Kiwi Roaming

We planned another shorter day for our second day of walking, leaving our wee hotel in Matasinhos and walking 15.5km to Vila Chā. This was also our only night staying in an Albergue.

Accommodation – there are different types of accommodation on this walk. Albergues are hostels and can be either public or private. The public ones can cost as little as €10 per night and have big dorm room setups. Some are in old monasteries or municipal halls, private ones can be in refactored buildings, old houses and occasionally are purpose built. Occasionally Albergues have private rooms but most are dorms – single sex and mixed. Then there are a wide range of options with private rooms, guest houses, hotels and rooms in peoples houses.

Atlantic sea fog – heading out of Matasinhos we went to the information place for a stamp in our credentials book (our accommodation didn’t have one) then followed the coastline. We quickly discovered a new friend the Atlantic sea fog which rolled in about 10am shielding us from the harsh sun, but also meant we couldn’t see the sea for a good couple of hours. I took a photo of a lighthouse at the north end of town and it was gone about 2 minutes later. The fog was also slightly cooling as well, we found it unreal seeing people sitting on the beach along the way with fog all around them.

Lunch – Imogen found a taverna on Happy Cow, the vegan friendly restaurant app, and started talking about their menu about 1pm, we got there just before 2pm and settled in for vegan linguini and 2 x bacon burgers accompanied by iced tea, strawberry lemonade and coke zero. Her linguini was delicious apparently but Steve and I learned our first big lesson for the Camino, even though we were starving and craving protein at this stage – we should never eat a big meal! as both felt sluggish when we started again.

The sun was out and we got burnt, our sunblock sweating off as fast as we put it back on. This day was mostly walked on hours and hours of board walks, they were in all different conditions and some had interesting dual language signs along the way for us to read. They were raised off the dunes and cut a path that ran parallel with the shore. We walked through some pretty wee towns, saw interesting buildings, fishing villages and navigated a couple of flights of stairs.

I am writing this on Saturday so looking back at our photos to remember what happened – these days are long and our routine pretty much a pattern now. The big news is Imogen had a fall, she employed her amazing combo of Kempo and Roller Derby rolling skills and did a barrel roll as she hit the stone path we were walking along. Even so she had significant grazing and cut her hand – quite a shock for us all but after a rest, cleanup (she has a great first aid kit) and some food we were on our way again glad it wasn’t worse.

About 4:15pm we reached the start of Vila Chā where we turned inland and walked up a very narrow cobbled country road to our accommodation for the night. At the time the road seemed busy and a little harrowing but we’ve since discovered this was wider than many and people were more courteous than elsewhere. Most of the traffic was high speed tractors with trailers full of freshly mulched corn husk – these went on until about 1:30am! and were noisy.

Trendy Villas – we chose this albergue for it’s 5 star reviews after we couldn’t find private rooms in the area. It has some pros – it’s cute, the pilgram meal cost $10 and was delicious (vegan mushroom risotto, salad and chicken), the deck was nice and the owners teenaged son was a lovely host. But it also had some downsides. Essentially it’s a couple of containers on a sliver of section beside the owners house with a breezeway in between. So everything was small. There is a kitchen / dining room, an outdoor table where we ate dinner (uncovered) and a bunk room with 8 bunks and 2 x small bathrooms. The main issue was there was nowhere dry to do anything, nowhere other than your bunk to unpack and sort your pack. Steve and I had rinsed some of our clothes the night before but they hadn’t dried so we hung them out on the drying racks – only to find them wetter the next morning which was one major lesson learned. We were late getting there and only top bunks were left so Steve selected us a double top bunk to share! I guess that was better than my own? The next issue was the owners son came through at lights out time and turned off the air conditioning unit, locked one of the bathrooms and left some windows open. Long story short – 8 adults sharing 1 toilet and 1 roll of toilet paper did not go well, and I am completely covered in welt like mosquito bites.

Dinner was great though and our German friend – on his 5th Caminho – fed one of the many rescued cats which resulted in us all being harassed for food throughout the meal. There was plenty of food for breakfast but everything was damp somehow. Lots of other lessons learned, added up to we did not enjoy this our first shared accommodation experience at all.

Step count 27,538. 17.91km.