Our alarm was set for 5am and we were walking by 6:05. We left our packs again for the pack transportation company to pick up. It’s amazing how much easier and how much further we can go without a pack.
We slipped through Vigo’s streets in the dark fog. Hardly anyone was around. It was almost cold and I debated returning to the hotel to pull a jacket from my pack. Thankfully I didn’t as it didn’t take long to heat up.
The fog was so thick that you couldn’t see too far and we were actually slightly damp while walking. Amazingly we found a cafe that was open at this time and we popped inside for tea, orange juice and toast.
The lady behind the counter did not speak English so we played another round of charades. Feeling confident in our simple Spanish and our acting abilities we settled into a booth. She brought our toast, juice and coffee??!! Being the polite Canadians that we are, we thanked her and drank the coffee. 🤢 mom’s was a tiny little thing (espresso??) and mine wasn’t much bigger but had room for milk. Boy did it taste terrible. We fancied them up with milk and sugar, drank them, paid and left.
We started our walk and became very turned around. We thought we were following good directions to meet up with the arrows. We saw what we thought was another pilgrim and excitedly followed her. My left eye started to twitch.
We looped under the freeway and our speed was increasing. It felt good to walk this morning! While spinning around to look at different road signs we lost the pilgrim. There were no yellow arrows anywhere. We were totally lost.
I flagged down a cab and I showed him the yellow arrow in my bag. He stared blankly. My left eye watched him intently and Mom asked him to take us to cross roads where she read there would be arrows. He understood.
He sped through the streets like a rocket. At about the same speed as my heart. Every turn seemed like a near miss of an accident and when he came around the last corner sideways, we saw the yellow arrows and cheered.
We bounded out of the cab in a flash and I was frickin ready to ROLL! I was fairly sure that my left eye was bulging out of the socket but Mom and Karis assured me that it was alright. My brain was crisp and my legs were fast! I didn’t even feel the hills! My enormous left eye, indestructible legs, crisp brain and racing heart yanked me up the hills at top speed. I debated registering for a marathon.
Maybe a coffee is needed every morning?😂🤨
After the coffee wore off we continued at a good pace. The fog held on for 18-20km until it started to burn off. We found another cafe and happily drank TEA with a croissant. We walked 27km in total today and it went well.
We are settled in a hostel in Arcade and went out for an early dinner. We are showered and have just hung our laundry to dry.
Tomorrow we will carry our packs again. We plan to only go as far as Pontevedra. The day after that we will start on the Spiritual Variant route and day one of that is tough. We will send our packs ahead again that day.

