October 13, 2023
We awoke to the sound of rain outside of humble pensión and the restaurante/bar was closed when we emerged at 7am. But just across the street was the Bar “Anyonymous” and we quickly went over to check it out. The croissants and coffee were just what we wanted.
We got on our rain gear, not yet tested during this trip. Alice has some new high tech fabric pants from Taiwan, so her normal pants are also her rain pants, and they kept her dry. I on the other hand, also tried rain pants, but it was like a sauna . I took them off after a few miles. Then it was raincoat for Alice and poncho for me for the upper body, as well as waterproof elastic sacs for the back packs
It was dark for the first 40 minutes, so we wore headlamps. The official camino went right in front of our pensión so we followed the signs, but easy to miss them in the dark. Fortunately my back up GPS map helped to get us back on the track a couple of times.
The camino was generally following highway 552, but kept ascending and descending the nearby hills to try to keep close to the hightway. we finally decided to cut over to the highway and get a direct, shorter route down to the ocean front.
The route I chose was a gentle curving street down to the waterfront. The rain became much heavier. People saw us walking and pointed or yelled to help us to stay on track. After about 11 km we came to a nice bar-restaurant where we had a a nice second breakfast. As we were stepping out into the rain, an Asian woman was stepping into the restaurant and both Alice and Yuki were excited to find another Asian. They chatted for several miles until we had to split in different directions.
We continued into the city, which turned out to be very crowded and confusing for navigating. I had trouble following Google maps due to the GPS getting confused with tall building. The monumental traffic circles had 7 or 8 streets heading out and we took the wrong one. We did many unnecessary zig zags. Eventually I got on track. The rain slowed, then stopped, and we made it to our hotel.
After a quick rest and shower, we got out to a local restaurant for some seafood that was excellent.
There were many tourists in town despite the rain. A musican played and instrument that looks like a bagpipe. It’s called a gaita de fol.
We had a nice hotel right in the center of the old town along the water front. It was nice having a view of the cathedral and the rest of the old town, but the rain was less inviting.
The gaita de fol sounds very similar to bagpipes.
We were tired and the rain seemed to be setting in for the rest of the day. It’s a good day to rest up and heal up. Alice has some horrible looking bedbug bites. The 15 km day had turned into 20 km due to unavoidable errors.