Sarria to Portomarin -- 23 k -- from here 100 km to Santiago

Sunday, October 11

I am getting very good at changing kilometers to miles. John and I have been averaging 4 km per hour -- not bad -- and usually finishing the stage on the low end of the estimate.

Today is very sunny as we meet Carmen and Alberto for breakfast and head out. Carmen had had a massage the night before -- like many pilgrims, her feet and back had begun to bother her.

Sarria is big city compared to the other stops we have made. And it is the important starting point for many pilgrims wanting to walk 100 km to Santiago to get the ´´compostella´´ and to gain the partial indulgence -- wiping out time in purgatory for sins committed on earth. Suddenly we see many more Americans and the camino starts to seem a bit crowded.

As we head out of Sarria and are soon in a country lane, we come upon a group of bicyclists crowded around a lone Asian woman. The poor woman speaks a little English and some Spanish, and the Spanish cyclists have gathered she can not walk anymore. One of them has a cellphone and calls for an ambulance. About 3 minutes later an ambulance shows on the highway above the lane -- John grabs the woman´s pack, runs up the lane to flag the ambulance down and one of the cyclists cycles up also. As the ambulance pulls off the highway and into the start of the lane, we walk with the woman up to the ambulance-- I ask her in Spanish where she is from. She is from Korea and had started in Roncevalles -- she has walked a long way already. She started with a group and we all surprised, including the cyclists, that no one from her group stayed with her to make sure she was ok. The medics took everything in hand and we continued on.

The country lanes are lovely -- there are more chestnut groves and oak trees with acorns. Some of the acorns fall on Alberto and John as they talking about women -- the nature gods are speaking!

At the Church in Barbadelo, we stop, get a sello, and I light a candle. The person in charge of giving us the sello for our passports, tells us that this church is unique in Spain because the access to the bell tower is inside the church, not outside. Another pilgrim enters as we leave, and suddenly we hear singing. She has lit a candle and is standing in front of the altar singing a beautiful hymn in German - a capella.

Today we see lots of sheeps, crows, and there are raspberries for sale along the road -- a must buy!

This area has lots of hunting reserves and we have run into lots of hunting parties with they dogs at cafes and bars along the way. We also meet two American women from California -- one , Amy, works in the juvenile justice system, the other is on the faculty of Antioch College, Susan. More about them later.

The day was not too long and we get into Portomarin and find a room easily. Sometimes we stay in hostals, which are not hostels, they are hotels with-without bath in the room, or in pensiones -- also with-without bath, and in refugios privadas which are more spartan and cheaper. Usually a room with a bath is 30 to 40 euros. Breakfast is running about 3 euros for coffee and a pastry or toast.

The church in Portomarin is famous for being built like a fortress -- Romanesque style -- with crenellated towers. It is open when we arrive, so look for a hotel. When we come back, it is closed. Then suddenly the doors open. There are German pilgrims sitting on the steps -- John and I go up the steps and into the church. The interior is much lighter and brighter than most stone churches of this type -- and we also find the old stone painting we had read about. A man appears at the back of the church and it seems as if he wants to lock up. We had managed to slip in with a German tour group who had special permission to open the church after hours. Another miracle on the Camino?

Outside the church, we ran into the solidly-built fast walking pilgrim from Ponferrada -- we said buen camino and started to chat. He turned out to be a doctor from Lodz, Poland -now working in pharmaceuticals and it was fun to talk about my Polish grandparents and Polish culture. Robert also has been walking on weekends parts of the Camino routes they are rediscovering in Poland. There was once a route from Kiev to Santiago.

Alberto and Carmen are staying in an albergue -- some are municipal, some run by the Catholic church, some are private -- and they are essentially like youth hostels with bunkbeds and often with kitchens for cooking, and facilities for doing laundry, internet, etc. They have invited us to eat at the albergue with them -- but the albergue conveniently had no dishes or pans. Apparently it was their way of getting pilgrims to eat at their cafe. So a bunch of us headed for a restaurant.

Tomorow will be a long day -- so we end early.