[Please forgive the delayed postings due to various technical difficulties.]

Friday May 31, 2019

Vilanova de Arousa to A Escravitude, Spain; about 10,000 steps

Proverbs 16 

v. 3  Commit your actions to the Lord and your plans will succeed.  I feel like our whole trek is falling apart.  Cast-aside packs, booked hotels, curtailed walking, overspending, cranky spouses and it’s so incredibly hot—no details necessary but you get the picture.  We’ve committed our Camino to the Lord but I’m not seeing a whole lot of success today.  Yet verse 9 has further insight:  “We can make our plans but the Lord determines our steps.”  Our plans may have been well-considered but God might have something else in mind.  And from his viewpoint outside time and space the Lord may see a bad end to where we’re headed (v. 25).  The path before us this afternoon was a long shadeless slog in temperatures approaching 100 F on and off a busy highway with drifting smoke from a nearby forest fire adding to the discomfort.  Maurice had already had a moment when he feared he would pass out.  The day wasn’t the typical walk I planned but by God’s grace we got safely to the end of it.  Thank you, Lord, that you have better ideas than we do.  Help us to keep committing our plans to you.

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Debee set out juice, cereal, toast, coffee and Cola Cao and we had a leisurely breakfast chatting with our hosts, listening to more of their story, learning how they got to where they are,  and hearing about relationships with local Spanish priests and spiritual hunger among pilgrims.  Debee is from Guernsey and came to faith out of the hippie movement in Amsterdam. Alfonso is from Brazil.  They met in Madrid in 1980, married and have been serving together ever since, raising three trilingual children along the way (third culture kids—we could relate).  “What language do you speak at home?” I asked.  “Depends on who starts the conversation,” said Debee.  Alfonso says the nuances conveyed by the languages are different, and he uses Portuguese to bring calm into fraught discussions.  Alfonso has an amazing network of connections among people and ministries in Portugal and beyond, as well as many examples of fruitful ministry; above all he and Debee have a character of love and service that models Jesus himself. 

I was reluctant to leave the embrace of Alfonso and Debee’s home of welcoming peace.  “If you’d like, we could share communion together before you leave,” offered Alfonso.  He had heard us mention the lack of spiritual refreshment along the Camino Portuguese.  After we packed up, Alfonso carried a tray of brown bread and little cups of port wine out to the back porch.  There in the summer morning Maurice blessed the bread and we gave it to one another, then I blessed the wine and we swallowed deeply—strengthened and forgiven once again.  Debee took up her guitar and sang about peace as the Spirit hovered in the shady garden and the sunlit ria sparkled in the distance.

Then we were off to the boat.  An alternative to the grueling final section of the Spiritual Variant is a boat ride up the Ria de Arousa and into the Rio Ulla to Padrón along the world’s only maritime way of the cross.  The estuary is shallow, the boat schedule is dependent on the tides and our time was 11 am.  Alfonso and Debee saw us off and made a little video of our departure for us.  We were going packless once again, as Alfonso had graciously offered to drive our packs to our next destination, “only a few minutes” up the road and he was going out anyway.  (Only a few minutes’ drive compared to hours walking?  Surely not!)  About a dozen pilgrims stepped into the semi-rigid pontoon boat as the sun beat down. 

Soon our skipper, the calm and gentle Santiago, was skimming over the wide blue ria, past the pleasure boats in the marina, out to where the work of harvesting the sea takes place.  We stopped at one of the big mussel farm platforms and Santiago explained how the crustaceans grow on undersea ropes. 

Farther along he drew up near a clam boat and we watched the hard work it takes to scrape the sea floor. 

Then Santiago paused for the first stone cross in the Via Crucis Marítima-fluvial, giving everyone time for pictures, then pointed out other crosses as we continued up the river. 

His final stop was out in the middle of the rio where he passed around hot tea and madeleines.  It was a delightful ride of about an hour and a quarter, and the fact that it was in the broiling sun was not Santiago’s fault.

When we disembarkd it took us a while to realize we were not in Padrón, the town we expected to be in, but about 2 1/2 kilometers in the heat of the day from it.  But it wasn’t far for packless pilgrims.  Padrón had some points of interest I wanted to see.  First we looked at the church that claimed the actual mooring stone for St. James’ boat—when he originally came to preach or when the boat returned with his body, I’m not sure which, but the stone o Pedrón from which the town takes its name.  There was no time to look at the art, for Maurice was anxious to get going, but next I wanted to go to Monte Santiaguiño where St. James first preached the gospel, a spot the guidebook said was “atmospheric” and little visited.  That’s Monte Santiaguiño, with a mountain of steps to climb to get there, and Maurice was not pleased.  “Just sit here in the shade while I go up,” I suggested, but no. 

Finally, near the top, were some trees, a bare little chapel and, off to the side, a stack of stones where James supposedly preached. 

