< Norte Day 14 — Norte Day 16 > < Norte Index >
28 kilometers, 6 hours, passing through Cuerres, Ribadesella, and La Vega.
When the previous day had started and since there appeared to be no restaurants in Pria, we wondered where we might get food that evening. After we five staying in the albergue that night had cleaned up, Marie organized the bits and pieces each of us had for a tapas(bites of this and that) delight of our own. I walked to the nearby pub for a bottle of wine.
We tried to play a Spanish board game called El Peregrino (The Pilgrim). Just imagine the scene: a German man, a French woman, a Lithuanian man, a Korean man, and an American man trying to translate rules in Spanish to English and play a game based on the Camino de Santiago. There may have been some wine involved. Our attempt at the game was loads of fun. Then we ordered food to be delivered. With more wine, of course.
Marie, always the organizer, ordered meals to be delivered from a town three kilometers away. The restaurant was prompt, and the food was decent. So, by the end of the evening, we had full bellies and much laughter in our heads.
A word about Marie: As I had said, she’s French. She had worked as a program director helping handicapped people lead better lives. Her education is in Social Engineering. But she had wanted a change, so she applied for a job with Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) and was accepted. She quit her job, but her deployment date with DWB got pushed out and she found herself with a few weeks of free time. What better to do than hike the Camino del Norte?
For our new day, the weather forecast was spot on to start. The forecast said rain at 8:00 a.m. and sure enough, as we prepared to begin walking, it started coming down. The sky wept until noon. But the walking was easy, only a few small climbs and several beaches to pass by or tread upon along our route.
In the previous day of this report, I mentioned my Camino friend Fernando. Once he had returned home and saw my message, he replied and said he would come to visit me. Fernando made the drive from Nueva to La Isla this afternoon. We sat in the glassed-in porch at an albergue by the beach and reconnected after nearly three years. Fernando did not speak English and my Spanish was not truly worthy of conversation, but, as in 2016, we managed. It was great to see him and catch up with each other. He told me that Hiromi, our mutual Camino friend had hiked the Camino del Norte the previous year and she and a friend had stayed with him in Nueva. He also told me about the Picos de Europa and that I must come to climb them.
Going back a bit, when we got to La Isla and found the municipal albergue, it was closed. Our information said they were open, but, oh, hell no. So, we backtracked to the private hostel on the beach, Marejada. Nice place which normally caters to the surfer crowd in summer. Thankfully, they would bake pizzas or make sandwiches after 7:00 p.m., so we didn’t have to walk across town to the store. Another fine meal with new friends was had.