Day 26: Sarria – Portomarin

Wednesday 22 April 2009
Via BARBADELO – MORGADE – FERREIROS – MIRALLOS – MOUTRAS

Approx 24km

Hot hot hot!

I think today’s leg must have been even hotter than yesterday. The gang was all together again today, and we had a lovely, much needed late start. The first of us stirred at about 8am, and once we all woke up, we realised that the clothes that we had hung out to dry the night before were still very wet and needed to be put in the dryer! So, off we headed to have a nice leisurely breakfast at the café next door. By the time the clothes were dry and we headed off, it was about 10am. I felt so guilty at starting the day so late!

It was a nice day though, and I felt so much better than I did yesterday. The scenery was beautiful and reminded me of Ireland – so lush and green.

At one point we were walking along a lovely big field, and I saw a horse. I decided to take a photo of the horse, and was doing so when Jeff came up to me laughing and made some reference to me being a dirty girl. I had no idea what he was talking about until I looked a bit closer and realized that this horse was a bit of a happy boy.... With an enormous erection. Enormous. He should be very proud of himself! Being as pure and virginal as I am (cough cough), I was incredibly shocked by what I saw, and dropped my camera on the ground. And broke it. So close to Santiago. Absolutely devastated. Stupid, well hung horse.

I was really upset about my broken camera, and having to use crappy disposable camera for the rest of the journey, but I was trying to be ‘Camino’ about the loss. Material possessions aren’t important; this will force me to look at the scenery in a way that will make me appreciate it and remember it, blah blah blah….but really, it was a massive pain in the arse and I was pretty upset about my loss! At least it happed while I was walking with a group who are all taking pictures and can send me their photos. Not the end of the world, but so ANNOYING!

Besides the camera, it was a nice day. We stopped for lunch in a lovely village and sought out some shelter to get out of the sun.

As we were leaving the town (called Morgade), there was an old stone hermitage, which was a place where pilgrims traditionally leave messages for their fellow pilgrims. We went inside to have a look and it was amazing – filled with photos of people and notes in all languages. It was a very touching and intense experience.

It was another long, hard slog in the afternoon with the heat getting to us all, and by the time we arrived in Portomarin, we were all sunburnt, sweaty and sore. We stayed in a Municipal Refugio, which was pretty full, and there were many familiar and friendly faces around town – including the school kids from the day before.

Portomarin was a lovely town, which had been rebuilt after the old town had been ‘drowned’ by the waters of the reservoir. Once we had our showers and settled into the Albergue, we decided to take advantage of the lovely warm weather and headed out to a bar where we sat outside and enjoyed the warm breeze and a few well deserved beers with some of our other friends we had seen and met along the way. We ate out in one the bars a little bit later on, and it was a very social evening. Lovely!

********************************************

In an aside, a few days before when I was still walking alone, it was very early in the morning, and I came across a little old man who only had one big tooth in his mouth. I said ‘Hola’ to him and went to keep walking when he started chattering away to me. I told him that I spoke only English and couldn’t understand him. He stopped talking and contemplated this for a while, nodded, took my arm and started walking with me, very slowly, arm in arm, chattering away. This continued for about 10mins, with me trying to tell him that I couldn’t understand him, and him not really caring! I finally had to take off and leave him standing there after it became very clear that he was happy to chatter and walk with me all day!

********************************************

I had also recently discovered that I was the Urban Legend of the Camino de Santiago!When I was walking with Austrian stalker Johan, he was telling me a story he had heard from a man he had been walking with previously. This story was about a prayer session that the man had attended while he was staying in Granon. In this prayer session, a girl’s jacket had caught on fire and the news was fairly grim. Apparently she was burnt and it was horrible to witness…. The funniest part of this story is that I had seen the man Johan had been walking with, and he was not in that prayer session… So unless it happened to another girl – that was my story! A few other people have also mentioned to me that they had heard a story about a girl who had caught on fire – it’s like Chinese Whispers. We were speculating about this and decided that it was because we don’t really have access to news of the ‘outside’ world, so we pilgrims were running on ‘news of the Camino’ – and with so many people completing the journey, word gets around!