Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Day One of Our Little Detour Variante Espiritual

 Let the deviation begin.
 I thought this lone rose was lovely.

Someone took the time to hand make all these signs for the Variante Espiritual. 


Sweet tiny lambs! 

Cruzero

Monestery of Opoio

Coming into the town of Combarro.  Our stop for the night. 

Touristic town of Combarro 

Following the yellow arrows 

For future pilgrims planning to walk this detour,  it can be nicely done in 3 days instead of two. If you have the time, we recommend it.  We leisurely left our hotel in Pontevedra this morning,  stopping at the café Acuna, which is excellent,  for cafés served with churros! They also had lots of sandwiches and croquettes and other things that would be good for lunch.  I picked two bready like dumpling things,  one stuffed with bacon and one stuffed with chorizo.  John got a sandwich that was called mixto and you could see veggies and ham and cheese sticking out.  Looks like a good bet. 

About 2k out of town we came to the plainly marked detour. The way marking is excellent so far.  What a lovely days walk! Took us a good 4 hours with stops wherever we wanted like the huge Monastery at Poio where the docent didn't seem to want to let us visit even though the time was clearly marked that it was open.  Oh well,  we had our lunch on the grounds there and John found out his mixto sandwich had tuna in it! Okay,  I'll trade ya. Then to make matters worse,  a big chunk of tuna fell out of my sandwich and into John's boot. It was then he became tuna foot. You gotta get your laughs from somewhere. 

Descending down to the water,  we came to the little port town of Combarro.  Checked into the nice one star there.  It's really two star worthy.  Nice,  clean, modern and friendly!  Cleaned up,  rested,  walked out to the little touristy part with tiny winding streets along the waterfront lined with the stone corn crib looking structures that were used to store fish, grains and other things back in the day.  Really picturesque.  Lovely little bars and restaurants right on the waterfront to have a beer or a glass of wine.  Lots of souvenir shops all seemingly selling the same things.  There were a lot of witch related things for sale and we learned that in old times,  this place was considered very pagan in nature and so the religious powers that be at the time placed cruzeros  (crosses) all over. They are on almost every corner.  They thought this would counteract the heathen energies and activities apparently. Stopped at the supermarket for salad ingredients and a bottle of vino and made a fresh salad for pre dinner appetizers.  Later we ended up at the restaurant across from the hotel and had a huge bowl of caldo soup and camarones. Which are usually shrimp.  Here we got a plate of what we would consider crayfish. They were good but not what we expected. Is anything? Tomorrow we can get up at our leisure once again since we only have another 4 hours walk to Armenteira.  We will be in an alburgue, the only place available there. We've had great weather all along but it is looking like the typical Galicia fall rain will be descending upon us upon tomorrow and future days.  Only 3 more days and we will be in Santiago! 

2 comments:

  1. Cayce......I have so enjoyed your journey through your eyes and look forward to your blogs. May the blessings you have both been given continue to flow forth. Emmy Thomas

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  2. John & Cayce think of guys often and continued safe travels. Blessings from Colorado

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