Today was heavy road walking as much of this Camino route has been. It really wipes you out. Hard on the feet and all of your joints. We met two Americans, Luisa from Seattle walking with Ronnie from NY who met each other on the Camino Frances two years ago. At the first coffee stop, I asked about using the water closet (bathroom) I didn't see and they signed in their best attempt to communicate with a non Portuguese speaker, for me to wait. Apparently there wasn't one there. Then the lady who made our coffees took the 4 of us women down the street to her home to use her bathroom! It was a very nice house, tiled in the traditional Portuguese style with heavy dark wooden furniture. Very cozy and homey. What a nice lady! John sat there and wondered where the hell we had gone! I'm sure he was relieved to see us.
A stop some miles on for a beer and no stopping or eating or removing our boots to massage our sore feet since we were walking with others. Now, we learned this lesson on the last Camino but apparently we needed to revisit it. We seriously have to walk our own pace, stop when we need and top off the fuel tanks! We walked all that way with only snacks and not eating the lunch John was lugging in his pack. Wrong move. And when we reached the town, we mistakenly thought we were close to our accommodation and John bought a 10lb bottle of wine and a ten pound bottle of water. We were nowhere close. We had at least another mile to walk to the very nice alburgue, the Hilario. We were seriously in pain and completely wiped out. We ate our lunch and passed out for a good hour and a half.
After getting a second wind and showers we limped our way down to a very nice restaurant where we wanted to try the specialty of this region, suckling pig. Now I apologize profusely to my vegetarian and vegan friends. Even John didn't quite know what it was til I told him. He probably wouldn't have eaten it if I had. Same reason we don't like lamb or veal much.
It was delicious! Camino hungry. We ordered "dose" which is enough for two but something was lost in translation and the dose for 15€ which would have been a good deal got doubled into 30€. Ouch. Oh well, write it off to a special dinner. It included two very nourishing bowls of chicken noodle soup, salad, homemade potato chips, wine and an ice cream dessert. Definitely Camino hungry.
Tomorrow is a little farther than today. I am gauging everything by a 20 mile day. Anything less is a piece of cake right?
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