March 9 – We slept in until 8am. After dressing for the Camino, we checked out of our hotel and then went around the Fort to take pictures. I can officially say I have slept in a Fort in Portugal. 😊

Then we had breakfast before leaving the Fort. I ate my thirteenth pastel de nata with my coffee and Karen her sixth. Kudos to her for trying to keep up. She truly tried her best.

Finding our way out of the Fort was the same by just following the yellow arrows. The exit was at the back of the Fort.

After saying our last goodbyes to Fortaleza Portugal, we made our way to Spain which is only a bridge away. You see, Valença and Tui is only separated by the river Minho and the metal bridge over it connects the two cities. One side Portugal and the other Spain.

We celebrated walking into Spain by having a drink at the Parador Tui and getting a stamp there.

The weather for walking this day was not much different from the others past. Rain and no rain so on so forth. We put on our ponchos and then took it off when we felt we did not need it. Then later we would put them on when the drizzle started again. That was our only real work for the day, “poncho on poncho off then poncho on poncho off”. Reminds me of the Karate Kid “wax on wax off”. LOL.

This day was normal enough for us until about 9 kms into our walk.

We encountered flooded out Camino roads. The flooding is due to a storm that had just passed through Galicia. I admit we did not know how to traverse the wet road due to thigh high deep water covering our Camino Path on the roads that were next to engorged river and streams.

There was definitely real danger for two segments of the way. The first one was helped nicely by someone who made an ingenious tiny bridge to help people get across the flooded road. I have Karen to thank for taking pictures of my heart pounding feat of crossing this makeshift bridge.

I made it safely across and met this lovely Spanish lady shortly after.

The second flooded road was so deep and there was no bridge to help us. We did have Karen’s Camino Angel in the form of three other pilgrims who had just crossed. They told us what to do. We literally had to take off our boots, gather them onto our arms, roll up our pants, put on our sandals and wade through the high water.

We made it safe and sound. We celebrated our adventures with 2 Kas Limons, a Large Vegetal Bocadillo and tasted part of a shared potato tortilla with our pilgrim angels.

After lunch, we walked for about half hour in the industrial route (we chose a new path to avoid flooded woodland roads) when Karen made an executive decision and called us a taxi to take us to our hostel. A very wise and commendable decision due to the lateness of hour in the day. She did not want to be walking in the dark on the industrial roads.

Later this evening, we were told by another pilgrim whose name is Daniel that he fell right into the water and was thoroughly soaked walking into the same hostel we chose to stay for the night.

We stayed at the Senda Sur hostel that newly opened only March 1 of this year.

We are warned of the same or maybe worsening conditions for tomorrow’s walk to our next town onwards. Not sure what we are going to do yet.

You will have to find out in my next post. LOL

Keep well Calgary! Much love from Spain!

March 8 – I got up absolutely cold today. There was only the one small heater in our room. It is an old stone house so no central heat. Lol. I am on the Camino so must take this situation in stride and adjust my attitude to fit. I am thankful that I had a roof over my head and a blanket to keep warm. Truly what else could a pilgrim ask for?

We headed out at 8 am. There was a slight drizzle in the morning at the start but after that we had a fabulous cool walking day. We came upon one incredible view after another. I loved walking on this day. We walked on some Roman roads again today.

Karen ate her fourth pastel de nata. I don’t think she will be able to eat twelve before we leave Portugal. I must give her credit for trying.

I took pictures of flowers again. Springtime here for sure.

I even came upon a real mistletoe tree growing in someone’s front yard.

FATIMA AND SANTIAGO CAMINOs:

They share the same route part of the way. We often encounter pilgrims going our way in the opposite direction. They are the our Lady of Fatima Pilgrims. They follow the blue arrows instead of the yellow ones and often times they just follow the yellow arrows in reverse if the blue ones are not available. Here’s one where they were both on the same post.

Camino distance markers:

Only 135 kms to go. Excited and sad at the same time. Excited that we will finish soon and sad that our Camino adventure must end at Santiago.

We arrived at the Fortaleza in Valença at around 4;30pm. Our accommodations are within the fortified walls of Valença.

We could have walked over to Tui Spain this night but I chose to stay one more night in Portugal as I love this country and its people. I highly recommend that if you are planning to visit at least one country in Europe, make it Portugal. You will love it as I do. 💕

For dinner, we did not cook this night but opted for a fancy dinner with white table linen service.

Tomorrow we begin the next stage of the Camino from Tui Spain. We will take pictures of the Fort here in the daylight and will upload the pics hopefully with the next post.

