Palas de Rei, 5;20pm

Ah....back at the blog. :) I was sad to not be able to make an entry yesterday but we were sorely misled by our guidebook.  It said the place we were planning on staying at had full facilities which usually includes kitchen and internet, but sadly, it had neither.  We went quite light yesterday as the day before was quite intense, and decided to stay in a smaller town. But I was a little stir crazy not being able to connect to the rest of the world.  There´s only so many times you can play Crazy 8´s and Go Fish! 

Today we decided to get up early again and make up some extra kms.  We made the decision a couple of days ago that we want to go further to the West coast edge of Spain, called Finisterre(literally "the end of the earth" .  It´s an optional 3 day add-on and it´s supposed to be beautiful, but basically means we will end on the beach and will give us about 5 days of R n R before Italy.  So yes, we are crazy and did another 45km today.  We were hurting a bit.  Mentally, physically and emotionally, it was a taxing day.  It all began first thing in the AM with the dogs...

To give you a bit of background, last night a girl at our hostel told us how she was bit by a dog earlier that day, and she had heard about another woman too.  The path weaves through all these little villages where, for the most part, peoples´ pets lie in the streets.  I had walked by dozens of them in the prior days with no issue whatsoever.  As we left the hostel this morning, based on what I had heard I thought, "I hope we don´t see any dogs."  Sure enough, 10 mins later, we walk by a property and two huge snarling, barking, teeth-baring dogs come out of nowhere.  I panicked a bit but Stephen calmly instructed me to keep walking and they fortunately did not follow us.  My heart nearly jumped out of my chest.  I had already had bad dreams last night so I was a bit freaked out for a while. 

As for the cow patties, they were like landmines today.  It was hard not to step on them!  They were everywhere on the path today.  We have entered Galicia, which is a region of Spain with a Celtic connection.  Very lush and green, lots of stone walls and gates, makes me think of what parts of Ireland must look like.  And it smelled like manure the whole day...lovely.

We are now in Palas de Rei and we are about 60 or so kms from Santiago.   3 more days! And then another 3 to Finisterre. We got a private room today at a woodsy cabin-type hotel called La Cabana, that is really nice.  Treated ourselves again.  And you will be happy to know that we are going to take our time and sleep in the rest of our journey.  Light days from here on out :)

Well, time to rest.  I am grateful to be sitting down right now!

xo,

Andrea & Stephen