As we walked today, the blog entered my mind a few times. What will I write about? Nothing really exciting is happening today.
Looking back, nothing ‘exciting’ is still enjoyable. We had some quiet moments today. We walked 29km which marked today as a tie as one of our longest walking days.
We made almost 20km before we even stopped for lunch. That was a first for us. The trek from Sarria to Santiago is significantly easier terrain than what we have been subjected to before now.
Watching Karis walk ahead of us, swinging and lunging her “spear” like every other day, made me very proud. She has not complained throughout this walk. She wakes up every morning with a smile on her face, and a joke to share and is ready to go. Blisters and all. Each and EVERY day. She doesn’t complain. She is cheerful, willing, energetic and genuinely excited for our walk. She is barely 12 and has walked the majority of the way across Spain. Across a COUNTRY! And in 2-3 more days she will receive her Compestella. Not many children have earned this document and I’m very, very proud of her. Even through the few tears she has shed, she has been focused and resilient. I hope that this determination will stick with her for life.
I also thought of Sydney. A girl who is as equally determined as her sister. I am proud of the unbelievable amount of work she puts in to meet her goals. And I am proud of her even on the times those goals are not met. I hope she will always know that the drive she has for life is moulding her into an exceptionable young woman.
Some people think that she didn’t come to Spain because she is 15 and “not into hanging with her family for that long”. I know that isn’t so. We are fortunate to have a teenager like her. This is the kid who would rather spend Halloween with her family than her friends because we are so much fun. She is a hard worker in school and in her sport, and is unbelievable at balancing her priorities. Like she said, “if she could swim across Spain or be pulled in a wagon”, she’d be here.
The hours and Kilometres pass and leave much time for thought. This is one of the gifts of the camino.
With all of that being said, we did have a couple of humorous moments! When we first entered the outskirts of Melide, the three of us were walking along quietly. All of a sudden there was this horrific, loud noise behind us. Mom and I both jumped. She darted to the right, and I darted to the left. She thought it was a MAMIL (middle aged man in Lycra – the bike riders) and I thought it was a cow or a car horn. Turns out – it was a woman blowing her nose!! I didn’t even know a person could make that sound with their nose! After watching us yelp and run off the path, the French woman was clearly embarrassed and apologized before quickly moving along.
After we had settled in to our albergue, showered, washed our clothes and hung them to dry, we went out for dinner. We had noticed a pizza shop on our way down the street and thought we would give that a try. Mom and Karis shared a pizza and I ordered spaghetti with marinara sauce. I confirmed that there would be “no carne” and she assured me there wouldn’t be. Wasn’t I surprised when my pasta arrived full of sea urchins. After some confusion and an exchange of broken English and Spanish, she took that back and was going to bring me a margarita pizza instead. About 10 minutes later, my pizza arrived. Covered in tuna and mussels. Really? People put tuna on pizza??
I felt so bad because the waitresses were so nice, that I didn’t want to complain again. I took one small bite and couldn’t do it. I typed a nice message into google translate about how my communication is terrible and that it was all my fault and that I would pay for it and not to worry about making anything else and again how sorry I was. You know… The typical Canadian “I’m so sorry, it’s all my fault” response.
We then left and I bought a margarita pizza from across the street. After confirming that NO MEAT OR FISH would be on that pizza. 😉
50km left until Santiago. Wow. Almost there.
