Day III: Rio Alto -> Anha; 19.0mi.

Total: 50.4mi.

🛏:

This morning, I woke up in our rustic little tent, thing, listened to the rainfall outdoors and watched my friend bandage her torn up feet. I hobbled out of bed and pulled out my rain gear and in that moment, I remembered all of the reasons I said I’d never do something like this again right around day three or four of my last trip.

My feet are faring fairly well this time around, probably thanks to the fact that I have finally accepted that I have wide feet and should purchase shoes accordingly (thanks, Keens). I don’t have the awful blisters on my pinky toes that I developed early on last year; just a tiny painless bubble on the bottom of my left foot. That being said, what I lack in foot pain I’ve made up for in my perpetual achy lower back and right hip pain. I’d take the blisters any day.

I digress, as we stepped out of our yellow and green tent, the drizzle turned into a mist and before too long we were stopping to take our rain gear off entirely.

Our first stop of the day was at the cutest little breakfast cafe in the first town we came across. There, we ran into a Hungarian man who we had eaten dinner with the night before, he is a physical therapist and a massage therapist. As we sat down with him, the cafe owner ran over to our table with rocks he had just hand painted for each member of our group and he instructed us to give them two minutes to dry before taking our order.

“The best latte in Portugal,” he said as he set down my friends coffees a few moments later.

We didn’t make it far from the cafe, when one of my friends decided she needed to re-bandage her foot. “How long will it take?” our Hungarian friend asked her. She replied five minutes and the next thing we knew, he had thrown his backpack down and laid his sleeping pad, which in that moment doubled as a massage table, on the sidewalk. He gave each of us a two or three minute massage as we waited.

The day continued on along the coast, over cobblestone and past branches of grape vines hanging in the trail. We talked of religion and our families and work, amongst other things, to pass the miles (or kilometers, rather).

I’ve tried to make it a point to minimize how much I bring up, and compare, my last trip to this one, but it is proving to be difficult and here is something I will say: I realized today that the majority of my trail family (“framily”) last camino, aside from an Israeli, Slovenian and German, spoke English as their native language. All of my other close friends were American, British, Irish and Australian and I took that for granted.

Despite a few pitiful years of high school German, my three German friends (and our Hungarian friend when present) have all catered to my limitations and speak English so that I can partake in the conversation. I find it so generous and kind of them. At times, they default to German temporarily and I can pick up on a word here and there, or general themes, but I can by no means hold a conversation in German or in any other foreign language and I am acutely aware of that here, where I am surrounded by multi-linguists. It is humbling to say the least.

The albergue (hostel) we eventually stumbled upon was not in any of our guidebooks and we were lucky to find it – it is one of the most comfortable and inviting places I have stayed in my travels. Our company here is an Australian man, a woman originally from Chili who now lives in Sweden and a woman originally from France who now lives in Germany. We all quickly befriended each other and after hand-washing our laundry agreed to walk to dinner together. The problem with this plan is that the little town we’re spending the night in doesn’t have a nearby restaurant.

Again, I’ll bring up my last Camino to say that on that trip I prided myself on the fact that I went an entire month of my adult life without getting in a motorized vehicle. That record went out the door tonight as the seven of us piled into a taxi to head to dinner a few miles away.

It was delicious with delightful conversation and exceptional company and I wouldn’t change anything about today.

🎒:

Okay, one more thing about last camino vs this camino (for this post). I brought along electrolyte powder to put in this cute little lightweight water bottle a good friend recently gave me. I drink a bottle with a full serving each day and it has been a life-saver in terms of feelings of dehydration, particularly muscle cramps. Oh, and, it’s delicious which enhances the sort of okay tap water here, 10/10 (sugar free and found at Natural Grocers).

🎶: Day 3 of no headphones. If you know me, you know how abnormal this is for me. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.