Day 39.

Today’s section of the Camino was a 29.5 km walk from Plalas de Rai , through a town called Melide, eventually to Arzúa. Our hottest day so far with temperatures reaching 29 degrees made the occasional gentle breeze inviting and the shaded trees momentary stays against heat exhaustion. Yellowknifers can adapt to cold weather much better than excessive heat. It seems the night before each walk we get a weather report forecasting a 70% chance of rain, but the rain does not come until after 3:00 pm, after we’ve finished our walk, then we get a big downpour lasting 1-2 hours. Last night, we also had prolonged thunderstorms and lightning.
We were on the trail by 7:30 again this morning with large groups everywhere, but they eased off in the afternoon. There are some towns and many villages along this route catering to pilgrims, so I suspect many of them did not go as far as we did today. Cathy and I started off together, but I moved on, momentarily connecting with Jim from New Zealand and Sandy from Arizona. Cathy chatted with Diane from San Diego for a while, then Sandy joined them. The longest conversation I had today was with Moises from Florida, but originally from Cuba. He shared interesting stories of attempts to defect from Cuba, time spent in forced - labour camps, and two years spent in Spain while awaiting his acceptance to the US. He values freedom above all else, and despite not liking Trump, Moises supports him. At that point, I thought it best not to push the political talk too much further.
The Spanish province that we are now hiking through, Galicia, has Celtic origins, so the music, especially the bagpipes are similar to Celtic traditions. We were treated to a bagpiper and a drummer on today’s walk including some of the pilgrims who danced along. Despite the long distance, today’s walk was generally enjoyable and scenic. We reached our destination by 3:30, then showered, had a short nap, then headed out to explore the town and find a place to eat.Read more