El Camino De Santiago: My Thoughts of Our 2 Day Excursion

Photo cred: Mildred
View from Playground in Portomartín

On Thursday, April 21st, we began our journey to the outer banks. Just kidding we weren't going to North Carolina, we were heading to O Cebreiro. It was about a two hour bus ride or so and we then were shown a few places there, that I didn't find all too important. One of them was one of the homes that housed people and animals and Morgue and I joked around about the logicalness of these homes. Such as the house was way too big. Think of all the wood they would need to heat that house since it was so big! Even with the animal heat they would still need a shit ton of fire wood. After Paula talked/toured us around O Cebreiro for awhile, we were released to walk around or have some coffee. So Morgana, Steph and I went to a different cafe from all the rest of them because there wasn't room for us in the cafe. We ended up in a cafe with only us and eventually a woman from Ohio came in as well.
This woman from Ohio was doing the Camino and had messed up her knee or leg while walking. I think she said it was fractured. Well, she wasn't ready to give up so after taking a break, she began biking the Camino instead. We had a lovely time chatting with her and helped her out a little since she couldn't speak all that much Spanish, she just knew enough to get by with ordering food really. After we were done drinking our drinks (obviously I had a cola cao), we decided to walk the Camino backwards since we were given about 3 hours or so at this town before we were moving on. Well it started sprinkling while we were walking so the rest of the group that had stayed together decided we were leaving early and we didn't get that memo. Mind you, I could've gotten that memo but I'm not really glued to my phone so I didn't. We walked for about an hour before making our way back to the bus to find that everyone had been looking for us for about an hour. Let's talk about awkward....

Photo Cred: Morgana
O Cebreiro

Photo Cred: Mildred
O Cebreiro

Back on the bus we headed to a different location where we began our walk for the day. I'm not really sure how far we walked, but it was a rather long walk. We did a lot of singing, definitely indulging in our inner Disney selves.

Photo Cred: Mildred

We walked to the above picture location that day, and that was as far as we walked. We then took a bus to Portomartín where we stayed the night in an Albergue. Steph and I went exploring the town, that she had already been in when she did the Camino in January. We found a playground and hung out there, obviously swinging since that is my thing for playgrounds. In Portomartín, almost all the railing that we saw had a shell, the symbol of the Camino. Actually a lot of places had these shells on their railings.

Photo Cred: Mildred
Shell Railings

The next day we did more walking than the first, starting out in Portomartín and going all the way to I have no clue, possibly to Ventas de Narón since the schedule says that but I'm really not sure because I was under the impression we walked farther than was actually planned since we wanted to get the total kilometers of planned walking in since it was going to rain later that day. I'm not sure though. Once we met up with the bus again, the driver took us down a nice windy road trying to make us all car sick to Castillo de Pambre. We also went to a church, La Iglesia Santiagouista de Vilar de Donas, while we were on the bus at some point during the day. Surprise, Spain's stonemasons also put their faces on the building that they build just like in Ireland. Anyhoo, the castle was closed to the public but it had this nooks that we could peak into to see the inside.

Photo Cred: Mildred
Castillo de Pambre

Photo Cred: Mildred
Castillo de Pambre

And then once we were done there, we went to a town called Melide for lunch. We were going to go somewhere to picnic but it had started raining, also Paula our guide didn't realize that we all had already eaten our sack lunches on the bus whenever we were there we were just munching on it. So we stopped in Melide and had some pulpo (octupus). I like pulpo but the sucky thingys have a real weird texture. Once we were done in Melide, we walked a little ways to Boente and then bussed the rest of the way to Santiago where Paula had us walk the route the pilgrims walk to get to the Catedral. So yeah that was the Camino, and then I went home to find that I didn't have any clean towels to use so I got stuck with air drying! (for a week because I didn't ask for one until I got my laundry back since I thought it was just not clean yet).

In comparison to the last Camino I did, I would say this really didn't feel like the Camino at all. We were just on a really long walk. We did see more pilgrims than I did the last time I did the Camino, and I think visiting with the pilgrims and sharing stories is a huge part of the Camino that I missed out on the first time around. I definitely think we should not have done the Camino in January when we did it last year for class because that was just miserable. This time around we had fun without worrying about the rain and even when it did rain a little it wasn't all that bad. The rain was a welcome relief to the heat of the sun. The one good thing about doing the Camino in January was that I didn't get sunburned of course.