Kiwi Roaming

Our day started bright and early as we’d booked the 8:30am water taxi over to Spain! farewell Portugal (for now) and Caminha and our lovely wee apartment.

Today we walk from Caminha in Portugal to Viladesuso in Spain and it was tough with the wind today.

The wee water taxi took 6 people, Peter from the Netherlands was chatty, 70 and on his third camino he was very curious about our trip from NZ to Europe and talked about his daughter who has moved to Valencia enjoying the slower pace of life in Spain and his grandchildren at home.

The walk took us along boardwalks through a forrest with Celtic markings on trees then into our first town for the day A Guarda. Imogen met Olya just off the boat and ditched us, they did let us know where they had stopped for coffee so we clambered up the hillside town and joined them for lovely avocado and tomato on toast for our breakfast. Imogen and Olya went back to the coastline while Steve and I took the path through the city – which my knees did not love. From here we pretty much followed the coast.

We saw Imogen and Olya once more in the whole day when we weren’t far north of A Guarda. Today was the first time we encountered the Atlantic Coastal Cycle route which spans 11,000km of cycleway. We walked along this off and on, dropping back to the coast or through a village the rest of the time.

Signs – it’s probably time to talk about how we navigate this journey. In Portugal the Camino signs varied greatly, an arrow spray painted on a fence post or lamp post, or a mozaic tile one in a wall, or a range of official larger sign on occasion. In Spain they have invested heavily in these pillars (like an obelisk without the pointy top) which are all identical and have the camino arrow at the top and our distance to Santiago de Compostella near the bottom, sometimes they are just 250m apart which is cruel on a steep climb.

Our destination today is Hotel Glasgow, we planned to stop in the town of Oia which is where everyone else we have been chatting with throughout the day were heading towards, but we couldn’t find anything suitable and opted to stay 4.6km north of the town at Hotel Glasgow.

People always talk about “the Camino Provides” which sounds like justifying an experience to me, but as we walked into Oia there was a little church which had a stamp (I’ll tell you about stamps tomorrow) and a water tap about 50m down the road (we were basically out of water by now), then as we walked out of Oia when I was struggling to muster the willpower to continue, we found a lovely sandstone bench for a sit down. The last 2km were tough into a headwind but we got to see lots of giant hairy cows with horns and their giant calves, a few horses and lots of lovely coastline. Imogen got there long before us so stopped in the hotel cafe for an iced tea while she waited.

Hotel Glasgow – there are heaps of hotels with interesting names in Spain, Hotel Mirimar, Hotel Holiday and this one. It pretty much lived up to our expectations, simple rooms, comfortable beds, very large complex with heaps of camino walkers who were predominantly English speakers. Exhausted Imogen didn’t leave her room after checkin and opted to eat snacks. Steve and I ventured down to the mess hall for the Pilgrams menu along with hundreds of others jammed in. It was kinda like a scene from Faulty Towers in a way, we didn’t speak Spanish and our waiter didn’t speak English. We opted for the Pilgrams menu at €25 and our choices were – Rose for me, Tinto for Steve, Seafood soup for me and Chicken soup for Steve, both of us ordered the Fish / salad / potatoes, then one flan and one ice cream. Everything landed on our table at haste – two bottles of wine first, then soup bowls then soup urns where our soup was ladled from then bread. We thought he would be back to pour us a glass each but no, we accidentally ordered a bottle of wine each! then in quick succession a plate of fish / salad / potatoes and a plate of chicken with potatoes arrived – no option to change it seems – quickly followed by our desserts. Our first meal in Spain was a very amusing one.

Breakfast in the morning was a much quieter experience as most pilgrams were up and gone by 8am when we went down. Fruit, yoghurt, cereal and bread rolls with ham and cheese.

Steps: 42,363 or 27.45km