Farther up, among picnic tables and incongruous lampposts, was a fountain of presumably drinkable water where I filled my bottled.  Maurice drained it when I came down and went up to get more; on the way he had to stop and sit down he said, because he thought he was going to pass out.  Hmmm.  It really was hot.

Back down the mountain in Padrón we needed more sustenance than cookies and water so we went to the cafe spilling across the narrow street from its bar to the broad promenade along the river in front of the church, partly shaded by tall plane trees.  I went inside to ask for a table; there was a stack of them in case the cafe needed more.  “Where are you from?” asked Maria the waitress.  The United States.  “What are you doing here?”  Walking the Caminho Portugués.  “In this heat?”  We must be crazy, I admitted. 

She arranged a table and took care of us, telling us it was too hot to walk and getting us a map to the bus station, an idea that Maurice was all for.  “It’s usually only 25 here in the summer and today it is 37!” declared Maria.  “You must not walk.”  But what were we—pilgrims or wimps?  We grew up in un-airconditioned Baltimore summers more humid than this and slept hanging off the beds drenched in sweat.  Of course we could walk!  “You can’t,” said Maria.  “We can’t,” said Maurice, irritated. 

We tried to contact Alfonso to tell him he needn’t hurry, that, by bus or by foot, we would be arriving much later than planned to our hotel, but we had trouble connecting.  Just as we finished our burger and omelet we heard from Alfonso.  He was in Padrón, he said, and we didn’t need a bus because he would drive us.  What a kind offer! Though now I was somewhat iritated we weren’t walking, Maurice was greatly relieved.  Soon Alfonso had loaded us into his car (and turned on the air conditioning).  He drove us down the hot N-550 (where we watched a helicopter delivering water to the forest fire off to the left) and to A Escravitude and our pleasant hotel, where the attendant said we did not book the internet special and we certainly couldn’t have it now.  I was further irritated but not surprised, since I knew for absolutely certain when Spanish speakers kindly helped Maurice make a reservation a couple nights ago that something would be lost in translation.

Maurice knew I wanted to walk so he suggested I go find something for breakfast at the local grocery store / supermarket. European countries, with the exception of Germany and possibly France, ought to be banned from using the word “supermarket,” since I have yet to see something called that in Spain or Portugal or anywhere else which really is.  I went downstairs to ask Mr. Friendly-But-You-Can’t-Have-the-Internet-Special where to find a grocery store.  “Grocery store?” he repeated.  He did not understand.  “Supermarket,” I said, hating to use the word, knowing full well wherever he sent me wouldn’t be one.  “In front of the church, down the steps, past the bar, you see some shops, only 100 meters, but it might not be open.”  OK.  So I walked along in the 35-degree-celsius heat, down from Padrón’s 37, looking for a little shop, and I walked and walked—the Camino of the day.  It was a busy highway and the sidewalk ran out.  I walked some more until a sign told me I was leaving town.  A dirt lane led to a square foot of shade so I stepped in there, turned on data and roaming and location services, and asked Siri where a supermarket was.  “Here’s what I found,” she said cheerily, no stress or sweat in her voice.  The nearest one was 2.9 miles away.  I turned around and walked back through the 35-degree heat, next to the busy highway, and as I was approaching the church the sun lit up a refrigerated drink case just inside the door of a tobacco shop.  Well, I thought, I could buy Maurice an overpriced coke.  I went in, looked at the meager selection, lifted up my eyes to see what else there might be, and lo and behold! it was the supermarket.  A few shelves held Spanish convenience store food, hardware, cleaning supplies, booze and no boxes of dried fish in this shop but a case of fresh eggs.  I finally selected orange juice, the least objectionable packaged Spanish breakfast rolls, something that said “hidracion” that we could start off with in Maurice’s water bottle in the morning and the overpriced coke.  Silly me.  I should have known by now that “tobacco shop” meant “supermarket.”

The church doors were open so I stopped in for a peek.  Only the outer doors were open, but a little curtain was pulled back from a square opening in the inner door which I had to stand on tiptoe to look into so I can’t imagine a lot of Spaniards are gazing in.  But stand on tiptoe I did, and pressed my face against the grill, because inside air chilled by the thick and somber stone was escaping, as cool as American air conditioning—and did I mention it was 95 F out by the traffic?

The restaurant across the street opened at 8:30.  We settled on its covered patio and the day immediately improved.  The air had cooled to just right, and we enjoyed the beautiful light of the setting sun on the church facade across the street, the palm trees in the parking lot, the train behind the restaurant and the mountains behind that.  As city kids we could tune out the N-550 traffic between us and the church. 

Padrón peppers complemented our meal, along with a fine four-euro botttle of wine, and when we got the cheesecake at ten the light still hadn’t faded.  A couple with a little girl were just coming for dinner, and the local good old boys didn’t arrive at their usual table until 10:25, when we should have been asleep, but we hadn’t even asked for the bill.  It had been a hard hot day but we were in no hurry to leave.  Our final night on the Caminho Portugués had returned to the peace that began the morning on another covered porch only a few kilometers away.