Danilo lives on the south side of the Po River. He ferries pilgrims across. Pilgrims can walk to a bridge to cross, but the bridge is several miles out of the way. To do the ferry crossing, you have to call Danilo the day before to set up a ride. So that is what we did. Well, actually Enrico at the Orio Litta hostel called for us. He set it up for 9 am. We didn’t want to be late so allowed plenty of time to walk the 4 kilometers to the boat dock. Got there at 8:30. No problem, we can wait, even though it’s a little cold and windy. Plenty of time to get some extra layers out of our packs. But at 9:15 Danilo still hadn’t come. We called Enrico who started trying to get in touch with Danilo. Then about 9:30 one of Danilo’s friends drove up in a car and said the boat was rotto (broken) but Danilo would be coming. Finally about 10:00 Danilo arrived in his boat. He told us he started out before 9 and discovered his gas can was leaking and he had no gas. That’s why he was an hour late. He took us in his boat to his beautiful house (photo below) 4.5 kilometers down river where we signed his book, got a stamp in our pilgrim passports, and paid him £10 each. He keeps statistics about the people he serves so he asked us our ages. Because of that, we discovered we had same birth year so went on to compare months and days and found he is exactly 3 days younger than me. He was a hoot.
Earlier photo… waiting for the boat:
