Casa de Fernanda

I walked about 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) today along quiet forest paths, through farmland and more little villages. Met and walked with Sean from London, who retired from the London police force after 30 years and now drives a Black taxi cab. You have to take a test to be a Black Taxi driver and he convinced me you should go with them instead of Uber while in London. They know what’s up.

I also met Richard, a New Zealander walking 30+ k a day and camping along the way at night.. He's a writer and artist, focused on supporting clean drinking water for the developing world. The book he's working on now will be about this walk and will be called. "A Walk about Water."

I stopped at Cas de Fernanda, a family-run albergue that only accepts a donation as pay. Dropped my gear in a grassy courtyard with six cats and four small dogs. Mostly Germans here again, along with an interesting young Chinese guy. After a shower and washing/hanging my clothes, I sat at a picnic table in the courtyard with the others. The Europeans are all convinced that Trump will be re-elected. Fernanda brought us cold beers, homemade local cake, then her homemade white wine, then little quiche squares. Now she’s making us dinner as we relax.

Later: I talked some more with the young Chinese guy, Xiao (pronounced like the first syllable in "Shower"). He comes from a small village in southern China, where they speak a dialect that is unintelligible outside of that town, is not written, and is not being learned by younger people. He casually said that the language will likely be gone for good in another 40 years. Shui's parents only speak that dialect, and I heard Shui talking to them on the phone. He speaks a number of languages besides his local dialect and Mandarin, of course, and just quit his job working as a hotel receptionist in Paris to do this walk. He's not sure what he'll do after this, and he's not worried about it, but needless to say his parents are!

Dinner at Fernanda's was about five courses, lots of homegrown wine and involved much loud singing in a number of languages (including Chinese) and laughing. If you walk the Camino Portugues, you need to stop here.Read more