This is going to be an adventure, that is for sure. Little things have been happening that are reminding me that this isn’t just a walk in a park. Yesterday and this morning, we were unable to use our Singapore and US debit cards to withdrawal euros from ATMs in Spain and Portugal. In the bigger cities, we can use credit cards for almost everything. Our 7€ breakfast today was charged as well as our 4€ drinks this afternoon.  In the towns though, cash is still king.  We finally found a bank ATM that allowed us to draw €200 but that won’t last long. Portuguese wine was hit by inflation like everything else.  We need to get this fixed.

I also had an Alzheimer’s moment yesterday after landing in Barcelona. I had remembered that we had a three hour layover between the Lufthansa arrival and Vueling flight to Santiago. My memory was wrong though. It was a seven hour layover.  We got busy though, writing the blog, answering e-mails, having lunch, trying to figure out itineraries, etc.  

After an hour of twiddling our thumbs, I suddenly shrieked. I had forgotten that we needed to collect our bags and then recheck them in for the flight from Barcelona to Santiago. Criminal jickets!  Barcelona is near the top of the top of the list of petty crime capitals in the world. We ran to the baggage claim area and prayed that our gear wasn’t already on the way to a random stranger’s house to divide up the kitty.  Thanks to the AirTags in the bags, we fairly quickly found them, still sitting on belt 10 in the baggage claim area, getting dizzy and lonely on their 75th revolution around the carousel. 

Our “Camino provides” moment yesterday occurred in Santiago airport after arrival. We collected our bags (this time!j and joined the queue for a taxi into town. We only had four people in front of us but taxis were very slow in coming. Melanie struck up a conversation with the young Turkish businessman who was in town for a conference. When our taxi finally arrived, we offered him to join us for the ride into the city. His hotel was not too far away and it would help save time for him and all the other people in the queue too. As it turned out, we got dropped off first and he insisted on paying the whole fare. I’ll have to remember that trick in future taxi queues!

Our “Uh oh” moment happened after we arrived in Porto after the 4 hour bus ride from Santiago. We managed to get a taxi to the hotel fairly quickly this time but we got stuck with paying the bill ourselves. That wasn’t the “Uh oh” moment though.  That happened as we rounded the first corner and the sky had turned black.  Not far away to the south, there was a massive fire.  I only found out later that it was a wildfire due to the much hotter, drier weather they have had over the past summer.  I saw in the news that several highways between Lisbon and Porto are closed due to the fires.  We also heard that Camino routes south of us were affected. I was relieved that I didn’t hear anything about fires to the north of us, where we are walking.  Well, I should say that I was relieved until later, when we met a German pilgrim who what our plan was to get around the fires.  Huh?  He showed me how to search for wildfires on Google maps and we are in trouble!  They are also north of us and close to the Camino. We will deal with it when we get there but this is the first Camino I have ever walked on AND prayed for rain. 

A final point relates to baggage transfer on this Camino.  As we learned last year, our days of carrying our bags are over. We carry smaller, lighter bags with what we may need on the walk but the rest gets transported by van for us. Well, that’s our plan at least. On the Frances route, the bag forwarding service works pretty well and it’s reasonably priced.  On the Portugués route, all the companies that do this work only pick up from and deliver to a limited number of accommodations. If you happen to be staying at a hostel or hotel that is not on their list, you are out of luck for two days.  Neither our first nor second accommodations already booked are on the lucky list. After considering everything we could think of, we settled on the Uber package delivery. Technically the bags can’t weigh more than 10kg but ours are close. That’s the best option we found so far but we are still looking.

This is being posted late so I’ll tell you about today’s walk shortly.