Day 29: Rubadiso De Baixo - Monte Del Gozo

Saturday 25th April 2009

Via ARZUA – A CALLE – SALCEDA – EMPALME – SANTA IRENE – A RUA – PEDROUZO / ARCA – LAVACOLLA – SAN MARCOS

Approx 38km

What a day!

We had planned to walk 22km to Pedrouzo / Arca today, but somehow we miss the signs along the Camino (which went through an ‘Enchanted Forest’ today) and ended up walking, in a great deal of pain, an extra 16km to Monte Del Gozo. So very, very shattered!

We had spent the morning doing the usual thing – walked for a couple of hours, then stopping for coffee (ok, sidras). At one point, Rebecca had decided that she wanted a bit of alone time, and walked a bit slower than the rest of us. We arranged to meet that evening at the Albergue in Arca. The rest of us headed off, thinking that we were about 2 hours away from Arca, tops. After walking through the Enchanted Forest for 3 hours, we had a ‘Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore” kind of a moment.

We were lost. Shouldn’t we have been Arca some time ago? Should we keep walking?
We agreed that we should keep walking on to the next town. So we walked. And then we walked some more. And then we saw it….

..The sign welcoming us to Santiago. (Or rather, the outskirts of Santiago – so near yet so far)
We had walked 8km too far, and after a very long debate on the side of the road about whether we should head back to Arca for Rebecca, or keep walking the 8km to the next town, the consensus was to keep walking to Monte Del Gozo – Oh My God!

What on earth could have distracted us so much that we had missed an entire town? Could it have been the talking sign in the middle of the Enchanted Forest that welcomed us to Santiago? Megan’s terrible jokes? The witch of the ghosts of pilgrims past who had floated ahead of us the whole time? (Seriously, we followed a woman all day who was wearing a long black poncho and appeared to float, not even pausing to catch her breath on the top of the hills…).

Whilst pondering this, we stopped for a calming beer. The worst beer in the WORST bar – which was complete with porn magazines for our reading pleasure!

To keep our mind off the incredible pain we were all in (Oh the pain!), we played word games for the rest of the trek – which of course was in the pissing rain. It worked, and we were at Monte Del Gozo before we knew it – notable for being the first point on the Camino where you can see the towers of the Cathedral of Santiago… but we were all just too knackered at that point to muster up much enthusiasm!

Monte Del Gozo translates to Mount Joy, and is called so because of the stunning view over Santiago – which has made it a place of great joy and celebration for pilgrims over the centuries.
The Albergue at Monte Del Gozo was giant, with room to sleep over 2000 people. It was set out in dorm style – 8 beds per room, so we were lucky enough to have a room to ourselves for our last night of the Camino De Santiago. The grounds that the Albergue were on were also huge, and amazing. Behind the Albergue was an amphitheatre, which was actually being set up for use as we walked in for some kind of celebration that was to take place that evening – the whole place was a hive of activity, which all seemed fitting considering we were almost there, and were in celebration mode!

We were still really worried about Bec, as we had no way of letting her know that we had gotten lost and had walked straight past Arca. The whole group was feeling pretty terrible about losing her, so to take my mind off it, I decided to gather my things together to go to the bathrooms and have a shower. I was walking down the hallway when I heard a voice I recognized….
Of course it was her!

It turns out that Arca is incredibly hard to find considering it is located in the middle of the (enchanted) forest –so she missed it as well and came to the came conclusion that we did – keep walking! We were all absolutely stoked that the gang was complete again, and decided to celebrate by going out for dinner at a restaurant nearby. After a huge 4 course meal, with plenty of tasty wine, we were all completely flaked out – well, we did walk 38km!

Everyone fell asleep to the sound of me singing songs about Australia – what a sweet sound for them all to have sweet dreams!!

…..Tomorrow – Santiago!!

