Camino Numero 2 Begins

Yesterday we started our second Camino!

Now that we have our pilgrim’s certificate for the Camino Frances into Santiago – what better way to celebrate than doing another Camino out of Santiago.

So we started the Camino Finisterre / Muxia with our first day walking from the Santiago Cathedral to Negreria about 22km away yesterday. This Camino will finish on the coast instead of a cathedral. It is much shorter at just 116km or about 5 days walking than the Camino Frances which must be 100km by foot but can be as much as 800km (we did 235km).

Full disclosure – we look super tired in this photo! We had an awful sleep. Our fellow hostel peeps were up at all hours and the sound from the plaza outside was loud well into the night too – many people were done their Camino’s and on they way home the next day, so there were in full celebration mode. Very few are as outlandish (like less than 10%) as us and decide to keep on keeping on out to the coast another 100+km.

We stopped for breaky before even leaving Santiago and I will admit I didn’t stop at one cafe con leche yesterday morning. I had to have 2 right out of the gate … to get out of the gate! We also enjoyed some eggs and bacon which were especially tasty now that we had a secret stash of pepper in my back pack. Spaniards use salt only, maybe paprika it seems. Pepper is hard to find and when we did find it, it became a worthy enough item for carrying in my pack everyday!

After breakfast around 11am we started the Camino, here are some sights from our walk out of Santiago and before our afternoon break ….

The pre-break morning ended with a 2.8km climb up and out of one village and into another on first gravel or forest track then asphalt road. We did a little experiment to see how we would come out of from such a hill with a little pre and post hill selfie photo shoot. In the following order check out our pre-hill selfie, pics of the hill which does not do justice to just how steep this sucker really was, and post-hill selfie.

Why yes that post-hill selfie includes a vino blanco! After a hill like that we deserved a break and stopped in at a cafe called Poncho in the village of Transmonte. A wee, totally cute little cafe just 8km from our destination!

After a great rest of wine and chocolate (we read in a guidebook you should eat high energy food like chocolate on breaks – we take the guide books very seriously!), we headed out to finish our day and spend the evening in Negreria. I transition from socks to compressions again for this last stage. Helps the feet and looks quite fashionable!

Our final 8km into our town for the night was a great walk. We passed through a small village Ponte Maceira with a medieval bridge that was very cool.