Day 12, May 7, Cacabelos to Vega de Valcarce

Day 12, Saturday, May 7, Cacabelos (mile 362.7) to Vega de Valcarce (mile 379.7). Walked 17 miles -- maybe. (Hard to know, we took a slightly shorter alternate route in one part, then wandered off and got lost in another, but the official Camino distance per Riv's gps app is 17 miles. 

The diarrhea saga continues (Chris doesn't want to write about it, but River does and guess who does the typing?) After a visit to a local pharmacy in Villares (May 3, day 8) River got some large pads to masquerade as adult diapers for Chris. Of course Chris had so incident since, but River arrived after the long hike down the mountain to Molinaseca not only with muscles aching all over her body but also smelling like her pants were full of poop (which they were). Tired though she was, showering and washing out all her layers of clothes seemed imperative. After that she also donned the diaper-facsimile, with no incident since, except exhaustion, odd feelings of rapidly oscillating chills and fever (but only briefly after walks) and a precipitous decline in appetite that makes River (a usually voracious eater) barely recognize herself. Meanwhile Chris' appetite has recovered completely and for the first time in our marriage Chris can eat more than River can. 

Back to Day 12. Today we got lost for the first time although not seriously -- it may have cost us a kilometer or but it blessed us with some beautiful views of vineyards and sloping hills. Photo 1 shows the approach to our first rest stop where we met up probably for the last time with Sara and Christina our roommates in Cacabelos. 

We deliberately chose a less challenging road walk over a more scenic and demanding route, only to discover that it was a beautiful walk along a river (photo 3). 

We arrived at our albergue before 2pm. Some time during the morning Chris realized she might have left her credit cards back in Cacabelos. What had happened was that the day before she had mistakenly worn her waist pack outside her rain jacket and it, and its contents, got quite wet. So while the waist pack was drying she temporarily transferred its contents to a ziplock bag. Somehow in the dark as we were getting ready to leave this morning, when she was transferring all this back to the waist pack, the credit cards didn't make it. We are very lucky that two quite simple phone calls took care of it and we do have River's cards. 

We also discovered that River had left her sun hat behind a day earlier (she hadn't noticed it missing in the rain). Fortunately Chris has a sun hat she never wears that she is willing to loan to River.   

We have actually been very lucky this far with the rain. Yesterday a light all-day Orcas-style drizzle, today none at all. Tomorrow sounds a bit more dire but we plan to take our first really short day.  

Some of you may know that Chris' sister Hanna has just started on her third Camino, the one that runs along the Portuguese coast. Unfortunately, she'll be reaching Santiago later than we. If you would like to see her blog, go to 

http://www.hannawalks.blogspot.com/

Thank you so much for walking with us.