Day 30: Pintín to A Pena (Wendy)

We did it! We went through Sarria today and on to the 100 km marker. 

We are now officially in the very last stage of the Camino. 

Sarria is where 50% of the peregrinos start. We expected the town and path to be super crowded, so we’ve stayed off-stage, stopping in little towns and villages between the main stopovers. I was mentally preparing myself for a huge shift in energy after the idyllic past two days we’ve spent walking basically alone through gorgeous countryside with lovely weather. Instead, we had been on the road for nearly 5 hours before we saw more than one or two pilgrims on the path with us. Today was much like the last two days with quiet walking through pastures along wide, tree-lined paths and across little streams.

The other thing we had heard and read is that because of the influx of pilgrims, the Camino after Sarria was very well supported. I’ve come to think of “well-supported” to mean that every village of any size, even the one-streeters, will have a bar/restaurant at the beginning of town and usually at least one more, a little market or shop of some kind, and usually a farmacia. We rarely if ever need to walk off the Camino to stock up on supplies or grab a coffee and sandwich.

That was not our experience today at all. First, we were actually leaving Sarria when we realized they were not going to walk us past anything other than a million albergues, a cafe or two, and the requisite churches. We ended up backtracking and turning off the Camino a bit to get the pharmacy and grocery supplies we needed.

And we definitely needed them. For the last three days, the “villages” are more like little farms, where we walk around horse and cow manure down the middle of the main street. We literally watched a boy on a bicycle herding the cows home past the window while we were having a cerveza and patatas bravas yesterday in the hostel bar. No shops, no cafes, and  if there is an albergue, there’s usually only one, maybe two max. And since we’re late in the season, they are closing down around us. 

One of the primary apps we’re using had marked the hostel we’re staying at tonight (very lovely) as “closed for the season” when we looked last night. In a bit of a panic, we reached back out to confirm we still had the reservations we’d made a few days prior. Because if we could not stay here, we would either need to go back a few stops or make a long day of it into the next “big” town that has more than one hostel. Luckily, while they are getting ready to close soon, they warmly greeted us today.

For lunch, we weren’t quite ready to eat when we passed an open albergue with a bar/restaurant around noon. We’d spent longer than we’d hoped in Sarria (see backtracking story above) and wanted to get a few kms behind us before we stopped again. We’d previewed the route and saw that there was a little village every few kms. No problem, we thought. We’ll just grab our tortilla and Coca-Cola Zero/Kas Naranja at the next little place.

Wrong move. After passing through several farms (let’s not even pretend they are villages anymore), we finally stopped and ate some of the food we’d bought in Sarria while sitting in front of an albergue with bar/restaurant that had closed for the season. 

While we ate, we chatted with the first Filipinos we’ve met on the Camino, a couple from Manila who are Catholic so doing the Camino as a devotion before they head to Toulouse in 5 days for their son’s choral performance. This was their first day on the Camino and already he was carrying her daypack strapped to his chest, with his own pack on his back. Even loaded down, he was whizzing past us and leaving his wife far behind. We tried to not come on too strong with advice as Camino old-timers. But we did suggest he may want to consider pacing himself a bit. We didn’t see them again the rest of the day, so perhaps he took some of our hard-earned Camino wisdom.

Five more days until Santiago!