Travel

Camino de Santiago (2022)

Stage 8: Mos – Ponte Sampaio

After an absolutely horrible night, I packed up my stuff and got ready, completely frozen. Kevin generally has better resistance to cold and sleeps more deeply. In contrast to me, coupled with the thicker sleeping bag, he was actually quite recovered. At least there was a small ray of hope: There was a breakfast restaurant directly opposite the hostel. The sign featured several delicacies to have breakfast there. Also, it said it would open at 7 am. After a good breakfast, the hardships of the night are surely forgotten. Not a chance! Of course, the restaurant was closed and wouldn’t open during the day either, because… well, why? No idea. In addition, when we were about to set off, Kevin noticed something completely different: his hiking poles were gone! After a little pondering, we came to the conclusion that he had probably left it at the front desk when we checked in yesterday. This was in a neighboring building, which also housed the restaurant. An elderly lady watched us curiously and I took advantage of her curiosity by speaking to her and asking if she knew when the building should open. She signaled that someone should be there at 8 am. That was still a good three-quarter of an hour. Ralph had also noticed our desperate start of the day and initially offered us a warm cup of tea back at the albergue. At least something to warm up! We gratefully accepted the offer. So we sat together in the kitchen until just before 8 and talked. Luckily the lady turned out to be right because a man actually appeared at the said hour to unlock the neighboring building. He had either noticed us or word had already got around, but when we approached him he greeted us with: “The walking sticks, right?”. I nodded and Kevin got his hiking sticks back and off we went.

On the way, we met Ralph again, who was much faster with his cart than we were. Shortly thereafter we discovered a café and decided to have breakfast together. Ralph was a true veteran of the Camino de Santiago. He has already walked it several times and not only the routes in Spain and Portugal, but also, for example, the Via Baltica which was one of the German Caminos. In the café, we also got really nice stamps in the form of a milestone. After a while, Ralph freed himself again. Since he was more mobile with the cart than we were, he also covered more kilometers a day. So he wanted to get 30km far today, much further than we did. He said goodbye to us and set off. We stayed a little longer and let our breakfast end in peace before we put on our backpacks and also moved on.

On the way, we passed the town of Redondela. A little off there was a pretty church that we wanted to see. Although it was dark inside, the door was open and we entered. After a few minutes, a novice came out of the sacristy and turned on the light for us. She was generally very friendly and really wanted to know where we came from. When she found out that we were from Germany, she told us about a partner monastery in Tübingen that she had visited before and how much she liked it there. We talked for a few more minutes and got stamps again. Again, I was really happy to finally be able to speak Spanish again. From Redondela we continued towards Arcade. As it was lunchtime we stopped at a tapas bar. Kevin ordered a really good tortilla and I had a cheap-looking tuna salad.

After we had also crossed this city, we reached today’s destination: Ponte Sampaio. This was an old town with narrow streets right next to the water, although there wasn’t much of it as the tide was low. In one of the narrow streets, we met Li again, who had once again stayed in the local hostel and was just about to explore the place.

Due to the hardships of the previous night, I had reserved a hotel room for us the day before. The hotel was a bit out of the way, but relatively luxurious. Only the staff was a bit strange. For me, it wouldn’t have been a problem if the staff didn’t speak English but spoke Spanish. Instead, the middle-aged lady at the reception only spoke Galician and although I was clearly trying to deduce the meaning of her words from Spanish, she rolled her eyes annoyed every time we didn’t understand her. At least we had our own room, with our own shower and even with a heater! The hotel had quite a few floors and yet there was only one other guest besides us, a plump man who appeared to be on a business trip. There was a pretty cool roof terrace on the roof of the hotel, even if the bar was closed due to Corona. So we bought something to drink at the gas station right next to the hotel and just sat down on the roof terrace, where we enjoyed the last rays of sunshine of the day. On a hill next to the hotel stood an imposing display in the shape of a Spanish bull. We didn’t know exactly why it was there, but it looked cool.

In the evening we had dinner in the hotel’s restaurant. It took a few minutes, accompanied by renewed annoyed eye rolls from the said lady until we understood what kind of food they offered that day because a menu apparently didn’t exist. So we both got a clear noodle soup and Kevin had a steak with fries and I had a fish fillet with potatoes. It wasn’t anything earth-shattering, but it was enough to fill you up. Under other circumstances I would probably have been very upset about the horrible lady at this point, but when I lay in the cozy warm bed after a hot shower in the evening all that was gone and I slept deeply.

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