Martes, El Ocho de Octubre

On Tuesday, October 8th, we had our taxi driver, Robus, pick us up at Hotel Puerto Arnela in Camariñas at 8:30 am, and take us to Casa Raúl in Lires, where we dropped off our bags.

For hiking, I had originally planned for us to start at Muxía, and hike down to Lires.  But from our recent experience, we knew that this could be a bit much.  So instead, I had Robus take us to the lighthouse at Cabo Touriñán, where he dropped us off at about 9:50 am.

It was drizzling at the time, as we started walking south along the coast.

We had light rain for most of the first couple of hours on the trail, but by about 12:30 pm, the weather had cleared, and we stopped at a small picnic area near Fonte Espiñeiro and had our picnic lunch.

Afterwards, the trail turned inland at Monte Gordo.

Then passed through the hamlet of Talon, on its approach to the coastal village of Nemiña.

 

There we stopped again at a café called Restaurante Saburil to have a snack.

TBD

At the cafe, we spoke to a team of local forest firefighters, and inquired as to whether we would be able to cross the Rio de Lires (Lires River) where it reaches the ocean, or whether we would have to walk around to the first river crossing (It appeared from maps and Googlemaps that there are times when the river doesn’t reach the ocean.). Unfortunately, the firefighters didn’t seem to be local, so they just pointed out both options.

When we were there it must have been near high tide, so the ocean was actually flowing upstream into the river.  So, we had to hike inland to the first river crossing.

As we approached Lires, just north of Vaosilveiro, the Camino dos Faros merges with the Camino de Finisterre.  Right at that point, we met the first soul that we had seen on the trail in 3 days. This was a young girl named Bee, from Belgium, who had walked the Camino Portuguése from Porto, Portugal to Santiago de Compostela, Spain, and was now walking on to Finisterre. It was nice that she slowed down to talk to us for a while, but soon she felt the need to press on at a more youthful pace, as her destination for that night was Finisterre, where we were going to stop at Lires.

We arrived at Casa Raúl at about 2:30 pm, checking in with Rosalía, the daughter of Senor Raúl. Casa Raúl is a lovely place to stay. It is a stone farmhouse, filled with antique furniture, which has been in Senor Raúl’s family since the 1800’s.

We took showers, and Then at about 3:45 pm we started walking to a nearby cafe called A Braña, where we had a delicious organic Lolea Sangria No. 1 and some melón con jamón (melon with ham).

Soon, Brian and Lucy from Calgary, Ontario, Canada arrived at and we asked them to join us.

Brian and Lucy are quite the adventurers.

Later I started a discussion with a young woman named Christine, who was eating alone at the cafe, seated nearby. She was from Germany, and for her the Camino was a religious pilgrimage.

Since we didn’t get to start our day at Muxía, as I had originally planned, from A Braña, we called a taxi to take us to to Muxía to see the sunset.

Pedra dos Cadris – kidney shaped stone

A Ferida

Mirador O Corpino (viewpoint)

Decision