We have escaped Melbourne’s winter, and on Camino again, to Santiago de Compostela via Fatima in Portugal.
Its great to feel the warmth in our bones.
MAN PLANS AND GOD LAUGHS (Yiddish Proverb) – The start of the day was not promising, we were delayed waiting for our Airbnb hosts to pick up the key. Long story short, someone attempted to enter the apartment one night with a key, so the they had the locks changed but this left us with the only key and they had to pick it up from us as we departed. Then we went up the hill to get our pilgrim credentials stamped at Sè Cathedral. We had tried to do this the day before (Sunday) but the cathedral was only open for Mass. We took a train from Lisbon to Santarem were we started the Camino this time. There was some sort of stop work meeting, and the train departed about 1 hr late. Overall we were running about 3hrs late, not great when the day is going to be 36c and we had hoped to reach our destination before the peak of the heat.
We arrived at Santarem station to find the town closed, nothing was open. So we headed off feeling totally unprepared. We had some water, but no food.
Lessons learnt today, 1) Expect delays and be prepared to change, 2) make sure you have enough water, 0.5 litre/hour/person. 3) don’t ignore an opportunity get some food before the trip, even a banana or two, your destination may be having a siesta.
The walk was hot and dusty, through km after km of grape vines, watermelons, peppers and tomatoes, a lot rotting on the ground. The drought has been and is still quite severe, the produce seems to be ripening before it can be picked.
We ran out of drinking water at about the 10km mark, fortunately Janice found a 10 litre bottle of water (non drinkable) under a tree in the middle of a vineyard. It was useful for wetting down clothes to keep cool. We used some and left the rest for the next pilgrim.
It was still a few Km to the next town, where we found a great cafe that was open, they spoke English, welcomed pilgrims, served icy cold agua con gas (look it up), stamped our pilgrim passports, gave us advise on walking (not walking) in the heat. Had we arrived earlier in the day they could have arranged accommodation, but as we were late it was already completo. So we agreed not to push it too hard in the heat and grabbed an uber for the final leg to our accommodation.
And what accommodation, a very up market style albergue built on the back of a house. The owners run this for tourists and pilgrims. It has private as well as shared (bunks) rooms. Jayne is in the bunks, Janice and I have a private ensuite room. did i mention they also have pool.
Lettuce shortage, what lettuce shortage. For dinner we had vegetable soup, bread and Salada Mixta. With enough lettuce to break the bank back in Australia. You would have to take out a second mortgage to pay for the amount of lettuce we ate.
Russ and Jan's Camino 