Distance traveled: 36.4 kilometers

I have almost no pictures from this day, which is primarily because it was another one spent almost entirely in the rain. I had a special waterproof bag for my phone, but it wasn’t particularly easy to use the phone while in the bag, so I think I must have just left my phone alone for most of the day. This was identical to the day I’d walked from Ponferrada to Villafranca del Bierzo, except that this day was 10 kilometers longer!

Once again, I set off early in the morning. I’m not sure what my motivation was – I knew it was going to rain all day, and it was already raining when I left; maybe I wanted to get ahead of the swarms of new pilgrims, which proved to be impossible.

I stopped in the next major town for breakfast, and who should happen to come into the cafe while I was eating but Ramón, my Spanish Camino dad from two days before! We were happy to find each other again and walked together for a couple of hours. I found that the rain made me tired, so I let Ramón do most of the talking, and I just exercised my listening skills. He has a beautiful perspective on the world.

Ramón and I ducked into a restaurant just before the town of Leboreiro to warm up, and as I ducked under the awning to take off my backpack, I saw another familiar face: Jean-Pierre, my French Camino dad! This was a really heart-warming moment for me. I hadn’t interacted a lot with him one-on-one while his wife and their friend had still been with him, but he seemed genuinely delighted to see me. I had never gotten around to exchanging contact information with any of them, so I immediately gave Jean-Pierre my number and told him to keep in touch. He had found another small group of French pilgrims, and they were planning to stop in the town beyond the one I’d been thinking to aim for. I decided running into Jean-Pierre again was a sign to go further, and I told him I’d try to make it to the same place.

Switching from Spanish to French to Spanish again was a lot for my tired brain to handle during that break, but the coffee and tortilla española soon gave me a boost. After our snack, Ramón bid me a fond farewell and set off ahead of me; I wouldn’t see him again.

I walked alone for the rest of the afternoon. I found humor in seeing the clumps of new pilgrims walking together in matching, fresh-out-of-the-packaging gear from a European athletic supply chain. It was pretty easy to distinguish them from those of us who’d been walking much longer!

I finally arrived in the town where Jean-Pierre had indicated he was going to stop, but I never saw a sign for the albergue he’d mentioned (or indeed, any albergue), so I kept going. And before I knew it, I’d arrived in Arzúa… a full 10 kilometers beyond where I’d originally thought to stay the night. I found an albergue with no trouble (this is a large town) and did what I could to allow all of my soaking items of clothing to dry; there wasn’t a washer or dryer in the albergue, so the best I could do was string everything up around my bottom bunk.

In the evening, I ventured out for some dinner and decided to forego Spanish food in favor of some good, old fashioned pizza. This pizza place had rave reviews, and that seemed like just the way to treat myself after surviving an extremely long and wet day. Three other younger pilgrims ended up joining me at my table. Two of them had been walking on the Camino del Norte, the route that goes along the northern coast; their route had just connected with ours that day, and it was interesting to hear about their experiences. One of them turned out to be the boyfriend of a German woman I’d met back in Carrión de los Condes! The other was a young Swedish guy who indicated that he planned to go all the way into Santiago – nearly 40 kilometers – the next day. The rest of us thought that sounded nuts – why go so far in one day? I’d heard that the best strategy was to stay in one of the towns five or ten kilometers outside of Santiago so that you could have a nice, quick walk and arrive in Santiago mid-morning, relatively fresh.

Each day, I took screen shots of both my Fitbit and iPhone step trackers. It was interesting to see how they did and did not align – there wasn’t one that was consistently more or less than the other in terms of steps or distance. Today, they were very aligned on the step count but had a three mile difference in distance traveled!