Vilalba to Carballero
Distance: 17.8 miles (28.6 kilometers-we have less than 100km left!)
Total Ascent: 110 meters
Difficulty: 2
Calories Burned: 3,321
I’m convinced that I’ve gotten quite lazy on this Camino. For the second time this week, I’ve slept in past 8am. Where do I think I am, the Four Seasons?
Andrew and I had a slow morning today because we thought that we were only going to walk 20 km. There was a good rural hotel that Isidro (our favorite Pension host) recommended in the town of Baamonde, and we wanted to heed is suggestion. But upon further investigation, this hotel was 20 km out of the way and required a private car to come pick us up today and then drop us back off on the Camino tomorrow morning. I’m planning to get an early start tomorrow, and want to be hiking by 6am, and since Andrew likes to have breakfast, we were planning to start the day separately.
On top of scheduling snafus, we have been overwhelmed with the beauty of Galicia. Not only are the farms and rolling hills and tree-lined paths the most beautiful we’ve seen all month, but the weather has been absolutely breathtaking. The sun has never been brighter. The birds songs never sweeter. We are smitten.
And finally, we saw a marker telling us that we have less than 100km left to reach Santiago, and we are (for lack of a more appropriate term) freaking pumped.
So…we decided to keep on hiking to get a head start on tomorrow (we are about to embark on two very hairy 40km days). But along the way today, we met James, a ginger Brit with a sense of humor and conservative view on love and relationships (but an "In" vote for the Brexit). We chatted him right into Baamonde, where we ran into Tom, an Irishman we met a few days ago, and his cast of characters collected along his Camino. We stopped to have one, or two, or three beers and some hamburguesas, and then we were off.
The last 10 kilometers went quickly as we made friends with some locals to bum some cold water, and we landed in a very quaint and clean private rural albergue, Witericus, for the night.
We are convinced that tomorrow should bring good conversation for our long trek, and we are happy to embrace our new peregrino friends.
