What a day!
Last night the sweet lady from the front desk found us and told us that the ferry company had called and bumped our 7am seats into the 9am run. I wasn’t disappointed. We slept until 7:10 (glorious!) and leisurely packed our packs. At 8am we went downstairs and they opened the breakfast bar early so we could eat before we left. It was so nice of them and such a good breakfast with fresh croissants, fruit and tea! Hotel Dinajan. A great stay.
The lady at the front desk called us a cab to drive us to the port, and we waited with other pilgrims for the boat to arrive. It was a small boat and we all took our seats and sped off out into the ocean and upriver.
The captain was good about translating the best he could for the three of us, but I know we missed some of the stories. We saw the 12 sacred crosses, the worlds second largest mussel farm (first being in China), clam fishermen and were served tea and cake. The trip took about an hour and we stepped off a couple of kilometres from Padrón.
We walked into Padrón for lunch but the day was heating up fast. We originally planned to spend a few hours there but after about an hour of looking around and popping into churches we decided to head out.
We were about a kilometre or two outside of Padrón when the “incident” happened. I wasn’t quite sure if I was going to write about it in today’s blog but – it happened – so I’m going to!
We came around a corner off of a trail onto a residential road just back from the highway. Karis was a few feet in front of me and Mom was a few feet behind me. There was a small, black Citroën car parked up against the sidewalk. As I passed by, I looked inside to see a man “aggressively tending to himself”. I yelled out, “OH! MY! GOD!!!” Mom and Karis jumped and yelled, “WHAT!?” And I responded with, “JUST KEEP WALKING!!! DO NOT TURN AROUND!”
Once we were a safe enough distance away I told them what he was doing. I regretted my reaction instantly. Mom said if she would have realized she would have started beating his car with her poles. This has been something that has been happening to women on the Camino but usually when they are alone. I wish I would have caused a commotion about it. The three of us could have had an impact together busting up his car with our poles! It was just such a shock and my instinct was to get away.
However… about a minute later he DROVE BY US! We were able to get his licence plate number and we called it in to the police! I’ve also alerted other pilgrims on Camino Portugues Facebook sites. Hopefully something is done.
Feeling rattled and trying to shake the uncomfortable feeling of what I saw, we continued weaving through the tiny subdivisions of the Spanish people. Around one particularly quaint and quiet turn, we came across an old, very Spanish woman. She was very passionate in speaking with us. She had something important to say. We had absolutely no idea what it was. She tried, and gestured, and tried again. Nothing. No idea. She tried some more. Yep. Still nothing. I felt terrible that we couldn’t communicate so I decide to engage. “YES! We saw the dirty man in his car.” I said it with a completely straight face. She sadly realized we were going nowhere and wrapped her story up. We liked her.
We laughed about my response HARD. We are still, hours later, giggling about it. We will probably laugh about it for years to come.
We continued on and the heat intensified. We didn’t walk too far today (just under 15km after departing the ferry) but boy was it hot. It felt like one of our longest days! By the time we reached our pension in Picaraña we were a mess. Literally. We were covered in sweat and stink like no other day. We collapsed into our beds and couldn’t move for about an hour. I called the police and through a translator described the pervy man and his little car. We showered, we washed our clothes and we headed for dinner.
We had ensalada mixas for dinner and ordered prawns on the side. They were staring at us so we had to bury their faces under our lettuce. We’ve done it now. We won’t need to order that again.
Another pilgrim liked the look of our prawns. He stopped to comment. We had no idea what he was saying. We smiled and nodded. Soon after, his wife came by. She has a lot to say about our prawns too. She wouldn’t stop talking so I smiled and shrugged. I apologized, pointed at myself and said loudly, “ENGLISH!”. She responded by saying that she was English too. She was British and WAS SPEAKING ENGLISH THE WHOLE TIME!! 🤦♀️ 🤦♀️ 🤦♀️ I was mortified and wanted to apologize but Mom and Karis said to shut it cause I would only make it worse.
We later found out that she has walked from Villa de Conde (just this side of Porto) and her husband has joined her for the last 100km. They are staying in our pension and are very kind. I can pretty well understand her if I focus hard. He has a lazy mouth so he still sounds Spanish.
Off to bed! Back to a 5am wake up and our arrival in Santiago tomorrow for our Compostela! Hurray us! We are awesome.
