Homestretch

Sarria, Spain
We make a point of scouting out the next day's route out of town the night before. It gave us the opportunity to check out an interesting ferriteria, an ancient smithy where pilgrims of old had their horses shod while they had a bite to eat, one stop shopping back in the day. It also made it easier to successfully navigate the turns and crossings of the Camino in the dark before it disappeared into the woods. Headlamps are great, but finding markings is still a challenge. Mike's guidebook said the trail would be flat, so he was rather skeptical about the elevation guide I had from the pilgrims office. The fact that Triacastela is in a valley should have been a clue. We spent most of the morning climbing uphill. Thank heavens we had a great breakfast to start. We were looking for our morning café con leche break when we passed through Fontearcuda and spied what looked like a pilgrim rest stop. Turned out to be a place to get your inner Zen on, but carrot juice with kumbaya is no substitute in our book for the high-test stuff. On to the next hamlet we went. This time a detour of 50 meters had promising signs, until we got to the turn off. At this point no coffee is worth going down a 50 meter flight of stairs which we would then have to climb back up. We pressed on and our efforts were rewarded by a roadside café with café con leche accompanied by a cookie and a beautiful view. The holdout was well worth it. We're walking through farm country, very picturesque with rich brown loamy soil, gardens of all sorts, and livestock grazing in green pastures. Our excitement for the day came on the outskirts of Furela, when we encountered a donkey roaming freely along the side of the road. Looked like he had broken free of his hobbles as he was dragging some sort of strap attached to a hoof. We informed a lady we saw in a nearby garden, but she didn't seem impressed. Perhaps he's a habitual offender. He was happily grazing, so on we went. By midday we made it to Sarria, our destination for the day. Sarria is officially 115.5 kilometers from Santiago, our ultimate goal. It is also the last place to join the Camino and still qualify for the Compostela, a graduation certificate of sorts. Evidently it is a popular place to begin and we expect to encounter a greater number of pilgrims from here on out. To us it represents the beginning of the end and we are on the homestretch. If we can just last 6 more days, we'll be in Santiago!Les mer