Day 46 - Camino Finisterre: Olveiroa to Muxia
Date: Tuesday July 30
Start: Olveiroa, Galicia
End: Muxia, Galicia
Daily Mileage: 20.1mi (32.2km)
Total Mileage: ~576.5mi (~927.8km)
Today was a much much better day than yesterday. Though it still grew hot during parts of the day, and there were still sections of the route that were exposed to the sun, for the most part we had far more shaded gravel trails and returning to the coast also brought nice cooling sea breezes.
After a breakfast of coffee and toast with jam, we got on the road just after 7:30am. The sun was still low and the sky a cool blue. Parts of the morning were in the shade of the hillsides. The route followed gravel roads and leafy paths through the forest. Everything felt so much better than yesterday.
Along the route, Shawn chatted with a guy who had sailed his boat across the Atlantic with a buddy of his, anchoring in Gibraltar. His family was flying over in another week or so, so he had some time to kill. And so this is where we found him, killing time. Most of Shawn’s questions revolved around the sailing portion of the journey, so he didn’t find out much about the man’s hiking plans other than the fact that he was also hiking to Muxia today. After Shawn’s short chat with him, we didn’t see him again for the rest of the day.
Just under four miles into the route came the Finisterre/Muxia split. While we planned to go to both, we’d decided to go to Muxia first, as ending our journey in Finisterre – at the end (finis) of the earth (terrae) – just seemed like the right thing to do.
And so, we zagged right for the route to Muxia.
In addition to quiet gravel roads through the countryside and shaded paths through the forest, the day would walk us through or along the outskirts of a number of small towns and villages. Some were little more than a loose scattering of homes, surrounded by pasture and farmland.
Within each village – both along the outskirts and within the town limits – we saw quite a few hórreos. While the raised granaries had been made of wood in Asturias, here in Galicia, they have been made of thick stone blocks. While many in Asturias were square-shaped, all that we have seen here in Galicia have been narrow rectangular structures, still raised from the ground, but on stone pillars.
About ten miles into the day, we stopped into a cafe for cold drinks. In addition to our usual orders of agua con gas, we’ve taken to also ordering Aquarius/Aquarade, basically the Gatorade/Powerade of Spain, though with far less sugar and fewer calories. Since we hadn’t seen a water fountain in awhile and were starting to run low, we also asked if the bartender could top up our bottles, which she was happy to do. Everything over the last week has been about hydration. Most of the day we aren’t even thinking about food. We’re just wondering where our next cold drink will come from.
After leaving the cafe, not even 200 meters up the road, we stopped into a small grocery store for Maxibon ice cream bars. Properly hydrated and sugared, we were now ready to continue.
After another few miles, walking through more forested paths and small villages, by wildflowers and puffy bushes of burnt popcorn, passing small churches and raised hórreos, we came to our next cold drink supply: a vending machine.
This vending machine sat in a shady spot alongside a narrow road on the outskirts of a town. Paired with a bench, it was a nice place for a break. While I acquired a couple more cold Aquarius for us from the vending machine, Shawn sat and rested his leg, stretching and massaging it near his right ankle.
Unfortunately, he’s been having major problems with a tendon along his lower right leg/ankle. This started along the last few days of our stretch into Santiago de Compostela, likely due to several high mileage days in a row combined with new shoes that are a different design/drop than his previous several pairs. While it felt a little better after two days of rest in Santiago, naturally now that we are putting in some big miles again, it has flared up.
Having had tendonitis in the past, he is pretty much positive that is what’s going on. There’s really no fix for it other than rest, so Shawn’s just been suffering through these last days since we will be finished soon. Once we’re finished tomorrow, it will be time to rest it – no hiking, running, etc. for awhile.
For now, it’s ‘grin and bear it’. It seems to hurt the most on the downhills and the least on the uphills, so for tomorrow we’ll hope for the route all of our father’s walked to school when they were young: “uphill both ways”.
For today the route had been constantly undulating, but in a gentle way that had not felt like a lot of work for the most part. If not for Shawn’s aching tendon, it likely would have felt like a relatively easy 20 miles for us both.
Around 2pm, the first coastal view for the day came into sight – the beauty of which we hadn’t seen since leaving Ribadeo ten days ago. We’ve missed you, ocean. I can imagine what a momentous sight this must be for those that take an inland Camino route to Santiago and then continue to the coast. Their first view of the ocean of the entire journey.
For us, it was nice not only for the beautiful vista, but also the return of nice sea breezes. Now that we were within view of the coast, the temperature seemed to immediately cool a degree or two. Suddenly the air was more pleasant. It was a reprieve after the scorching hot hiking days over the last week.
I don’t always carry a staff, but when I do, it has a little poop emoji at the top.
Descending to a road shaded by tall trees, we could see the ocean blues through the stand of tree trunks to our right. Even the shade felt more pleasant, dappled sunlight falling on the quiet roadway. A man walked down the side of the road playing a flute, as if to emphasize some heavenly feeling of returning to the coast. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone playing flute while they hike. Was that real? (Shawn also saw it, so I’m not going crazy).
