of course, and a Spanish tortilla, which was excellent, clearly home made. It was so good we had the raisin cake, also excellent, clearly some grandmother was involved. We saw an older woman and her husband was clearing dishes. Wynette asked the guy about it and he said yes it was his abuelo. Wait a minute, abeulo not abuela? Yes, the old guy clearing dishes made the heavenly tortilla and raisin cake. Never assume.
• We are in a spacious apartment tonight, we each have our own room!
• And we had a really good Easter lunch, especially the salad.
• Some off and on rain but generally a very good day.

• Another rest day. We did pack up our packs and walk the half mile from last night’s hotel to tonight’s hotel. They were not the same because of busy hotels for Semana Santa.
• Yesterday we ate breakfast at a nice little cafe very close to our hotel, our usual fried eggs and toast. Three video screens playing videos from what appeared to be the late 1980s, on some MTV channel. This surprised me since I thought MTV had stopped playing videos. This seemed to be the video equivalent of a Spotify playlist. We enjoyed trying to identify the songs without looking at Shazam on our phones.
• This morning we went back to the same place (same video play) and he recognized us and remembered our order. When I got up to pay he suddenly remembered something and got my glasses off a high shelf. I had left them but didn’t realize it. I’m not used to wearing glasses, only recently needing them, and don’t usually wear them.
• Speaking of playlists, we were in a bar for lunch a few days ago and they were playing all rockabilly, my favorite genre. I think I can say without fear of contradiction that rockabilly is the greatest music ever made. Besides the classics they had some deep rockabilly cuts that even I had never heard. Shazam heard: Party Doll by Buddy Knox, Let’s have a party by Wanda Jackson, Summertime blues bu Eddie Cochran, Bluejean bop by Gene Vincent, Woo Hoo by the 5.6.7.8’s (!), Good golly miss molly by Little Richard, Ubangi stomp by Warren Smith, Rebel rouser by Duane Eddie.
• We had a great lunch at Micazo Ramen: a ramen bowl and an udon bowl. Afterwards the waiter offered us, on the house, a sample of a Japanese plum liqueur called umeshu. He claimed the recipe was 3700 years old. It was good but we didn’t buy a bottle. It wasn’t that good and I’m not lugging a bottle of booze in my backpack.
• Now we are sitting in a lovely common room with big windows looking out on the square. I love to watch the rain and wind while sitting inside in a warm room.
• The rain patterns here are so different from what I am used to. You’ll get a light drizzle and then clear up and you get some sun, then it clouds over and you get a heavy rain, then a light rain, etc, etc, etc. In New Mexico, if it rains for 15 minutes straight it is quite and event.
• Miles walked per Wynette’s watch: 5.76
• Flights of stairs climbed (equivalent): 9, mostly in our pension

• Today and tomorrow will be rest days for us. Wynette has a tiny bug of some sort and the rain continues to come down so we decided to take some time off. We took a taxi to Pontevedra and are just hanging out. It looks like rain for 3-4 more days and then some better weather.
• Today is Good Friday, a big holiday in Spain, and most stores and a lot of cafes are closed. They also closed around 2 yesterday so we had trouble getting stuff for our in-room dinner. We were directed to the “24” store, very minimal, and it closes at midnight, despite the name. We got some canned lentils and heated them up in the microwave. They were quite good.
• Walking today per Wynette’s watch: 1.03 miles. Flights of stairs: 0.
• Miles in taxi: 12 or 13
• Successful cafe manchados ordered: 1

Video of taxi ride (4 seconds): https://photos.app.goo.gl/YmpDiLgss55M25b39

• Camino walking: Vigo to Redondela, 8.0 miles in 4:08, moving 3:04
• Elevation: up 70 feet, down 565 feet, we took a taxi from the hotel about 2 miles and up about 500 feet, which we lost going into Redondela
• Total walking per Wynette’s watch: 10.93 miles
• Flight of stairs equivalent (up) per Wynette’s watch: 17. (Many more than that downhill, but her watch doesn’t give you credit for those.)
• Missed turns where we had to backtrack: 2, we were chatting.
• Cute coffee places: 1. A woman who lived along the Camino converted her house into a coffee shop.
• Fabada Asturianas missed: 1, we have been looking for this and we didn’t notice the chalkboard at the little coffee place noted above, until we’d finished eating something else.
• Steep tunnels: 1, right near the end, as we were going down into Redondela, luckily it had a hand rail, it was quite steep in there.
• We walked along a Portuguese Coastal variant that was also one of the Vias Verdes or greenways (https://viasverdes.com/en/). Spain has been converting disused railroad tracks into greenways. They have well over 100 of them. They are marked with wavy lines filled with green (see photos)
• It rained off and on all day but there was no wind and fairly warm.
  

• No Camino walking today. It was cold, rainy, and windy this morning by the ocean. We had already decided we needed an organization day in Vigo so we took a taxi from A Bousa Vella into Vigo. What a treat to zip through the driving rain in comfort and speed. No wonder we ruined the climate with automobiles.
• Taxi video: https://photos.app.goo.gl/RNhvVJ4ELWTa5ypn6
• This weather is a disappointment for the holiday-oriented businesses along the coast. This is Samana Santa (week before Easter) and usually everything on the coast is fully booked.
• We got our saved bag at the hotel and repacked for the next phase of the trip. We did the laundry and picked up some things we needed.
• Lunch at a working man’s restaurant with very good food. There will be a post on it.
• A friendly hotel clerk gave us some good advice on getting out of Vigo (300,000 people) without the hassle, that is, he told us where to take a taxi to the edge of town. If, he said, we were not purists who had to walk every step. Believe me, we are not.
• We still ended up walking a fair distance and going up and down, Vigo is quite hilly. Full disclosure: we did take one outdoor escalator and some inclined moving ramps in the mall we went to.
• Total miles walked today per Wynette’s watch: 6.08
• Flights of stairs climbed today per Wynette’s watch: 31