Ribadiso to St Irene

The morning ritual followed suit, out of the hostel and ready to hit the road. We´d been laughing the day before about the lack of suitable establishments, but literally did not have to walk far about 10 minutes before our first stop of the day for Cafe Con Leche and desayuno. Tostada, though I had the option of eggs and bacon.

It had been mentioned once of twice my opining for the English Breakfast as a standard to start a long day by. I've found that in my wandering that toast is a temporal fixture at best, and if one doesn´t want to be hungry again by 10am, then something more substantial than a bit of jam on a toast is needed to get the ball rolling.

In this case I was elated for the opportunity to try what equated to two eggs and bacon ala Espanol! Well fried eggs you really can't alter too much, but the bacon or the Spanish description of there of left a lot to the imagination. I think it could be closely associated with some sort of fried ham. Needless to say it was delicious, but I couldn't bring myself to call it bacon in the traditional sense of the word.

Then it was on the road and off we went. We seemed to be neck and neck with a large mass of Irish people doing a part of the walk for charity, and the sometimes crowded but serviceable resteraunts and cafe's along the way seemed now to be chockablock full of road side travellers. When we finally settled for a drink in the afternoon, the patron of the place seemed to be slightly more flustered and less friendly about the whole affair. That along with the appearance of more people meant actual competition for basic things like toilets.

The trail at this point was a mixture of small rolling hills, parkland trails with more streams, and paved roads cutting through the smaller farming towns that made up the outlying areas on the way to Santiago.

We stopped again at another road side bar, this time a bit quiter and hid from the sun. The weather this week had been perfect, cool nice mornings segwaying into warm afternoons and then the full heat of the afternoon. I'd even managed to start to accumulate a bit of a tan which for me is incredible. Various people had commented on the pallor of my skin, which compared to the incredible variety of fantastic tans looked pale by comparison. At least I tried.

The hostel the Rural Astrar that we had planned on staying in, was out of the way, seemingly far off the beaten path but the nice aspect of it was the fact that it had seclusion. The hostel was nice, and the patron who lived in one of the side buildings took good care of the place.

The general amusement of the place was that it had a nicely made little foot path and some chickens in the back who took very happily to me grabbing some grass for them to eat. It was a nice collection of old farm hens and a bantam cockerel, though I don't think they were let out that often. I would return to them after dinner and my discovery on closer inspection of the bounty of the yard.

Dinner is an odd affair, the patron must have local connections to the restaurant, as he is willing to phone in orders and then either drive you or pick up the food for you to have at the hostel, which as far as I was concerned went above and beyond in terms of service.

Dinner was lasagna, bread, salad, wine and tiramisu. It was during dinner with the occasional interruption by a very adventurous and monstrous sized hornet that began to take notice of the surrounding vegetation. The owner had not only a very nicely kept apple tree, but as well grapes, pears, and kiwi fruits which were held up by a trellis on the roof acting both as a sun catch for the kiwis and the grapes as well as shade. I was impressed, and managing to find one of the small apples that the tree had rejected cut it up into pieces for the chooks who seemed very eager at the opportunity for slices of apple.

Later on in the evening Marina and I sat outside drinking beer which the patron was happy to supply, I think from his own stores, and she set about teaching me the somewhat obscure but simple card game of mow mow, which is one of those process of elimination card games that is popular in Munich. Jackie later joined us, and after a lucky win at Mow Mow, I tried to teach from memory the rules for snap.

That was fun considering I hadn't played it much since my Grandmother had passed away, but she had been an avid card player, and I can still recall a summer camp spent on Salt Spring Island, where she had set about teaching us things such as snap and rummy. My German companions seemed a bit dubious at first, but once they started to get the idea of it, I can honestly say I didn't really stand much chances of winning.

After a few rounds the light had died sufficiently to the point that it was truly bed time, again I was fortunate that our hostel had no snorers in it, not that it mattered the collective day of hiking, and the day previous took care of any instances I might have had not being able to get to sleep.

Santiago tomorrow, and then who knows.

Thanks to my patrons. Brendan Mills, Renee Rushbrook, Carlos Ara.