Villafranca del Bierzo to La Faba – 24.0km, 5.5 hours, Tito’s Albergue, 30€

It was a cold morning in the apartment and I know I was thinking twice about staying in bed when the 6am alarm went off. But today is a walking day. The ice cold floor greeted my bare feet and I reconsidered my sanity. The first few steps were very difficult as my ankles weren’t bending and my knees and hips screamed at me to get back in bed. However, the minute I put on my wool hiking socks, I felt warm inside. When I put my boots on, everything was right. I was ready for the day’s 24km hike.

I guess the problem was that I hadn’t actually gone outside yet. When the front door opened and the 46ºF / 8ºC wet wind hit my face, I regretted locking the keys inside the apartment as instructed by the landlord. What else can we do but walk. The faster we could walk, the warmer we should be. That’s my logic anyway.

I should mention here that I walk in shorts, a compression undershirt (that makes my flab look like muscle) and a button down madras shirt. My core stayed warm but Lordy, we had a long wait until sunrise and then for the sun to reach the bottom of the valley we were in. Even then, it took about an hour of walking in the sun to thaw out my fingers. By that time, it was 11am, well after breakfast #1 and 13km down the trail. Brrrrrr!

Breakfast #1 was at the first available bar after leaving Villafranca. We, and every other pilgrim who passed the open bar in Villafranca, expected the bar in Pereje to be open at the 5.3km mark. It wasn’t so all the hungry souls like us trudged on until the 9.3km and the town of Trabadelo. The bar was jam packed when we got there so we just waited in line. It was obvious that only one woman was running the operation and for at least five minutes she didn’t take a single order. She was running around doing stuff or hidden in the kitchen. The line got longer and longer and the Italians and Spanish then had trouble pushing to the front as they usually do. Finally, we found out why there was a bottleneck. Two Americans had decided they didn’t want any of the prepared raciones, tapas, tortillas, bocadillos, breakfast sandwiches, croissants, etc. They didn’t want the normal Spanish breakfast of tostadas either. They wanted fried eggs over easy and bacon. So the woman was cutting the bread that comes with a meal, slicing the pork to make bacon and frying up everything so the Americans felt at home. Holy Moses. The worst part was that after we finally got fed (the usual cafe con leche, tostadas / chocolate croissant, orange juice), we left the bar and found two more empty bars further along in the village.

Time at that bar wasn’t a complete waste though. When we were almost finished, two woman we saw yesterday came in and were looking for seats. We invited them to sit with us but I got up to help bus tables. Meanwhile, Melanie talked to the ladies and found out that they were from Uruguay and they started walking in Ponferrada so we saw them on their first day. Melanie was having this whole conversation in her Duolingo Spanish. Then the ladies asked where she was from. When they heard that she was from Singapore, they were astonished. They said they didn’t realize that Spanish was spoken in Singapore. That’s my polyglot wife!!!

Much of today’s walk was along side of the Valcarce River. That would have been the same route taken by pilgrims for the past millenium. Unfortunately, in the past 100 years, someone decided to turn the trail into a road so that pilgrims can drive to Santiago. Now we just have a dedicated path outside the guard rails of the two lane road. They have also built a highway that paralleled some of the distance but much of that was elevated and ran along the mountains near the top as well as very high bridges. It was still nice but the best part was when we left the roadside and climbed to La Faba through the forest. The trails there were perfect. I briefly wondered why we didn’t do the next 4.6km to O Cebreiro but then I remembered it was 400m higher too. We should leave that for tomorrow, I think.

Peace y’all. Goodnight George & Leo. Don’t let the bedbugs bite because bedbug bites barely beat bad blisters belonging to beautiful butterflies.