The 5th Week

During the last days it became clear for us how many people complete only the last 100 km. Everyone can get the Compostela, the certificate about completing the Camino who finishes the last 100 km on foot or the last 200 km on bike or horse, hehe. :)) Even tourist agencies organize trips to the last 100 km with package shipping and pre-booked accommodation. That’s why fresh people appeared on the road in clean cloths, sport shoes and with a miniature day pack.

One of the last stages looked quite hard: in 40 km there are no facilities you have to carry all your food and water. In between there is only one accommodation for 14 people only (while during the last days we easily filled up places for 40 people) and it doesn’t provide any food either. We knew we could not get into the first 14 and somehow we had to break up this stage - but it seemed that nobody smells business in the steady flow of the pilgrims. It was hard, but thanks for the persistent effort of Carolina we managed to find a guest house in a village (casa rural) about 4 km from our path. We agreed with the hosts that they will pick us up somewhere on the road and would take us back to the same exact point. In this way we don’t have to walk a meter more than necessary.

 
Waitng for the pick-up

I’ve only seen in Australia anything similar: the smaller-bigger farms create a village but without any village center. If there was a postman on bike here he could easily enter for the Tour de France that’s how big the distances are here. Our host told us the their village, Regüela comprises two farms all together, their and the neighbour’s farm. Though it was only 4 km we winded for almost a quarter of an hour on the narrow one-lane roads, when we finally arrived to the beautifully renovated farm house.

The guest house is owned by a family, very nice people. When they learned that it was Nathan’s birthday they gave us a free round at the bar. That night Spain played against Chile and because everyone enjoyed the match (including the family) we could only have dinner after 11 PM.

Two days later our path merged into the French Way at Arzúa 40 km from Santiago. All of the sudden we were many. They said in Arzúa the beds in the council owned albuerge (the cheap pilgrim’s hostel) filled up by noon, and we couldn’t get in to the private albuerge at 3 PM. Luckily we found two rooms at an old lady. I think by 6 PM all the beds were taken in the town.
The Way became different too, the pilgrim doesn’t miss anything here. In every few km there is a bar or a buffet, next to the road vending machines are lined up and at every step accommodation is offered on signs. You have to eschew your solitary mood as well. Actually the road was so crowded that we hardly had to check the signs at all, most of time we only followed the people in front of us!

 
Traffic Jam

 
Plenty of offers

  
Everything for the Pilgrim