Thursday May 30, 2019

Barrantes to Vilanova de Arousa, Spain—Day 15; about 27,600 steps

Proverbs 15 

v. 23  A person finds joy in giving an apt reply—and how good is a timely word!  We weren’t too thrilled to be picking up our packs again this morning.  We had a spot reserved for the evening and expected to meet up with our hosts in the middle of the day.  “They have a car,” said Maurice.  “Maybe they would take our packs to their house.”  Yeah, maybe.  After a good two hours of walking we came to the little chapel in Mouzos where a team welcomes pilgrims.  Debee recognized us at once.  “I’ll be the American who looks like he’s carrying the kitchen sink,” Maurice had told her.  When we got ready to be on our way again, Debee said, “I don’t want to interfere with what you feel you have to do, but we’ll take your packs home if you want.”  A timely word!  What joy!  We accepted.  Thank you, Lord, for the blessing of a timely word.  Please use us to speak such words to others too.

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The restaurant downstairs didn’t open until eight, and it was at least 8:15 before the one hardworking woman had cranked up all the Rolladen, turned on the cofffee maker and the leche heater and rustled up our breakfast:  wedges of Santiago cake, fresh orange juice and the thick toasted crusts probably left from last night’s breadbaskets which were a standard breakfast of our first Camino, but this time with enough butter and jelly.  We settled in to crunch and chew.  Then to our surprise came plates of melted-cheese-covered fried eggs and slices of jamón.  Yum!  Maurice’s cafe con leche and my Cola Cao appeared and we were set for the morning’s hike—until I went to slip my camera into its mount on the strap of my backpack.  The connection disc that screws into the bottom of the camera wasn’t there.  It could have fallen off anywhere yesterday when we were bouncing merrily along without our packs.  I had just had the camera around my neck and across one shoulder, and I could carry it that way again today even with the backpack.  “You’re taking this well,” said Maurice, who knows how I can get.  Yes, well, I had practice with the bendy hooks.  Not irreplaceable, and we could manage.

Yesterday’s chatty ria continued happily along though it was now out of the forest, dancing past grapevines until it tumbled into the broad and smooth Rio Umia and lost its bubbling personality.  With the splashy water quieted, other riverbank sounds emerged of chirpy birds and a whole cacophony of frogs.

At 11:30 we came to a little capela in the bright sun in Mouzos.  Its doors were open and a table was set up outside for stamping credencials. 

This was the place I’d read about in Stone and Water, Roy Uprichard’s account of the Portuguese Camino’s Spiritual Variant.  The chapel was built in 1978 and the man who built it, now 93, wanted to see it put to good use, which fit in perfectly with the new call felt by Debee and Alfonso, YWAM missionaries in Spain for decades, to minister to pilgrims. 

Debee and Alfonso go to the chapel to welcome pilgrims most days, talking to people and, as the Lord leads, inviting pilgrims to their home for “Christian hospitality”—dinner, one of six comfy guest beds and breakfast.  Debee, assisted that day by team members Pauline and Marcellos from Brazil, welcomed us like long-lost friends.  We took off our packs and went to rest a bit in the cool of the chapel, still decorated with roses from St. Rita’s day. 

After a while Debee picked up her guitar and sang an Irish blessing for a small group of gathered pilgrims.  

“We have miles to go,” reminded Maurice, and we left too soon, back into the hot sun but floating free without our packs from Debee’s gracious offer.  Having read about their ministry, I had emailed and pretty much invited ourselves to stay with them, and we still had a long walk to get there.  The temperature climbed, and even the forest paths were not shaded. 

We didn’t have lunch supplies with us but propped ourselves on a narrow wall under some trees for cookies and water.  About 3 1/2 hours from the chapel we came to the Bar Mississippi and stopped for coke and juice, which was served with cheese and nuts.  We crossed the road and turned back onto the Camino, or so we thought, since we didn’t actually check for signs where we had turned aside to get our drinks.  “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen any arrows,” said Maurice at the top of a hill.  We paused to look and think.  A guy in a white mini-truck pulled up and stopped; Maurice said he had noticed him go past and now he came back.  Do our very selves betray us?  He spoke to us in careful Spanish, which I surely understood through the fleeting impartation of the gift of interpretation of tongues, explaining that this was not the Camino, but it was a parallel road, and we should turn right, and then bear right, and the roads would meet at a church and we should turn left to get back on the Camino at the…stone burro?  Well, something about stone.  “Got all that?” asked Maurice.  Sure—although I rarely get the directions right in English.  We walked and walked.  The road curved right.  Finally up ahead was a little church.  And there beyond the church was a stone burro!  Our yellow arrow was just across the road.

We walked through countryside full of cruceiros and horreos, past villages, gardens and grapevines held up on granite poles, among scented flowers in the hot sun. 

Even without packs we were tired and our feet hurt.  At last we came to the beach, fading out of sight around the curve of the bay, and began our trek along it. 

I was so tired.  My feet hurt, my bunion ached, a new pain was inching up my leg and there wasn’t enough shade; it was in the low nineties by now.  Finally, finally, there was the footbridge across an inlet and we arrived in Vilanova de Arousa.

We plunked ourselves into an outdoor cafe along the seaside—where I was irritated that the salad and drinks were overpriced but Maurice says how often do we get to sit on a lovely bay in Spain like this?

Soon Alfonso picked us up in town, cheerfully drove us around on errands then took us to their lovely home where Debee plied us with icewater and we were treated like honored guests.  Their plumeria-vined stone house with spacious rooms sets in a walled enclosure of several acres, some of which is cleared for hammocks under trees and space to work and relax, and some of which is wildly overgrown for future projects.  Guests stay in a separate building that was used for winemaking in a previous incarnation.  Marcello and Pauline joined us for what Debee called a Spanish dinner:  some fresh salads, bread, cheese, jamón, hummus, olives, pickles and wine, followed by ice cream and Santiago cake.  It was a comforting end to a tiring day.