Day 28: Palas De Rei - Rubadiso De Baixo

Friday 24 April 2009

Via SAN XULAN – PONTE CAMPANA – CASANOVA – LEBOREIRO – FURELOS – MELIDE – BEONTE – CASTANEDA

Approx 27km

Urgh, had a terrible, terrible night’s sleep. The room was so hot, and over looked a main road with lots of trucks driving past. Of course there was also the obligatory snoring, but nothing worse than normal (mental note to self – do NOT marry a man who snores).


Unfortunately I was awoken at 4am by an old English man who was shouting at Jon to wake up IMMEDIATELY. Apparently Jon’s snoring was keeping ‘everyone’ awake and he ‘should leave the room’. I couldn’t believe the nerve of him, although this was the same man who had proudly told us earlier that he had let down the tires on a car that had been transporting some fellow pilgrim’s backpacks into the next town. Not exactly in line with the spirit of the Camino. I had to get out of bed to tell Jon that he didn’t wake me up and he wasn’t to leave the room till morning. However, leave he did, and I went back to sleep – only to be awoken by loud snoring. Upon closer investigation, guess who it was? You got it, Mr. Nasty Camino himself. He’ll get his in this life, I’m convinced of it.

Anyway, because of that incident, we were all tired in the morning, and as a result, it was a bit of a long day. We broke it up by stopping for coffee and cake in the morning, and doing some grocery shopping in Melide, where we also had lunch. In the afternoon we got caught in a brief shower, which left us all wet and frustrated!





My ‘should be’ highlight of the day was our stop in Casanova. I had been looking forward to seeing Casanova for days, and I was so excited that Megan and I made up a song about going to Casanova (to the tune of ‘Say My Name” by Destiny’s Child… of all tunes to choose from!). But when we got to the town, we were past it before we realised we had just walked through it. Talk about small Spanish towns! It left me wondering if it was indeed the home of the infamous Casanova (I’m guessing not, and I’m sure some people reading this will be shaking their heads at my lack of geographical knowledge...Don't be too shocked - this is the girl who was in Amsterdam when she decided that she should have gone to Holland instead.)




We stayed in Ribadiso, which was a converted Pilgrims Hospital that was renovated and converted into a pilgrim refuge in 1993. This Albergue was the last of the historical establishments on the Camino – which means we had to be close to Santiago! The Albergue was on the river, with a beautiful medieval bridge stretching across it. Being a huge lover of all things bridges, I was pretty pleased by this.



We had planned to have a’ family dinner’ in the Albergue, as my guide book (The Camino Frances Pilgrim Guides to Spain, by the Confraternity of Saint James) had indicated that there was a ‘large dining room and kitchen’ – but no grocery stores in town, so suggested we buy any food in Melide, which as mentioned earlier, we had. The meals we had planned to cook involved many jars and cans and bottles of ingredients, so we had divided the weight up between everyone’s backpacks and carried the the 12km from Melide in preparation for our amazing meal…..

…Well, as Murphy would have it, nothing went to plan! The kitchen and dining room were amazing. They were stone, cave like rooms, very dimly lit, and made me feel like I was living in the medieval times. Very haunting and great atmosphere….but when we entered the (amazing) kitchen, we were horrified to discover that the only thing in there was 1 pot....

Yes, 1 pot. No dishes, no cutlery... nothing! Megan went to the local restaurant to beg some plates, forks etc (and was kindly told that once their kitchen closed we were welcome to use anything in there….but that was too long a wait for us hungry pilgrims!). Somehow, we managed to cook an amazing meal. I was in charge of the soup (cooking my Camino specialty of sausage and bean soup, which I had treated many hungry pilgrims to over the past few weeks), and Megan made shrimp scampi. We had bread, salad and wine and it was fabulous. We managed to get around our lack of dishes problem by drinking our soup out of the bottles that our ingredients had come in – we felt very ingenious for that idea! It was a great night once we had figured dinner out – although I felt terrible for one of our fellow pilgrims, a young guy on his own who was cycling the Camino – he had to wait for such a long time until he could use the one pot in the kitchen to heat his dinner up… Opps!


To update: the black dog (who we christened Sirius after the Harry Potter character) was still following us today. I can’t believe how far he has travelled.