What a difference a day makes.

After the long difficult day of climbing yesterday we spent the night in a lovely albergue and this morning the hospitalero made us an amazing breakfast. Eggs and toast. Pancakes. Fresh squeezed orange juice. Coffee. It was incredible. The best breakfast we had on the entire Camino so far. (Of course most of the others are just café con leche and toast or some sort of pastry.) It’s amazing how resilient the body is. You go to bed with everything aching and after a night of sleep you wake up ready to go again.

We left a little later today, around 8, after our amazing breakfast. The walk today was through dense forest. Eucalyptus and pine and a blanket of ferns. The slowness of walking makes for the possibility of attending, of noticing the things I don’t normally see. Of course there were the ever present cows that we have come to depend on. And wildflowers. So many wildflowers.

There were two major climbs today, but with cool weather for most of the early part of the walk, it made for a more comfortable temperature. By mid day we found our way to a lovely cafe with homemade cakes and delicious café. After all the climbing I treated myself to a slice of moist carrot cake with my café con leche… and that’s when I realized I’d walked of with the keys to my room at the albergue in my pocket! Ugh! Thankfully, the lovely café owner knew the owner of the albergue and offered to return them to him. Wow. I was so grateful!

We came across Pedro, Paola and Julia as we made the final descent into O Cadavo. I walked in with Julia who, like me, was still sick. As we came into town I was so relieved to be stopping. The albergue was big and spacious, and we ended up in a room with all the people we’d been walking with on and off the past few days. Pedro and Paola from Portugal. Julia. The Czech couple and Susanna, another woman from the Czech Republic. It felt good to have our “family” all together for the first time.

I’ve been struck by how different this Camino is from my first and one of the biggest ways is in the lack of pilgrims on the walk. By this point of the Frances I’d met dozens of people, but on the Primitivo there have been far fewer people to meet. It reminds me to appreciate the people I have met and the opportunity presented in the solitude and quiet in front of me.

Kristen and I met up with Malthe that evening as we were doing our laundry and with Gary we all went off for dinner. As we walked into the restaurant we were immediately scolded by the restaurant owner who chastised us for arriving for dinner too early (people in Spain eat much later) and he was not “ready” to serve us dinner. Still, after we apologized profusely, he seated us in the corner of the restaurant and fed us anyway, a noodle broth, a simple meal of meat and potatoes and a dessert that did the trick.

That night as I lay in bed I couldn’t stop coughing. In the quiet of the albergue, I was so conscious of the fact that I was making so much noise. Although nobody said anything, it was hard to miss the sound of my hacking reverberating through the silence of the dormitory. I’d sit up for a while, and hope that would allow everyone to fall asleep, but then when I lay down again, I couldn’t stop. Finally I opted to sleep sitting up, tucking all my clothes and pillow behind me to have just the slightest cushion to lean against. I must have fallen asleep eventually because the next thing I knew it was time to get up and do it all over again.

We were headed to the city of Lugo.