< Norte Day 23 — Norte Day 25 > < Norte Index >
26 kilometers, 6 hours, passing through Vilela, A Ponte de Arante, Villamartín (small & big), Gondán and San Xusto.
Leaving Ribadeo and climbing into the forest lands ahead, I took one last look to the sea. Behind me was the Atlantic, the bay at the mouth of the Ria De Ribadeo o de Eó, and the towns of Ribadeo, Figueroa, and Castropol. No more coastline for this trip. Dropping my head with sadness in my heart, I turned away.
Once again Spain had changed. At one point in the early morning, the trail slightly above a small road, I could see a bus stop where an elderly lady sat waiting for a bus to town. We waved our hellos and she spoke very clearly to me, a cheerful morning greeting or something. Her words were in Galician, which might as well have been in Basque, for I could not understand a word. I smiled and waved again as I walked on.
The climb moved quickly into the rolling hills further inland, with higher peaks to the west and south. I could make out dozens of wind turbines in the distance and kilometer after kilometer of eucalyptus plantations.
Jody, our Camino friend from Australia, hiked the Camino Primitivo, south and east of us. She had taken the Primitivo inland many days earlier. She had said of that experience in a message, “It was into the mysterious mountains . . .” This morning I had to agree. Thick, moist air and platinum clouds filled the air above. If not mysterious, at least it was different. Coincidentally, and not long after this thought, Jody sent me a picture of a distance marker on her route. She trekked along, now inside 100 kilometers to Santiago. I sent a similar picture back to her. The next marker on my path said 187.540 kilometers to go. The markers are very precise in Galicia.
Decisions are easy to make. Hendrik had said there would be a town four kilometers out where we might get breakfast, so I didn’t go to the store for trail food. First village bar closed; second, nothing there; third and fourth, closed. Now hungry, and at twenty kilometers out, we found a great restaurant in a tiny town with a menú del dia. We both had fabada (big bean stew) and chicken with fries and dessert. Dinner would be on the light side tonight.
In Lourenzá, we walked through town to an albergue we had selected for the night from the information we had on hand. As had happened often to us, the place was locked closed for the season. We backtracked to a private one in the newer—newer being a relative term—part of town. The Albergue Savior was another clean, well-run place to stay. The super sweet lady that ran the place checked us in then showed us to the bunk room. Here, we found the Italians we had seen several times before. They always stayed to themselves, and as usual, took over the kitchen. That was fine because we would eat snacky stuff from our packs and bought some wine from the albergue’s stock of albariño.
Backtracking a bit, when I say the Italian men always stayed to themselves, that’s not entirely true. During the stretch before the branch in the Camino to the Primitivo route, a very attractive French woman of about forty was in our midst. And these men, and I’m judging here, these Italian men, were very attentive to her. They fawned over her. They included her—and only ever her—in their evening meals and cooed and chatted her up every time she would show up where they were. She was probably happy to take a different route.
During this light meal, we met Kazumi from Japan. She rode a mountain bike along the Camino del Norte, having started not far inside France and crossing into Spain at Irún. She said she was a freelance yoga instructor, and it sounded like she traveled a lot. I learned a while ago that that probably meant she was a trust fund baby or some such. Well . . . good for her.