The last few miles of the hike wound us up along gravel roads and through small village laneways before depositing us onto a woodland trail that led to the coastline outside of Muxia. Descending along a steep path with a labyrinth of tree roots, we stopped and sat for a bit so Shawn could rest his leg before our final stretch into town, which we could now see on the peninsula across the water.
The trail descended to a wooden walkway along Praia Espiñeirido, a calm but rocky beach. I had read that some pilgrims would dunk themselves into the waters here in almost a sort of ‘baptism’. We saw only one woman walking along this beach as we passed by. While the waters did look inviting, we were also pushing the limits of Spanish lunch hours, so we opted out of a swim.
Continuing along, the wooden walkway reconnected to a road along Muxia’s waterfront, curving above a couple other beaches where people paddleboarded and swam in the calm crystal clear waters. Others played paddle ball, sunbathed, or hid under the shade of their umbrellas along the beaches. Beyond the beaches, fishing boats bobbed in a small harbor.
A small fishing village, Muxia would have been a good place to look for some local seafood or the ‘catch of the day’ for our late lunch. However, the problem with arriving in town hungry and toward the end of restaurant lunch hours was that we needed to find something quickly. And, after hiking twenty miles powered on only some toast and jam and an ice cream bar, we were also in the mood for something very filling. And this is how we found ourselves eating pizza. The last orders to go in for the lunch hour, once our pizzas were out of the oven, the kitchen lights were turned off and the chef left on his bicycle. (I know this because I walked by the open pizza kitchen as this was happening).
Happily satiated, we walked only a couple blocks away to our lodging for the night, a small studio apartment rental (basically a hotel room with a kitchenette). While we waited for the owner to come with the key, I plopped down onto the sidewalk near where Shawn stood by the door. After a minute, a man walked up and looked at us, loitering on the sidewalk. “I sit here?”, he motioned to the sidewalk. Umm... “Sure.” Help yourself to some sidewalk.
He hefted himself down next to me and said nothing. Just sat there.
A minute later, the owner of the studio rental appeared and looked at all of us on the sidewalk quizzically. “Someone has a reservation?”she asked, tentatively, in Spanish. “Sí,” Shawn said. I popped up from the sidewalk. As we walked away, I heard the man on the sidewalk go, “Oh...”, as he realized we were waiting for someone and not just kicking it on the sidewalk. (There are actually plenty of nice benches in Muxia, one was just in the small plaza/parking area about ten feet away from the sidewalk where he sat).
The woman let us into the apartment, a door just around the corner from where we’d waited on the sidewalk. After showing us a few things about the room, going over normal check-in stuffs, and taking a picture of our passports, she left. The window in our apartment looked out over the sidewalk where we had just waited. The man still sat there. An hour later, he was still there, and I wondered if maybe he had fallen asleep. Eventually he would get up and walk off.
We spent the rest of the evening relaxing, other than a couple of errands I ran. The first was to visit the Office of Tourism, where I picked up a certificate verifying my long, hard, three day journey to Muxia. Ha. I’m kidding. It was considering the full journey across Spain, from Irún to the western coast of Spain. I’m more interested in the one from Finisterre, but as long as we were here and the certificate was free, I was at least interested to see it. Then I could roll it up and add it to the little green tube along with the other certificates that we’ll never look at again. After Santiago, Shawn had lost interest in collecting the stamps needed for these certificates, which was also totally understandable.
My second errand was a pharmacy run to pick up some paracetamol for Shawn. Hopefully it will help at least mask some of the pain from his tendon, getting him through our last day of hiking tomorrow.
A little after 9pm, we went down the block for a cup of ice cream and then walked along the coast toward the tip of the peninsula, where we could watch the sunset near the lighthouse. A tranquil, calm, and clear night, there were several others around the point, but plenty of space for everyone to spread out and find their own little space to watch the sun sink below the horizon.
Sitting here along the coast, staring out at the Atlantic, we had made it. Even though we had one more stop on our journey, our arrival at the Atlantic had completed our journey across Spain - from the border with France, across the rugged northern coastline, through the heartland of Galicia, and out to the western coast. Nearly 577 miles.
A Camino distance marker set on a hillside above the coast read 0.0km. This was the end point. Or the start, depending how you looked at it.
Behind the marker was the monument ‘A Ferida’, which translates to ‘The Wound’ in Portuguese. A giant split rock slab, the monument honors the Galicians that joined together to clean up after the Prestige oil spill in 2002.
The point was also home to the Sanctuario de la Virgin de a Barca, whose front doors opened directly to the sea, a stunning setting.
Bye! See you tomorrow!
After the sun sank seemingly below the waves, we walked back into town. Though in some ways it seems like we just started, there’s only one more day of this adventure. Tomorrow we head to the end of the world.