"Go Tell It On The Mountain" (Part 1 of 2)

Ever since going to Portugal 10 years ago without her, Pisinee has been bothering me about wanting to go there, so I had to create a trip that integrated Porto as a destination. I did not want to repeat my previous trip, and we had already done much of Northern Spain just a couple years ago, so I choose to follow an off-shoot of a famous Christian pilgrimage route. The traditional Camino de Santiago (Way of St James) goes East to West across Northern Spain for about 500 miles and takes approximately 30 days to complete. We had paralleled much of this route visiting Bilbao, San Sebastian and The Picos de Europa, and honestly it did not look that exciting. It turns out that there are a number of routes that all end up in Santiago de Compostela. There was a Portuguese Way starting in Lisbon, heading North. This seemed a bit much, but I found that if you walk the last 100km you can still get the certificate of completion, and isn’t that why we undertake challenges? For the reward itself?

We had actually done part of the sister pilgrimage in Japan (The Kumano Kodo), but I failed to get the certificate for that one (Japan Hike).

Our plan was to fly into Porto Portugal and spend a day, then take a train up to the town of Tui on the border with Spain. From there spend 6 days hiking into the town of Santiago de Compostela. Finally, catch a bus back to Porto, where we would fly back to the US.

Our flight out was at night. In some ways it is good cause the airport is empty and a lot less stressful. The downside is you spend the whole day thinking about the trip and checking to see if schedule backups will cancel your flight. I felt like I spent the whole day trying not doing anything stupid, like break a leg or get in a car accident.

Our layover was in Paris. Our last trip layover in CDG was a nightmare with 3 bus connectors and barely making connection with a 2 Hour window. Again we had a 2 hour window, but it want a bit sideways in a different way this time. The line for border control was backed up even before the ropes. These days they are using electronic machines to scan passport and face, but they never work right. My passport has never worked and I always have to go to the human line. The line backed up into a wide hallway and no one was in any sort of line. You just had a mob outside the ropes. It was a poor look for humanity as they were trampling each other to make their connections. Some guy yelled at me for not moving fast enough, so I kinda pushed him and he didn’t like that. I told Pisinee what happened and she said, “Ya, you didn’t need to push him.” Oh, you saw that huh? That kinda ruined my story.

We did make it to Porto by late afternoon and fought the urge to sleep. We walked around at dusk for a couple hours. I made the mistake of walking the city in flip flops, leaving my feet pretty sore since Porto is all up and down.

Stopped at a bridge to watch kids doing backflips into the water below. It seemed like a cool way to spend your summer as a teenager. Doing jumps from the bridge into the water while all the tourists watched and clapped.

Our first dinner where just regular sandwiches, but our second dinner was this monstrosity.

It was basically every type of meat available put between 2 slices of bread, then covered with melted cheese and an egg dropped on top, drenched in gravy. It felt like something they made up for some eating challenge. As expected, it did not taste all that great and sat even worse. Not something you want to eat at 10pm at night before bed. We stopped at a grocery store for snacks for the hotel, as we always do and settled in for the night.

The next morning we had a excellent experience with breakfast at our hotel, The Cocorico.

Our hotel was interesting because it was designed for handicapped individuals. That meant there were cords all along the floor to pull in case of a fall and all the doors to bathrooms were seamless, almost like a hidden bookcase. I was not sure why that aided handicapped people, maybe clearing more space for wheelchairs.

After breakfast we checked out and walked over to the train station to ride 2 hours north to border town of Valenca.

My last hike in France I had the Canadian flag sowed on my backpack, which I have done for decades to avoid people thinking I am American, but now it is a whole thing where tons of people are doing it.

I did it cause I was often going to 3rd world countries that the US had exploited and did not want to get killed, but it now looks like I am one of the masses who do it even when going to a safe country. I mean, its still the same concept, as every country now hates the US, but I didn’t feel right explaining it to people or lying, saying I was Canadian, just to shorten the conversation when I don’t deserve the sympathy that they give me afterwards. I have decided to update it to this new flag.

This one gives me many more options for potential narratives.

Since the trains are kinda constrained by country borders we had to walk 45 minutes from the border town of Valenca in Portugal to it’s sister city of Tui in Spain

After checking into our hostel we walked to the local Cathedral and got our stamp book for the pilgrimage. We would present this at the end as proof we had walked the 100km to obtain the coveted certificate.

We spent the remainder of the evening strolling the town streets

The next morning everyone was up at 6am, getting on the route by 7-730. We were a little late, opting for a simple breakfast of toasted bread with crushed tomatoes and a cup of coffee. We got our first stamps at the hostel, and the cathedral, and hit the road by 8am. The route has various markings, one being a yellow arrow, but there were so many people walking the trail it was never a challenge to know where to turn.

A brief bit about this hike, the Camino de Santiago

A couple years ago, we visited Venice and saw the remains of St Mark, learning how incredible guerrilla marketing around the remains of a saint can build up the economy of a town. Santiago de Compostela did not want to miss out on the action so they went and got St. James, created a website, a newsletter and some billboards and the "Believers" started rolling in.

Basically, in the Middle Ages people started making the journey from around the Iberian peninsula to see the remains of the apostle. The original route followed an ancient Roman trade route but now there a quite a few ways to get there.

In honor of the Christian nature of this trek I decided to title the blog entry after a Christian song,

We were hiking about 10 miles to the town of O Porriño today. Pisinee had done absolutely no preparation for this walk so I was interested to see how she would fare. It was a pretty flat elevation with a mix of towns and pasture. Along the way I freed a horse that had its leash caught in some bushes, after watching others stop to take pictures with him. I can only imagine what he was thinking, “WTF, you are taking shots for your Instagram and you see I can barely raise my head cause this rope is wrapped around this shrub!”

We know saw why everyone leaves by 7am to hike in the dark, because by 11am it is up to 90 degrees. People in towns say this weather is not normal for the season. No, 90 degrees in the beginning of Fall seems a bit high I agree.

We arrived at the hostel in O Porriño around 1pm. While waiting to checkin we had this region’s version of the “Tortilla.” Basically an omelet filled with potatoes.