Have a wonderful night or as they say in Spain ‘Bueno Noches’. We will begin to practice our very basic Spanish and probably use our limited French to supplement. No more English unlike in Portugal. No matter as it will be a beautiful experience as well.

There were no pictures of the actual 400 metres of difficult climb as all hands were on deck to keep from falling. She has some pics where we were close to climbing. These pics are tame, of course. LOL. 😂

March 7 – We woke up early this morning. We believed we have a game plan for going to Rubiães today. There were two options. One was to take a bus straight to Rubiães from Ponte De Lima. The other option is to take a bus to Labruja and then walk 8 to 9 kms to Rubiães. I was told by a couple of locals that both options would bypass the Beast. I opted for the second option as the Labuja bus would leave at 10am whereas the first option would leave at 1:30pm. We have been building our stamina and we felt walking under 10 kms today would be nothing.

This would also allow us to check out the medieval plus Roman bridge at Ponte De Lima before catching the Labruja bus at 10am.

After breakfast at the hostel, we walked to the bridge. The Roman bridge was built in the first Century and the Medieval in the fourteenth century. We were informed that they built the latter bridge because the river changed its flow and required a new bridge for the town to function. However they did not destroy the older bridge and just built an attaching new bridge to it. It just became a longer bridge.

Here are the photos:

Medieval Bridge Pics

Roman bridge is attached to Medieval Bridge. Here are the pics.

Two bridges as one. Before and while visiting the bridges we took photos of all other items of interest as much as possible.

After the picture photo op time, we returned to the hostel and took the bus to Labruja. The bus station was just behind the hostel so we thought this is a good sign that we have made a good choice. Furthermore, there was no rain for today. Another blessing indeed!

The bus tickets to Labruja only cost us €2.20 each. We arrived in Labruja at 10:40am. Once we exited the bus at our stop, we don our backpacks and took our poles. We followed the yellow arrows once again.

Here’s our starting point:

The walk started decent enough.

Then things started to change for us after a short period of time. We found we were not descending but ascending. The ascend was steep and at one point I handed Karen (who was ahead of me) my poles as I needed to use my bare hands to properly climb. I don’t have many pics of the ascend but Karen’s camera may have some. I will load these in next post.

Well folks you guessed it correctly. God has been with us all along and has an incredible funny sense of humour. We had inadvertently chosen the option that included having to climb the Beast without knowing it. LOL. My local source of information may have interpreted that I wanted to started my walk at the beginning of the climb instead of bypassing it.

It was tough and the blessing we had here is that it did not rain this day so the rocks on the ascend and descend were not too slippery.

Here’s the view from the top of the Beast:

We DID it. Yes it was very challenging on the incline but the real lesson here for me is that it was the fear itself that was the most frightening not the actual feat. A good lesson indeed. I shall remember this now for any future situations that I may perceive to be difficult. Thank you God for this humbling lesson! 😂 🙏😇😄😉.

The rest of the Way was super easy now. There was one somewhat difficult descend but we had our poles to help so all was well.

Here are the rest of pics until we reached Rubiães. Spring flowers, dogs, fellow pilgrims and farms. DOBs in pics here. Lol. Too lazy for another segment.

We reached Rubiães and stayed at Ninho hostel and once again cooked dinner for our pilgrim family for this night. Until my next post, keep well Calgary.

March 6 – We left Casa Fernanda right after breakfast. Fernanda prepared breakfast for all of us. The hospitality is great here.

After breakfast we head out the door and we took a picture of our departure with Fernanda’s five dogs behind us. Just a mini DOB in this picture. The sun was out. This was a great start.

We headed to Ponte De Lima. It will be an easy walk. Just 15 mins into the walk we encountered this milestone marking how far we had walked and how many more kms left to Santiago De Compostela. We have 171.3 kms to go.

Here are the rest of the photos from our walk today. We also encountered a nice Portuguese lady who gave us oranges straight off her tree in her front yard. Here she is.

We did get lost right outside Facha and ended up at the statue of Saint John (S. João).

Again Karen’s Camino Angel put us back on track and we got on the right way to Ponte De Lima.

It was a wonderful picturesque walk. Views were breathtaking. We came across an altar to Santiago too.

We even walked on Roman roadways today.

Prior to reaching our destination today, we played at an outdoor gym.

Here are our food pictures on the way:

I took a picture of me putting my feet up and resting them for a bit.

We reached Ponte De Lima and took the following pics. You can see the new and the old medieval bridges in the pics. We will go see the old one closely tomorrow morning as part of it was built in Roman times.

We chose to stay at the Old Village Hostel for this night and cook our supper.

We shared our supper with three other pilgrims from Germany.

