Katherine was antsy and wanted to get going. Pam and I are still not early risers and the weather isn’t supposed to be that bad today so we opted for a little more sleep. She brought us in coffee in the hopes of enticing us out of bed. I drank mine and laid back down for a few minutes.
We’ve got our routine down pretty well in the mornings by now. It didn’t take us 10 minutes to get ready. We were packed and ready before Katherine was. We loaded up and headed out front for a picture with Rose (the owner who had quit to come to Spain and start a new life) and Agnes (who had rented a bike to ride to Muxia and Fisterra–but the bike was crap so she didn’t make Fisterra).
There’s only one restaurant on the way to Fisterra and it’s about half way (10 miles) so we have breakfast in Muxia before we leave. It was just after 8 when we started walking.
The trail is straight up out of Muxia for the first 4 miles. Fortunately, it’s overcast and we have an actual trail in the woods. Katherine is worried that she won’t have sunshine again this evening for a sunset, but Pam and I are overjoyed with the missing sun. We have planned our first 20+ mile day on the Camino to be our last day of hiking. If the sun was out, we wouldn’t make it.
We play leap from with a group of 3 Spanish women all day today. Katherine feels like it’s a competition and we need to beat them because they have only walked from Sarria and we’ve come all the way from France. What she doesn’t consider with us is that we are carrying our full packs and don’t really care about speed in the least bit. Katherine complains about her feet hurting and her legs, but she pushes hard every day. Pam and I are in this for the long haul and we can’t afford to push to the point of injury. She’s going home in a couple of days. We’re going to hike a longer and harder trail in the mountains.
When we got to the half-way restaurant, Katherine helped a girl with directions. It turned out that the girl was Romanian and was cousins with someone Katherine went to school with. It’s a small world, but I wouldn’t want to paint it.
Romanian Andrea recommended that we take the coastal route into Fisterra. The second half of the day is not as hilly as the first half (thankfully). Even so, we still needed to stop to break up the day. Pam was going slower and we normally stop every 3-4 miles but without restaurants, we just had to stop on the trail.
When we finally caught sight of the ocean, Pam and Katherine wanted to push on thinking that the town we were seeing was Fisterra. I wanted to stop because I knew we had another hill to climb. By the time we got to the edge of town, they both realized we still had another 2 miles to go. Pam and I had to stop. Katherine agreed to stop but didn’t want to.
Since we were so close, Pam and I did something we haven’t done since the second day of this pilgrimage–we had a beer before we were done hiking for the day. We were hoping it would help numb our feet with the road walking that was ahead of us.
Katherine has been shipping her pack forward the entire time since we left Santiago so she was also making reservations of where to stay. Personally, I hate being tied into someplace to stay ahead of time. It limits our options on what we can do. If we want to stop earlier than planned or later or we don’t like a place, we can move on. With a reservation, you’re stuck. Katherine has bought into the hype that everything will be full in Fisterra. I know this is BS. All of these towns can handle the high season which isn’t until July and August. If they are full now, they would pass up easy money in the high season–no one is going to let that happen.
We got into the Hungarian Albergue right about 6. We dropped our packs, changed our shoes, and grabbed our credentials to walk the final mile and a half to the lighthouse and the end of the Camino at Finesterre (the end of the earth). When the pilgrimage began over 1000 years ago, this WAS the end of the earth. They believed that the earth was flat and that an idiot like Donald Trump would make a good leader. Thankfully, times have changed. Or have they?
To complete the Camino (for the third time for us) we needed to get the stamp at mile 0.0 and then present our credentials before 9 at the municipal. After we do that, then we’ll have free time to eat, get in the ocean, and burn our clothes (preferably not while we are wearing them).
We completed everything just before 8:30. We wanted to eat next, but I didn’t want to carry our credentials with us any longer. I told Pam and Katherine to waitwhile I run everything back to the albergue. I run uphill to find Pete standing outside waiting for me. He figured out that we would be staying here and that we’d show up before 9.
Pete joined the three of us for drinks and dinner down at the harbor. We decided to have one last pilgrim’s meal. I was the only one to order white wine. They brought a bottle of red for Pam and Katherine, a beer for Pete, and a bottle of white for me. Everyone finished before I had finished my bottle of wine so they took off and headed to bed. I finished my bottle of wine–my mom didn’t raise a quitter.
