Travel

Camino de Santiago (2022)

Stage 4: Portela de Tamel – Ponte de Lima

As always, it started early in the morning. We left Portela de Tamel with the beautiful albergue behind us and after a short time, we saw signs that should lead us to a pilgrim café slightly off the actual path. But we didn’t feel like taking a detour, so despite the initial rumbling in our stomachs, we ignored the said signs and continued on. This was the right decision because 5 minutes later we discovered a really cozy little bakery, despite the very kitschy decoration. The lady at the counter greeted us warmly and even spoke very good English. Satisfied we had breakfast and then continued on our way. The morning walk was pretty easy. We listened to music, talked, and put one foot in front of the other. After a few days on the Camino, you get into a kind of rhythm. You know roughly when to start, when to take breaks, how many kilometers you can cover in a day without having to exhaust yourself completely, and roughly when you will arrive. It’s actually incredibly relaxing and enjoyable. You know what to expect and can just let the day pass without being able to think too much about it. Perhaps that is the liberating thing many pilgrims experience when they embark on a journey like this.

Around noon we made our next regular stop at a coffee shop. And here Kevin has probably conquered a small furry heart directly. The owner’s cat jumped right onto his lap and kept cuddling and tapping him with her head. It was love at first sight. She probably realized how much Kevin liked cats. Even the owner and her family laughed at the spectacle. The café itself was actually a completely normal café and not labeled as a pilgrim café at all. Nevertheless, we got our first stamps for today, and actually, these were some of the most beautiful stamps we should get on the whole way. Next to the café’s logo was St. James as a pilgrim. It was with a heavy heart that Kevin and the cat were able to say goodbye, but we still had a long way to go.

The afternoon was rather uncomplicated and after a total of almost 25km, our longest route so far, we arrived in Ponte de Lima. After all the small places, we should now stay in a slightly larger city again. The city is divided in two by the eponymous river “Lima” (which happens to have the same name as the Peruvian capital). In addition to a promenade along the river, the city has many small streets with old houses, as is typical in most southern European cities. We met Marinus again on the aforementioned promenade and were surprised that he was already there before us and was calmly drawing. As it turned out, he developed hip problems on the way and a car had taken him here. Since the city was a bit larger, it naturally had a range of accommodations. Our original plan was to go back to a private hostel for the comfort of a private room. However, something strange happened here. Check-in for the private hostels was only after 6:00 p.m. So we would have had to wait several hours. The only accommodation where you could already check in was the municipal albergue. Having just had such a surprisingly good experience with the albergue in Portela de Tamel, we chose this option again. The albergue was significantly larger than the previous one but unfortunately didn’t have a comparable common room. There was a very sterile-looking kitchen that was mostly made of metal and only had the bare minimum of inventory.

Although there were now more guests than in the previous towns, we only met one other person in the kitchen, Li from South Korea. Li had been traveling for a year. He first traveled from South Korea to Budapest and from there walked to Santiago. Next, he walked a few more Caminos, and now the Portuguese Camino should be his last one before he went back to South Korea.

The dormitories were spread over two floors. On the first floor was a classic dormitory with bunk beds and one floor up there was a dormitory that only had mattresses on the floor. The lady at reception first sent us to the dormitory on the first floor. But since I would have been the only woman in the entire room, because the women were sent one higher up to the room with the mattresses, the lady opened a door that was actually locked to an adjoining room in which 4 more bunk beds were close together. The room was actually too crowded for the current Corona requirements, but of course, it wasn’t a problem if Kevin and I didn’t keep the minimum distance from each other and so we got a room to ourselves again. A nice extra of this hostel was a small roof terrace from where you could see the rooftops of the city. The hostel had an early closing time of 8 pm, but we didn’t want to stay up late anyway. The plan was to eat around 6 pm and then return to the hostel, shower, and sleep. Except for the sleeping thing, our plan didn’t work out. The restaurants in the city were either completely closed (Corona?) or opened at 7 pm at the earliest, many even later. Unfortunately, the risk of not making it back to the hostel in time was too big. The city generally seemed to have its own rhythm. Finally, we bought cookies, a carrot, a banana and some juice in a supermarket. I also had some peanuts from the last accommodation. So this was our not-so-glorious dinner.

It was still February. During the day it was a pleasant 15-20°C, but at night it was sometimes very fresh. The hostel was of course not heated and so it was quite cool. The bathroom, like the kitchen, was more metal than anything else and incredibly sterile. In the back part of the women’s bathroom, there was an area with showers like those you know from sports changing rooms. I was already shivering as I took off my clothes. When I turned on the water, however, I started screaming internally. It was freezing cold and it stayed that way. Without further ado, I decided to take a shower in the next town, put on several layers of clothing, and wrapped myself in my sleeping bag. Kevin did the same.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16