Day 31 - December 3rd - walking from Vega de Valcarce to Fonfria (21,6km)

Today I am celebrating one month of walking because I walked out of Saint Jean Pied de Port on November 3rd, 633 kilometres ago. I have to admit it is starting to feel normal to walk every day and to carry backpack. It was also an exciting day because I crossed over into the most western communidad in Spain called Galicia. This region has always intrigued me because it has a bit of a celtic culture similar to Brittany in France. Santiago de Compostela is now about one week´s walk away. I was given a warm or rather cold welcome to the region by a lot of rain.

I was told that climbing the mountain O Cebreiro was one of the most challenging parts of the camino and I actually did not find it very difficult compared to some of the early days except for the wind and the rain. As I was going up I saw another pilgrim coming up behind me wearing a big blue plastic garbage bag pulled down over his body and back pack pinning his arms to his sides and his head stuck out through a hold in one of the corners. He had half fashioned a hood out of the other corner and the blue peak was just above his face. I felt intrigued to speak to this curious pilgrim and met a livey man from New Zealand with a wonderful sarcastic sense of humour. When we reached the town at the top of hill I left him to go to mass and nearly froze in the stone cold church in my dripping wet clothes. I met back up with the blue bag man and another guy from Madrid and we continued to walk in the pouring rain. It was the only way to stay warm in the wet clothes. So much for the breathtaking views described in my guide book all we could see was cloud and rain. As we walked the man from New Zealand asked me if I was happy. I thought about it for a while because my immediate answer to the question how are you feeling would have been wet. As crazy as it sounds I was happy walking behind this crazy man in a blue plastic bag followed by another with a flapping read rain poncho from Paris along the highway in the Galician mountains. I distinctly remember picnicking on the floor the albergue in Leon and the Japanese man announcing that this was ´Feliz´. It is small moments like that when you can feel happiness.´The rain didn´t really matter anymore because I couldn´t get any wetter and I could even walk straight through puddles because my boots squished with water inside. The slate stone at the top of the mountain had a beautiful turquoise hew and I could have gone swimming with my clothes on.

We continued to walk until we found an albergue with heating because we needed to dry our things. That albergue was found in Fonfria, ironically a town called cold spring. We were told to leave our wet things in the garage to dry and they had an unusual machine that I would describe as canon shaped that blew hot air on to our wet clothes. For supper we sat around a wood stove and ate Gallego soup, pork and Santiago pie. One of the hospitaleros shared some ideas on the camino and how it is like the stages of life. At the beginning when you first start you don´t really know how to walk and then when you reach the middle part, the meseta you can walk long distances. As you get nearer to the end, to Santiago you start slowing down, taking your time and living each day to the fullest.