Holy darkness Batman!
That’s what I was thinking when we left the albergue early this morning. Up in the mountains around Armenteira it was pitch black. We used our flashlights to manoeuvre our way through the trails along what we are sure was a gorgeous stream. We zigzagged. We went up. We went down. We were careful not to trip. We prayed for no Blair witch.
We came to many junctions. We debated. We told each other why the other was wrong in their thoughts of which way to take. There were no yellow arrows. At least that we could see.
About 45 minutes later, we found ourselves back at the albergue.
Well shit.
We giggled at other pilgrims as we saw them start down the trail that would bring them back to where we were. We went the opposite direction. 0.5km later we realized it was wrong. Back again to the original trail and this time zagged instead of zigged. The other pilgrims were fine. We were the dumb dumbs.
All in all it was about a 3km mistake. All in the darkness of a beautiful, Blair witch forest.
We carefully manoeuvred with the help of our poles and watched the sun rise and light the trail. It was gorgeous.
We followed the stream and then a river for a large part of the day. Saw pilgrims and locals. We were told that the trail was flat today. They lied. Again. They like to do that. We climbed so far that I thought I saw the space station. (It wasn’t) but it was hot up there like the sun.
We suddenly dropped down, crossed overtop a highway (they honked when I waved) and into the outskirts of the city. Three young boys were riding their scooters and saw us coming. They quickly ran into their garage and grabbed a portable table. They ran out with it and yelled at us in Spanish. They had jewelry to sell.
The craftsmanship was sketchy but their enthusiasm more than made up for it. We bought Karis two bracelets for 1 euro each and tipped them 3 euros. They were impressed. Canadians are nice 👍🏻
Shortly after we found a cafe for lunch. The waiter told us that our hotel was only another 2km. Awesome.
I cued up some Beatles and we dance-walked as we followed the arrows. We kept our arms held high in the air more to air out our armpits but also as part of our dance moves. Two men outside a bar clapped. I curtsied.
Around another corner. We were hard core airing our pits to, “a hard day’s night” as a man was suddenly springing out of his gate. I yelled, “OH CRAP!” And he responded with, “OH CRAP!” 😂😂😂 he said, “you thought you were all alone didn’t you?” Perfect English. Huh.
We were happy to check into our hotel and even happier to spend a couple of hours in the pool. A solid 25km today (with our 3km screw up)
We were thankful for the lady at the front desk in her assistance in ordering us pizza for dinner. Thank you google translate. Happy to be done and heading to bed now. Tomorrow we take a boat and walk into Padrón for lunch. After that another 10km or so to a pension for the night. Almost finished our walk. Very close to Santiago.
Xo
