We got up early and walked through beautiful countryside for hours with the trail all to ourselves. What a blessing and how unimaginable after spending a night in a room with over 100 beds filled with pilgrims in O'Cebreiro.
Photos 1 through 6 give you a hint of the quality of our day. Although we knew rain was coming later in the day, we arrived at our albergue before 3pm and were completely spared rain.
Here are another couple of examples of the wonderful slate roofs (photos 8 and 9).
For the first time ever we made reservations ahead for an albergue Chris had really fallen in love with four years ago. Alas however it was the wrong alburgue. But after considerable embarrassment and matrimonial challenge, we made our way to where we really wanted to be and luckily there were still beds available.
Once we were at the alburgue, showered and resting, River realized that despite her efforts the diarrhea had gotten worse every day to the point that she did not think she could continue to walk. (At this point she was leaking into pads continually, and the soiled pads were irritating her skin, despite changing them at every rest stop.) We talked everything over and decided that our next great adventure would be finding a way to head home early - bus to Santiago, new plane tickets back to Barcelona, new plane tickets to Seattle. Neither of us thought that diagnosis or treatment of River's condition would be simple or easy, and it just didn't seem possible to try to handle it here. We were actually both a little relieved to be facing the problem and acting on it.
Then at the pharmacy where we stopped to get more pads (having used 7 in one day the supply no longer seemed so large) the English speaking pharmacist encouraged us to see a local doctor. Over dinner (which was exceptionally good) we discussed that possibility -- recognizing there was one plausible diagnosis that might be relatively simple to treat: chronic guardia. River's diarrhea which she had self-diagnosed as lactose sensitivity actually began in the final weeks on the PCT last fall, so it was a plausible hypothesis these symptoms could be an aggravation of a chronic parasite problem. We looked up on the internet an NIH article and found that a single dose of a drug called Tinidazol was the recommended treatment when overseas. Back at the pharmacy to ask if River would need a prescription to purchase it: no. For under 5 Euros, we can home with the single dose, which River has now taken. Stay tuned for further news.
Hope it is under control. Sometimes too much yogurt /probiotics can cause diarrhea.
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