Only one DOB today:

Tomorrow we will go on to Rubieas. We will encounter the Beast. The locals call their vertical hill this name because it’s difficult to climb. It’s real name is Alto Da Portela Grande. We don’t know what we will do yet. You will have to find out on my next post. LOL. 😂

We walked 17.5 kms today to get to our hostel. FYI only.

Boa Noite Calgary!

March 5 – We had stayed at the Barcelos Way Guesthouse and checked out at around 9am right after breakfast. Once again we ate well before heading out.

Oh, I have to tell you the following. I tried drying my liner socks the night before and it was not a good idea. Here’s how I did it. I had used a hair dryer. I must have been so tired that I forgot I was drying synthetics. Look what I did.

Yes, I burnt holes into my sock. I now have two and a half pairs of sock liners. Thank goodness I am still good.

It was raining again when we left Barcelos. Remember how Karen brought our trekking poles to Lisbon. Well, I had a brilliant idea. Yes this one was good. We each lightened our Backpacks by half the weight by packing the things we don’t need yet into the foldable IKEA bag. We engaged Tuitran (backpack taxi) to transport this one bag to our next accommodation in Lugar Do Corgo. We chose to stay at Casa Fernanda on this night. It is a Donativo Lodging which meant we pay what we think is fair.

On our way to Lugar do Corgo, the walk was both wet and dry. It rained intermittently throughout.

We took several breaks on this day to ensure we are still enjoying the walk.

I also took a picture of our view for lunch st Sr Da Lapa.

Karen is eating meat again. She says the beef was tough and she would have preferred the omelette instead. I don’t mind her eating meat at restaurants. However, she knows that we have to be vegetarians when we cook. LOL.

After lunch, Karen indulged in a third pastel de nata in the Portuguese fashion with a couple of dashes of cinnamon on top.

We arrived at Lugar de Corgo at a decent hour. Fernanda and her husband Jacinto are wonderful hosts. She cooked dinner for 10 Pilgrims (pictures of food below sans meat but there was chicken apart from what is pictured here) and then they both entertained us after. It was like a family partying, singing and drinking. Of course Karen and I did not drink but it was a great experience nonetheless. A German pilgrim even played the guitar for us.

It was a cold night but I slept well with a toque. Karen also had a good night in spite of a cold room.

DOB for March 5:

Hello everyone. Not every Camino are alike. I know this from the start. I would like to insert this observation segment onto my blog every so often when I can. I call it exactly as the title says.

This is where I will share my observations of the blessings I receive and the moments where I bless the accounts I perceive to require them. Hopefully the former surpasses the latter in a big way. It is my perception only hence my own judgement of what is a blessing or not but I wanna record them nonetheless. You will see this title inserted if warranted every so often in between my journey blog to Santiago.

Blessings

When we appear to be lost, things or people appear out of nowhere and put us on track. Saves us time. Though we are never lost between towns and cities for this Camino is well signed. However, within the big cities it is a slightly different story and it does take some good navigation skills to read our maps.

We also meet people who gives us good advice on what to do aside from directions.

The following is an account of some blessings.

– in Porto, we meet two kind gentlemen pilgrims who recommended ponchos from Decathlon. We did not even consider such an item as we have our own rain gear but now that we have bought them and used them we are grateful for their advice.

– another pilgrim who had passed us a long time ago appears in front of us and points us in the right direction within the city when we could not find an arrow.

– no one in sight at a roundabout but a local suddenly appears and gives us a hand by pointing us to the correct turn at the circle

– cannot find our accommodations and I step in dog poo right in front of it. LOL. This is a blessing though some may disagree.

– some cars would pass us and honk with thumbs up wishing us ‘Bom Caminho”. I call this a blessing as it gives me a warm feeling to know that we are supported by some of the Portuguese locals.

Blessing some accounts

In Lisbon and Porto, pickpockets are a big problem. When we ride the transit you can see the locals hugging their belongings to avoid being pickpocketed. Karen and I have secured our important stuff and hid them from view. We have been vigilant and take our cues by observing the locals. Possibly from the heightened awareness, I have felt my zipped up pocket unzipped and my bag touched in a searching motion. Nothing was taken as I had not placed any valuables in sight. I bless these accounts by seeing Christ within them and trust that Divinity will provide for them by alleviating their circumstances so they do not have to continue their unfortunate profession. Lord hear my prayer!

That’s all for now folks. I hope to blog as much as possible or rather as much as I get Wifi. LOL.

Until next time, keep warm and well. 💕💕💕

–

March 4 – We began early in the morning on this day with a rainbow in sight.

