Ponte de Lima to Rubiaes Portugal

13.81 miles, 33208 steps

2934 calories burned 

Almost 6 hours of sleep!  79 sleep score!!  

6th day of 12 day walk, tension between wanting to get to the next town and not wanting it to be over 

3 healthy, 1 sick with head cold… to be continued

HIGHS (warning there’s a lot of them, and not well edited!):

heading out of town we saw a man with a small storefront of sorts, an open stall on the side of the road.  Not sure what attracted us at first.  Maybe the small wooden ornaments painted with the cross of St James for me.  The traditional big scallop shell we bought earlier was loud and clanky on backpack. I’m no longer carrying my backpack only a small cross body bag.  “I need something to mark me as a pilgrim,“ I rationalized the purchase, “It was a matter of time before the shell breaks…”  One of the most obvious takeaways of the pilgrimage is to carry less, own less, buy less.  I picked a wooden St James cross out to put on my cross bodypack. “Manuel” the storefront owner was feeling the the joy and sharing it.  I gave him one of my handmade rosaries.  He came around the table and gave me the best kiss on the cheek I have ever had.  Wouldn’t let me pay for my ornament that he made.  “It’s very important” he said as he patted the small organza bag with the rosary in it.  I’m not sure he knew what it was.  He had not opened it. He rang a loud bell and handed me a piece of paper with something written in Portuguese on it. “Do small things with great love,” I would later translate. Then he asked me to change the chalk customer counter to reflect the fact that I had been there.  As we walked away he yelled to anyone who would listen, “No more Xanax!”.  Apparently he’s kind of an Internet sensation .  A Facebook phenomenon.  Yes, it’s the little things done with great love that make the Mother Theresa’s of this world.  More highs!: Sonia, the host at yesterday’s alburgue did our laundry while we were there.  With a machine.  The “scent of Sonia” we said when we would get a whiff of the lovely smell of machine washed clothes that actually got cleaned for the first time in a week.  You could tell the people who had freshly machine laundered clothes. There’s not a lot of them. Another high: my friend gushing when she couldn’t contain it any longer as we walked along a wooded path:  “I feel the joy, Joy, Joy deep down in my heart.”  More highs?!: singing the divine mercy chaplet while Barry prayed the Liturgy of the Hours as we walked through the quiet woods.  There is MORE: Meeting my first Camino Angel.  Helped me accept the gift of being backpackless (yes it’s hard), and he helped me understand what might be happening with my toes and how to adjust my shoes.  “Pay it forward” he told me later when I let him know how much he had helped me.  You want more you say?!  The savory , protein filled second breakfast fish fritters, running into Camino friends at second breakfast.  Learned new Australian word.  You’re a “runner”  are ya? my new-old friends asked me.  No one had ever accused me of being a runner before.  In Aussie a runner is someone who doesn’t pay for their food—what in the US we would call  a “dine and dasher”  Guilty.  I went back and paid.  Fell asleep to sound of rain that hadn’t come while we walked.  Are all these highs the result of Manuel at the start of the day?… I think they might be.

Lows: getting in trouble for being too loud at hostel.  At 7:30pm.  Creepy shrine in woods.  Clothes strewn in trees, same small photo frame with picture of baby that comes in it, over and over, except one frame where the photo was removed.  Left me with questions about art and religious installations, symbols of sacrifices offered by people.  This one felt grotesque. Was it just me?  What made the difference with others we ran across where people had also left items?…

Pics aren’t loading for some reason… will send later