If I had to describe today in one adjective, it would be HOT.
We left extra early before 7 this morning to escape the heat at least a little but it was already super warm even at that time and I changed into the short clothes in the middle of the first hill. We crossed the back of one hill and descended on the other side; the rest of the day would be much flatter than the profiles of the last days.We tried to make time pass faster with the old recipe of solving black stories and it worked and we felt like we were walking pretty fast.
At some point, we came to a junction with two options. The left one was 1 km shorter but several red and black crosses and written “NO NO” made us choose the right way in the end. When we finally got to the next village, we had to find out that several people who had been behind us were already sitting in the bar and we got pretty demotivated and pissed for a moment.
Disappointed of having gotten up so early for literally nothing, we sat down for breakfast. After a short while, the rest of our group started to appear and sat down with us.
We finished breakfast relatively fast and walked on together as a group: Andre (from Chech republic), Lukas (from Südtirol), Tom (from Germany), Mitch, Ben and the two of us. We had to almost run to keep up with all these well-trained, strong and fast men we are travelling with but there were many good conversations and it made the way more than bearable.
It got hotter and hotter and we started being more and more sweaty and dusty and disgusting.
We had our lunch break about 6 km before Lugo in an abandoned building that looked like an open air stage in the forest and went on afterwards.
It felt like walking through a desert; hot, dusty, hot, with no water-supplies and oh, did I mention that it was hot? We even saw a Viber on our way.
We walked incredibly fast but Johanna and I were very greatful to have the group because we might not have made it on our owns, or at least not in the same time nor as happy.
Arriving at Lugo meant passing the point where Santiago is exactly 100 more km to go, which means that our trip is really coming to an end soon.
We arrived in Lugo at 4 and checked into the official albergue which was basic but had what we most needed: a shower! I also had two ticks that needed to be removed.
The leg-“tan” washed off completely in the shower, but I am hard working on the hiker’s tan on my hands:
After we were not gross anymore and had washed all our gross cloths, we went out into the city for a bit, sat in a park for a while, did some shopping and finally met up again for dinner at 8.
The menu we had was pretty bad for its price (at least what I ate) but we were hungry enough to finish every bit of it.
After paying, we had to hurry quite a lot to get into the albergue before curfew hour at 10.
Having to be in bed at 10 during summer is quite annoying, especially if it’s so hot and you cannot get anything to eat before 8.
I was pretty exhausted and sun- and heat-damaged and went to bed right away after getting home. It’s incredible that we were freezing cold just some days ago and are burning hot now.
In terms of weather, people, services and food, Galicia is not very convincing up to now. It is super difficult for me to find any gluten free food resupplies anywhere around and people are much more ignorant and uninformed than in the regions we have passed already. I feel like we are really getting into that famous “profound Spain” now. Even though the Gallegos have their own culture and language, it all seems to be very “villagy”.
We will go on with the same group tomorrow and even hope to reach Santiago together. We are having lots of fun and interesting conversations together and I am very greatful we can share these last days that will be hot and long and crowded.
