Missy - Day 7 (O Rua to Lavacolla)

 

It rained on us. 

We spent a fair amount of time choosing our footing wisely. We found the firmest ground and dodged mud and streams and took what felt like a very easy 7 miles. 

We passed a lot of really cool art in the early morning. 

I was delighted to see a stage beetle like the one we ran into yesterday. 

Outside a bar I admired this beautiful garden while drinking fresh oj and eating a chocolate croissant (napolitano?) and watching Kiernan and mom get their daily dose of café con leche. 

Then we went up a giant hill that turned out to be a mountain.

I took off my rain jacket because I was so hot. This was a good plan in the short term but a mistake over all.

We were moving at such a good clip and planning out Minecraft projects for the summer and singing songs that we completely missed the town in which we meant to stop.

It’s weird. We did about 22k steps and got to our destination at 11:30. Nothing was open yet and we couldn’t check in to our Pension.

We looked at a lovely old church here in Lavacolla.

We got hot chocolate the a giant sandwich for Kiernan and potatoes for me.

Lavacolla is the last stop before Santiago. It has two stream/rivers in it that pilgrims used to use to wash up before arriving at their final stop. The name is variously translated as wash collar/wash tail/wash penis. 

The main point is wash up. 

We dutifully took our showers. 

We are so close to Santiago that when we were looking for pizza delivery the places listed were there.

I was freezing and wet. My overheated self cooled all the way down and the wet socks and shoes and shirt wouldn’t let me warm back up.

If we had been able to check into our place it would have been fine but I had a rough couple of hours there. I’ve gotten no blisters the whole time but the wet socks made the tips of my toes burn in a pre blister way and my wet backpack belt started to abrade my hip.

It’s a good thing this was our only wet day. My poor decisions might have done much more damage earlier in the trip. As it was I got on dry socks and put some antibiotic ointment on and crawled into bed for a big long nap.

I think most of us napped.

At 7:30 when the restaurants opened up again we went to a close one to try out the pilgrims menu.

Other than subsidized housing on the Camino there is also a subsidized menu. It is 3 courses plus half a bottle each of wine or water. It’s 13 euro for lunch or 16 for dinner.

I had salad and pasta and cake, Mom and Michelle and Chris had pasta and Chicken and cake and wine, Kiernan had pasta and ribs and cake.

They gave us a big bottle of water and a bottle of wine and some bread and olive oils and vinegar and salt packs.

It was clearly a menu designed for people who walk all day. I’m glad we tried it before this is over.

Tomorrow we will walk together the last few miles and be in Santiago.

So far so good.