Wednesday, April 17

Today we walked from Monasterio de Oseira to A Laxe, 29 km, 18 miles. We set out to walk 12 yet, it didn’t work out that way and tomorrow we will have less!! Several have injuries though and general fatigue has set in. Our group tries to stay together as a general rule so over the course of each day several stops ensue and we are usually getting into our accommodations around 5:00, making for a long day, a short window for washing chores and mostly just enough time for a meal. This day we JUST missed an incredible down pour once checking into the government “Xunta” hostel that is newly remodeled and looks and feels like a ski chalet.

And a very cool thing – there is a restaurant in town that was willing to take our pilgrim meal (an inexpensive 3 course dinner) orders over the phone and deliver back to our albergue. It ended up being a grand communal breaking of bread with our twelve, Damion from London (but born in Jamaica) who we have walked with the last two days, Jacque and Joanne from Montreal, Isabelle from France and the Portuguese couple – Luis and Rosa – those last five having been a part of our Camino since we started on this Via de la Plata route. And the food was wonderful, too! The restaurateur brought all the serving ware and even brought the soup in a pot! Great times!!

It rained so hard all night long it sounded as if the roof would crash in on us!!