18.9 K
The Camino has taught me two things today:
- Don’t trust Accuweather, there was a reason we dubbed it Inaccuweather on our first Camino in 2015.
- Don’t label any day the toughest yet, the most challenging, the wettest...because the Camino has more in store for you.
We looked at today’s weather and saw 70% cloud cover, but no rain, so we packed off our rain gear with trail transport. It was spitting by the time we hit the bridge. You know how the Inuit was 100 words for snow? I have dozens for rain, I lived in a rainforest for 30 years, after all.
And remember that mountain from a couple of days ago? Turns out it was in our future, with this stage’s elevation gain of 540 meters while inappropriately dressed for the constant mizzle turned to showers.
Cold from the wet, I made a shrug from a silk scarf my daughter brought me from Thailand years ago. Silk is perfect - light in weight, warm, and the rain beaded up on the surface keeping me dryish. Here I am keeping dry in a winemaking shed about a quarter of the way up.
Most of the climb was in wet rock through eucalyptus and pine forests:
The weather cleared as we approached our accommodation, a casa rurale about 1.5k off the Camino. Could this really be it? It has its own church? This property is larger than some of the villages we’ve walked through.
La Quinta Gandra was spectacular. Large rooms, private baths,
impressive commercial kitchen and dining room, but they only serve breakfast. For dinner the cheerful helpful hostess, Isabella, drove us to a nearby restaurant, Bon Retiro, which sounds appropriately like good retirement to me.
The restaurant catered to pilgrims with a lengthy reasonable menu. We sat with a couple from South Africa and shared good conversation. We were driven back to the Casa with another couple from Latvia (the country count now stands at 19).
Isabella met us in the dining room with a bottle of Port for the six of us. When her shift ended she left an additional bottle just in case.
One glass is all I could handle.
Comments