A good omen for our “way”. It meant the rain stopped and we can at least start our journey without getting soaked. On the beginning stage, the views were breathtaking as the sun rose and unveiled the lovely countryside.

Though we were dry in the morning, the offset to this was that we had to walk on muddy roads.

I tried washing the mud off my shoes on any stream of water when I could but it just gets caked again. A futile exercise. Lol. 😆

The road does get better.

Along the way, we see altars dedicated to St. James and Mother Mary. The people here take their Catholic faith seriously.

Gertrude (68 years) from Germany who is walking alone walked with us until our planned destination for today. Barcelos is our ending town on this stage.

We visited the so called famous Antonio’s Pedro Furada Restaurante for our morning coffee break. Oh, we encountered the ‘King’ today. Antonio the owner must be an Elvis fan. He wasn’t here to confirm this.

We continued on after our break. I found a project that Miki and I can work on in the summer. We can recycle plastic soda bottles and make the following. What do you think, Miki? Wanna do this?

I think it is genius. 😉

Karen found something else that has now become her thing to do on the Camino. She takes pictures of road signs marking our entry into the towns on our path.

I think that’s noteworthy to inform us how much longer we have to walk and ensures that we don’t take a wrong path. Though I have to say it is almost impossible to get lost on the Camino Portuguese as the roads are well marked for the Pilgrims.

An outdoor gym:

We reached Barcelos at around 2pm thereabouts.

The Peregrino Meal is very cheap in Portugal. Only € 5. In Spain it is € 10. Karen took a break from vegetarianism this one time so that I may see what the difference is from the Pilgrim’s Menu in Spain.

The three of us tried the said meal at the Cantinho Do Peregrino and our pictures are below. Vegetable soup first then the main course and a drink of our choice included. I have a new obsession to replace pastel de nata. Now, it is Pedras Limao which is a slightly sweetened carbonated lemon drink. I have been ordering this at least once every day since we began our Camino.

I took a picture with owners of the restaurant. Quid Pro Quo as they took one of us which will appear on their Facebook or marketing website.

DOB time. Portuguese people love their dogs.

We walked 15 kms yesterday and 15 again today. We hope to do 18 kms tomorrow. Let’s see what happens.

202 kms left to travel. Almost one fifth of the way completed. Still a long ways to go! 😂

March 3 – our second day on the way of St.James. We began this stage at Vila do Conde and our plan was to reach Sao Pedro De Rates. Hopefully you will enjoy my telling of our adventure.

We began once again with breakfast but this time we had it at a Portuguese Panaderia that served coffee and sell bread to the locals.

I enjoyed my first sip of actual Portuguese coffee outside a hostel or guest house. Karen is an avid tea drinker but made the exception today and tasted coffee with me. She liked it.

Picture of Panderia below. By the way, they call breads Pao here. Sounds like Chinese but it means bread to the Portuguese.

Right after breakfast, off we went on our path feeling fresh and excited. Karen and I took some pictures of what we saw on this stage of our Camino.

The views were nice and we walked with two of the perigrinas from last night for a very short part in the beginning.

The two ladies are younger and soon they were off on their brisk ways while we took our own sweet time.

The following pictures shows the towns’ signs on our way to Sao Pedro De Rates.

Karen enjoyed her second Pastel De Nata on this stage. She has 10 more to go to catch up to me.

At lunchtime we found a nice picnic spot in a tiny park dedicated to a doctor who serviced the community in the area for 50 years. Lunch was a mish mosh of yesterday’s dinner leftovers and fruit.

It wasn’t all rosy today. There were moments of danger on this walk. We actually had to share the road with fast drivers. There wasn’t any side curb to walk on. Cars zip by in inches from us. We had to be watchful to ensure we did not get hit by passing cars. Here is one picture of the type of road we walked on today. See what I mean.

We made it to Sao Pedro De Rates by 2:45pm.

DOB for today consists of a mean (he barked at me angrily and I felt he would have jumped onto me if it weren’t for the high wall) blond retriever and a tiny cute toy mongrel. I don’t know what kind of dog it is. Here is the strange part. I thought the people it was with were the owners. They said he was a stray who followed them and they don’t know why.

The Albergue at Sao Pedro De Rates has the coolest stamps that I have seen thus far.

Once again we cooked at this Albergue and the pilgrims have identified Karen as the chef in this two woman team. LOL. We had bean soup and pan fried wonder bread. The following picture is our peregrine family for dinner as they enjoyed Karen’s cooking.

Good night Calgary. I hope everyone is safe as Karen had updated me of the heavy snow fall you have been experiencing. We don’t have snow here but we have our own challenges with rain. Be well!