Day Six: The Road to Redondela

Tui was interesting.  We saw all our Camino friends at one stage or another, but we were joined in the albergue by hordes of young Spaniards.  Tui is 100 km from Santiago, and to get a certificate of completion, that's the minimum you have to walk.  Apparently, the Camino looks good on your resume, so with 27% unemployment, here we have everybody aged 21 through 30 joining us.

Michelle and I had one roommate, a guy from Cadiz who had driven "1,000 kilometers" that day to start the Camino the next morning.  He had this pronounced lisp which is one of the distinct Andalusian accents.  He was nice, but we didn't stay up to talk because the following day was going to our longest, 32 kilometers (20 miles.)

So, we get up at 5:30 planning to hit the road at six.  I haven't mentioned that Spain and Portugal are in different time zones.  Six AM in Spain looks like Five AM in Portugal, i.e. pitch black.

We head into the quiet city and start scouring the curbs and corners looking for a yellow arrow.  This is going to be interesting.  Michelle's wearing a head lamp and I'm just following making wisecracks.

We found the Camino in the dark, but to be honest, it was poorly marked.  Near the edge of town, we found the Dutch girls looking for the markers in the dark. It wasn't just us.

We were in the countryside as the sun rose.  There was fog in the meadows.  If was beautiful.

We walked like this for two and a half hours until we reached a cafe on the far outskirts of O Porriño.  Lots of pilgrims were sitting there.  I got an indescribable Cafe Con Leche (think caffe latte) and Michelle got a Coke Zero. We also got two orders of tortilla Española (Spanish omelette with potatoes and onions).

The guy at the next table says to us in perfect English "So are you guys the Americans? Didn't there used to be three of you?" We were floored, but struck up a conversation with Bart, an educator at the American School in The Hague.  He's from Belgium and speaks five languages fluently and a few others passably.

We'd never thought of ourselves as the Americans, but then we realized we were and still are the only Americans we've run into on the Camino.  This is a big responsibility.  We won't embarrass you, America.

O Porriño

After almost 19 kilometers, we walked through the center of O Porriño. This early on a Sunday morning, it was pretty deserted.  They were getting ready for some sort of fair.  It looked like a nice place.  Plenty of pilgrims stopped here for the night.

We walked on, eventually starting up another hill, stopping in the little town on Mos.

The church of Santa Eulalia in Mos.

We stopped in a cafe across from the church and had Cokes and sat with Bart again.  The slog continued, this time with Bart in tow.

We got to Redondela and got spots at the municipal albergue.  It's in an ancient granite building in the center of town, beautifully renovated.  That was the good news. The bad news was that it was full of the young Spaniards and others who'd started in Tui.  Apparently, these partyers are referred to not as perregrinos (pilgrims) but turegrinos.  (Tur is Spanish for Tour). Some even had their backpacks picked up and delivered by a service...

We had lunch in a place next to the albergue with Bart.  For the last 20 kilometers, all Michelle could talk about was ice cream.

The first of two...

My uncle Manny's brother, Jose Luis, and his wife Sara joined us at the restaurant along with Julia, who was looking a lot better than the last time we saw her.  They stayed long enough for a coffee and a whole lot of hugs and then left Julia with us.

Michelle took a nap, so Julia and I explored the town.  It was dead. Sunday and some saint's day combined to close most businesses.  We stopped in a cafe with WiFi and I had a gluten free beer.

Heaven.

At seven, my cousin Marilyn arrived with her husband Felipe.  We had some light fare at a cafe when this religious procession came by.

I still don't know what Saint it was!

Marilyn took Julia with her to Moaña and we returned to the Albergue before they locked the doors at ten.

Felipe, Marilyn and the Americans

So we're getting ready to go to bed and right behind the albergue, a concert of traditional Galician music starts.

View from the albergue

For those of you who don't know, Galicia is Celtic Spain.  If you look closely at the picture, you'll see the bagpipers.  There were probably twenty.  It was remarkable. It made me think of my uncle Manny and how much he would have loved it.

Afterwards, I had to tell the young Spaniards to shut up so the rest of us in the bunk room could get some sleep.  The American...