Our Camino, Stage Eleven, Triacastella to Sarria, July 19 2013.

It was a long hot walk (he says again) from Triacastella to Sarria, but some cool things happened.

Before I begin though I need to explain to you how we survive here in Espana.

Well, I should start by saying that all our dinners and breakfasts (cena and desayuno) have been paid for as part of our accommodation so its not like we are foraging for tucker.  Nevertheless the meals that have been included are what are called 'Pilgrims Menus' and the very thing that we would be procuring should they not have been provided.

They work like this.

A.  Usually about ten euros ($14 to $15 AUD) each.

B.  Come with 3 courses.  Primera (first) Segundo (second) and Postres (desert).

C.  Your choice of wine or water ( bottle of wine and bottle of water).  We go the vino tinto (always served chilled).  Agua for the ninos.

First course is not an entree, it is usually pretty big.  Often including a number of choices such as soup, pasta or vegies.  The kids usually go for the pasta, I usually go for the vegie soup.  Interestingly Mum, if you are reading this, a Galician staple is pasta with tomato sauce and tuna, pictured below.  Tasted it, exactly the same as Manna.  You have Spanish blood in your veins woman.

Segundo is when you get the meat.  Lamb, pork, beef, fish, your choice.  Now let me be clear, you get the meat.  Generally that's it.  Cuts not easily recognisable to Australians but tasty.

Desert is ice-cream or rice pudding or something that reminds me of that milky curd thing we used to get off our nanna as kids, junket, that's it.

The food is honest and local and tastes great.  Have not seen one Maccas in Spain, saw a sign but couldn't find the place in Ponferrada a week or so ago.

I am not going to disparage the locals with this blog, just share a couple of pics and make some comments about each from our walk into Sarria.

This is a picture of Monica and the kids seated at a watering fountain about 4km out of Triacastella.  We were in that lovely mossy, shaded forest once again, it was at the top of a pretty steep climb so you can see that everyone looks a bit pooped.  The lady and her son at the fountain are some spaniards who are walking the camino together, he is about 12, we passed them a number of times this day and got to know them a bit.  There a lots of places along the road where you can fill your bottles, this one is particularly spectacular.  The water in the big concrete basin was not so nice but the cool liquid that flowed from the Camino shell was lovely.

A beautiful spot with an over arching tree covering the path.  Not the lush vegetation in the background, that is where we had just come from when this image was taken, the light was no good shooting back this way.  You don't imagine that there is such abundant greenery in Spain, the Galician hills are equal to some of the rainforest walks we have done in Queensland but the trees are different.  Much more old and tree like, a bit more Lord of the Rings.  Aren't my children magnificent?  I am so proud of them on this journey, they are irrepressible.

Just a shot of a very narrow little section as we pass througha stone village.  The lady at the end of the alley is simply another peregrino passing through.  It goes like this usually.

'Ola'

'Ola'

'Buen Camino'

'Buen Camino'

And then you may never see them again or you may run into them for the next 3 days at every cafe, water fountain etc.  Sometimes you chat on the path for a few minutes as they pass through if you have languages that you can connect with.  It always finishes with a 'Buen Camino' and either they or you move on.  It's lovely when you see someone who you chatted with or sort of criss-crossed for a while a few days later in another town.  'Hey, g'day, Buen Camino.  How have you been?  Did you get that ..... or how did you end up with that.... ' and so on.  It is a really nice thing travelling along the same road parallel to people, you learn their story, share them with others, hear about people before you meet them and so on.  Its all really neat.

And then you see something completely freaky, like a coke machine in the middle of the bush with an extension lead disappearing over the hill into the distance to who knows where.  As entranced as our children were we did not give in, they get plenty of coca-cola in the cafes.  I tell you what it is good gear too, when they are flagging, falling short, finding motivation a bit tricky a glass of coke gets 'em up and pumpin'

You may not be able to see it but this shot is a cracker.  Our kids often go for an ice block on the road if they can get us to give in.  On this day it was another stinker, we had been going for about 6 hours or so by this point.  It was after lunch, about 2pm.  We wandered into this little stone village, as you do and spotted a cafe/bar/shop.  There were no seats outside so we went in, it wasn't airconditioned and the air was pretty still, no breeze.  The kids brought an iceblock each and as they held them the steam was falling of them.  You know when you open the freezer on a really hot humid day and you get that steaminess falling out onto the kitchen floor, like that.  But for the whole time they ate them.  I tried to get a photo of it.  You can sort of see, veery close to Zoe's ice block, near the red section above the chair I think.  It was so hot in that room.

And it was as we were sitting in that room that we met some fabled travellers we had been told about a week or so ago.  We were sitting there and all of a sudden a guy walked in with two kids and the Australian accents were unmistakalbe.  You don't hear many.  An Aussie fella with two little kids, all that was missing was the wife and donkey.  Every time someone found out that we were Aussie they would ask if we had met the Aussie family travelling with the donkey and the little kids.  We had not until now.  They had pulled up at the same spot (pictured above from the outside) for a break.  The started in St Jean Pied de Port in France and walked all the way to Burgos.  At that point they decided to skip a bit of the journey, send some of the excess baggage they had home and hook back up in Ponferrada, as such the people that had met them early had not seen them for a while.  They were back on the road and we met them today.  The donkey is called Simon, the kids were Eli and Moses, I never got the parents names.  We chatted for a while and have worked out that our paths will probably cross again closer to Santiago.  How cool, travelling with a donkey carrying your gear, or your kids when the are tired.  The just got it off the internet, need to have it in Santiago by July 30.  That simple.  Of course Zoe was in raptures.

Not much else happened that day, we walked the last few days into Sarria for our 2 night stopover.  We need a rest, some time to do a bit of washing and get our chafing under control, well mine anyway.  This last image is a shot of the cafe scene at about 11.30 at night just across from our hotel, a beautiful strip alongside a pretty stoney river.  We sat there for about 3 or 4 hours, had a few drinks and kicked on for tea, watched the world stroll by.  They don't really get going in Spain until about 10pm and then they kick on until well after midnight, particularly the old people, folks in their 70's and 80's promenading back and forth for ages in the cool evening breeze, catching up with friends.  At about 10 pm all the families turn up for a feed with the kids, little plastic motorbikes, scooters etc.  Mum and dad find a spot for tea, kids scoot up and down along the footpath, no cars on this part.  Just a wonderful way to live.

So that was our day.  Rest day tomorrow so I won't blog so much, maybe dump a few pikkies.

Buen Camino Peregrinos.