Day Twelve

It's the home stretch. We have only 100 km to Santiago, and we'll do that over four days. In fact, many people just start in Lugo--the church in Santiago counts that as an official Camino. Hmpf. That's not what Alfonso II did.

Our friend Irene sent us this photo of us on the Camino...happy not to be on pavement.

Today's hike was 27km, with not a lot of up and down, and most of it on pavement. Not ideal for our feet. And hot. Not ideal, either.

But we got up before dawn to beat the heat, and walked into Las Brisas bar in Lugo about 6:40 am. He promised to be open for us, and he was--with hot pastries, coffee, chocolate, and a couple of bocadillos the size of our hiking boots. God bless him.

We powered through today, average speed well over 5km an hour, and got to our albergue by 12:30, including time to stop and eat those bocadillos.

Hiking, except for the pavement, was easy, but there are more people now, and larger groups. The views are more modest and the terrain is flatter.

Still, we enjoyed the hike, and loved the local grain silos.

The hostel here has no kitchen, but There's a cantina next door. We ordered a medium-sized veggie omelet and two beers. Bread was included, and it cost us $15. The omelet was so massive thatwe took half for breakfast tomorrow. That's for two people!

But by tomorrow we'll be in Melide, where our route joins the throngs of the more popular Camino Frances. After the peaceful green trails we've been hiking, were dreading that.