Terri's Trails

Alverca to Azambuja ~ 28 km/17.5 miles

As I was leaving at 7 am another pilgrim was just walking out the door - I learned that he was Ğirts from Latvia. We walked together all day to Azambuja. The first part of the walk was on a busy road, then it was fairly pleasant until Vila Franca de Xira where we had breakfast. The latter part of the walk was a long hot slog, mostly beside the train tracks. We had to take stairs to cross over the tracks three times, which was pretty much the only "uphill" walking we did.

I didn't have anything booked in Azambuja because there's an albergue there with 16 beds that doesn't accept reservations. I didn't think that it would be too busy because we hadn't seen anybody else walking except for a couple from New Zealand who had stopped for a break. So I was quite surprised when I arrived at the albergue a half an hour before their opening time of 3:00 to find that all of the lower bunk beds had already been taken and I would have to take a top bunk bed. But the biggest surprise was when the hospitalero asked me if I knew about the problem with the electricity. I said I didn't know and he said there is no electricity here. I responded that maybe I should go to a hotel instead, and he said no, there is NO electricity anywhere in Portugal and that's when I found out that there was a massive power outage in Portugal, Spain, France, and Italy.

Since their hot water system was electric that meant a cold shower. Being hot and sweaty that was better than no shower at all. I had resigned myself to sleeping in the top bunk when a couple came in and were told that there were no beds left but there was an overflow area at a preschool. When I heard that I asked if I could possibly go with them to the school. A young Dutch woman named Kelly also wanted to go to the school. It turned out that the school was a much nicer place to stay than the albergue. They brought out nice mattresses for us to put on the floor to sleep on. There was a kitchen, a bathroom and two showers with hot water because they used gas. Of course there was still no electricity but it was a much more comfortable space to be in than the albergue. I even sort of had room to myself! We found out that there was a grocery store in town that was open because they had generator so we all walked to there. We bought a whole chicken to share and some side dishes plus some fruit and other things to take with us the next day.

Then around 8:30 the power came back on! I slept very well, especially knowing that the power had been restored.Read more