On to Negreira

In the morning about nine I walked through nearly empty Sunday streets, down to the Cathedral once again, which was open. Inside I descended a narrow passage to St. James´ crypt, where a silver treasure chest held his remains. All the walking and seeking, all the churches built to honor him, the rise of the city of Santiago itself, a whole bunch of European history--all because a man´s bones supposedly traveled by sea (in a scallop shell?) from the Levant to a lonely spot on the far Iberian peninsula, and were brought to a starry field, where they lay undiscovered for eight centuries.... Then 1200 hundred years ago what was lost was found, and people from all over Europe began to wend their way to Santiago.

Outside I sat on a stone bench built into a wall of the cathedral and waited for my travel companions. Mandy and Salima and a German man named Eddy and I had decided to go on to Finisterre together. Earlier I had said goodbye to Rachael, with reluctance, and she went off to the bus station to start her journey back to Brighton.

At ten we set off around the cathedral. In the vast plaza in front, four drunk men stumbled over the cobblestones, one carrying a large cardboard box of wine on his shoulder. Clearly they had been up all night. Their shirts and pants were covered with purple wine stains, and their faces suggested not a pleasant debauch but a disturbing depravity. And so I started off from Santiago for the sea.

The morning sky had begun clear but soon clouded over. Dreary and humid. I felt out of sorts, I´m not sure why. Maybe Santiago had been the goal, and further walking was anti-climactic. After a couple hours Salima asked us to rate our snse of well-eing on a one to five scale. None of us was too chipper, but I gave a hopeful four.

The country we were walking through was certainly worthy of better feeling. Rolling hills, patches of eucalyptus forest, ferns covering the forest floor, ivy-wrapped oaks scattered along the path. There were farms all along the way too, busy with small groups of animals, cows and sheep and chickens and horses. Every house had a dog or two, and cats lurked through the streets of the small villages. In Porte Maceira we crossed a lovely river on a long 15th-century stone bridge. In a field nearby four kids were playing around a trash fire, chasing each other with smoking sticks and burning magazines.

We only walked twenty-two kilometers, but it semed much farther. I was tired, maybe becase of the humidity, maybe because of a slower pace. We reached Negreira, a good-sized town, about three in the afernoon. All the beds a the small albergue were taken. But we were offered blue mats, which later we could lay on the floor in the public room by the soda machine. Not ideal, but a place to sleep. The woman in charge was quite helpful and friendly--and would become more so later on, after we returned from town (where we visited an internet cafe and ate at a bar--nothing else was open on a Sunday). When we got back one of the mats had been filched, and there wasn´t enough room to put the others down until all the bucketheads with beds upstairs went to them. But they seemed intent on lingering downstairs, cluttering up our would-be bedroom. I sat in a corner with Dickens and sulked.

But then the hospitalera gestured to myself and my companions and led us to the "handicap room." Apparently no people needing such facilities had shown up. She opened the door and there were two bunkbeds, with a private bathroom through another door. We had ended up with the best accomodations in the albergue. I´ve been with a lot of people (ok, women) who like to say things like, "you just have to trust," and "you always get what you need," etc. I pretty much consider such sentiments ridiculous, but when they were invoked in this situation, I did not argue. I had a lower bunk by a window, and it was cool enough to sleep inside my down bag, and what else could a person ask for.