Redondela

We started early and it was tuff going. We walk steeply up for a long time. Then without really having any leveling we walked down very steeply indeed. This is more difficult. Walking down hill uses entirely different muscles in my legs and hips. Wow, I discovered parts I didn’t know I had. We see the vista of the valley below. We see open water, a bay, a town and across the bay more city. It is really amazing to see so much from the top of this small mountain. But we get this treat now at the top.



Eric is an energetic walker and I know I slow him down. I just keep putting one foot in front of the other. He stops to take pictures of flowers, of unusual doors, or cats sitting in windows, of gardens just being planted. He always says, “Just keep walking, I’ll catch up with you”. And he does.



Once I had a deck of cards called “52 Things to do Before You Die”. Well, today was that day I finally had to do something from that deck of cards, poop in the woods. We were in the middle of nowhere. Forest lined the road on either side. I took my little spade we brought just for this purpose and find a private place. Eric gave me some pointers, guess he’s got some experience.



Well, the branch he advised me to sit on broke, I finished my business, I covered it up with my spade and slid down onto the track where I left Eric waiting for me. What do you know? There are a dozen or more fellow pilgrims all talking to Eric at once in Spanish as I saunter out of the forest, spade in hand.



They were some sort of girls school having a Spring Break outting. Well, I tell myself, act natural, just be casual. Introductions happen. Everyone is discrete.

Well that went as smoothly as can be espected.



So they sped on ahead and we begin again at our own pace. However, they stopped for lunch and we caught up to them again. So we began to talk and Eric is doing a splended job of translating and speaking Spanish. He requests I pull out our little purple album of pictures of our children. So I do a show-and-tell about each or our kids, their ages, their educations, their siginificant others, there children, their jobs etc. Afterward, everyone claps and Eric and I take a little bow. It was fun.



We saw our first ancient Roman Marker. They are big round rocks about 4 ft . high. They have writing in Latin on them and they guided the military on their campaigns. We knew they were around since we entered Spain , but this is the first one we actually saw.



To put my hand on the old carvings kind of gives me goose bumps. It’s like someone chipped away at this rock for months to make it round and write on it and then millions have passed it on their way to wars and wedding and festivals and to market. Slaves have passed on their way to be bought or sold at the destinations where these markers lead. Animals have labored to pull heavy carts with these stones to be installed. If this stone could talk, what atrosities or blessedness has passed it. Flashes of days gone by seem to run up my hand as I feel the chipped surface. It’s a trip, truly.



We walked through the back roads of small villages and forests. We merge with larger streets with lots of construction going on. The dust stings our eyes. There’s lots of traffic and we have trouble finding the path markers at times.



When we got to the abergue the manager put all the girls on one side and us on the other so we had privacy. Nice. We are right next to the heater, my favorite place to be. And the mens restroom is on our side, and since Eric is the only man for the night, we have a private bathroom as well. Wow, how do we luck out?



Eric said he feels like he’s getting sick. So early to bed, Echineacia, and Epson Salts. It would be unfortunate to get sick.



I saw a sign by the check-in desk from a local school asking if any pilgrims wanted to come to the school and speak English to the children. So we decided if Eric felt well in the morning, we would call the number. And so to sleep.



The next morning I got down from our bunk and landed on both feet. We had choosen the top bunk because I had a bad bump on the back of my head from being on the bottom bunk. However, these bunks at the abergues are made for monkeys. When I landed, something happened to the inside of my left knee. It really hurt and walking was difficult. However, the walk must go on.



We called the number of the school and Eric talked to a nice teacher named Beatriz. She invited us to come to the school and gave us the directions. We walked to the school which had 400 children ages 8 to 12.



We spoke with five groups of about 30 to 50 children each. They came prepared with interesting questions. They asked about how we felt about President Obama. They asked us how old we were, How tall we were. How many years we’d been married. Where we were from. What are favorite food was. What were our names,



Eric had a fun time having them guess how many kids we had. Some of them we showed all our children’s pictures to. Other groups we talked about the geography of where we had flown to get to Portugal . They asked why we were walking the Camino. They wanted to know what our favorite sports team was, and what our favorite sport was. Just all sorts of things.



We were very popular, joking and asking them questions too. Everybody wanted to shake our hands and they all clapped for us at the end. We stayed at the school talking to kids until 2:00. Then we were treated to a lunch of authentic Spanish food at a very nice restaurant donated by one of the children’s parents. We had octopus, savory and tender. I really liked it. Now we got a big surprise!