Day 26 - Castaneda to Salceda

Our Hansel and Gretl house on the highway had breakfast, so we went down around 9am. Today was a planned 18km hike so we took our time.

At breakfast, our host brought out juice, toast and coffee. Then a plate of cold ham. Joan and I waited in anticipation for eggs that never came. We realized that was all we were getting to eat. We tried to butter the rock hard toast which was now cold. We made the most of it.

Our host asked us to wait for her to show us the way back to the Camino trail. I bet she walked us a 1/4 mile and then told us which way to turn to get back on the trail. We both nodded and started walking and then asked each other… what did she say? Because we both are terrible listeners.

Good thing was we just walked thru farmers fields until we saw brightly covered ponchos and we knew we were close to the Camino.

It rained all morning. Not just a little mist but a hard constant cold downpour. Have we mentioned there were hills? It was not fun.

Upon entering the biggest town we came across, Azura, we hit two supermarkets for prunes, and a Pharmacia for more Vicks for our tired feet.

Back to the trail we went - still raining, and a cold breeze. We bumped into Chris from Michigan who we stopped to chat with. We were more excited to see her than she was to see us. So we said goodbye and went on our way.

We were slow. Couldn’t get going. We stopped under many trees and the hills were hard. And this was supposed to be our short day. Every time we looked at the map it said 8km to go / 2+ hours of walking.

We came upon a cute looking modern cafe. We popped in soaking wet, and got something to eat and drink and some new favorite pilgrims that we knew stopped in and we sat and chatted.

The wind continued to howl, rain was sideways. We had just shared our story of where we stayed last night and how it was off th Camino trail. Renee asked where were we staying tonight? We told her and she looked it up and said, “you’re off the trail again!” We looked at each other and said let’s get a cab.

We were so happy. We ordered Renee a wine and we celebrated. In 15 min we walked into our Albergue Salceda and the lady handed us a key and said check in later and go get a shower. We asked for two rooms and she tossed another key.

We showered, got our laundry together - they do it for us and since it was only 4pm we went to our own rooms to relax. 30 min later joan texted she was lonely and came over to watch a hallmark movie and have snacks.

At 6pm we went down to play uno and have our celebratory beer. We had an ok dinner with Galician garlic mashed potatoes- a first in Spain.

We met two women from the Netherlands who had heard we had scheduled a cab to pick us up at 9 am the next morning and shorten our route to Santiago.

They came over and asked if they could ride with us. They shared that the weather would be terrible and they were so appreciative of our hard pilgrims work to pre-plan our next day (patting ourselves on the back!)

Today we walked 13.2 / 8.2 miles in rain. We are 30km from Santiago. The plan is to get dropped halfway and walk in the cold pouring rain into Santiago and end our pilgrimage tomorrow.

The roads are nearly empty with this stormy weather. Yesterday only 855 pilgrims arrived in Santiago. They were averaging 2,000+ per day.

Buen Camino!Read more