Beware of scallop shells pointing straight ahead

Well, the good news is that I am in Rodeiro, today´s destination, having had a third very hard day in a row. Well, no, that´s not the really good news -- the really good news is that I´m sitting in a little bar with a blaring TV waiting for a camino friend to come pick me up and take me to his family´s casa rural! He is British and his wife is Dutch and they run what looks from the pictures like an absolutely charming place hidden in the woods. So this means I will take a day off -- no walking tomorrow!

Today´s walk was beautiful, but pretty tough. The first 8 kms were confusing, with scallop shells on big granite mojones (I´ve been told the English word is bollard, but I´ve never heard that word) pointing in the wrong direction. I had been warned of the first one, so was ready to go in a different way than the shell marker indicated. But there were at least three or four more, all pointing straight ahead, when the guide book, and occasionally painted yellow arrows, indicated another direction. The woman I spoke with yesterday out in the middle of nowhere has the explanation -- the Xunta de Galicia (regional government) spent big bucks to put these huge granite markers with shell signs all along the Invierno to give it an official status, and also, presumably to help pilgrims find their way. Well, when the workers from the Xunta showed up with their mojones to install, a few realities presented themselves: first, that their little trucks couldn´t drive through the places where it´s easiest to get lost, so those areas are marking-free. Second, they really couldn´t have cared less about where these signs went, so they just plunked them down, shells pointing any which way, in order to empty their truck and finish their work day. I think that´s probably the essence of it, but the wonderful thing is that there are small groups of camino lovers in all these towns who take it upon themselves to get the yellow paint and help point us on our way. And usually, it works just fine.

I had a pretty stiff ascent, up into the clouds/fog, and when I was presented with an optional two km detour up to a sacred spot, the geographical center of Galicia, where there is a shrine and much holiness, I couldn´t resist. No matter that the promised beautiful view was going to be whited out, I just figured I was unlikely to return soon, and so I should go see what it had to offer. Well, what it had to offer was a pretty ermita, a nice cross, and large areas of rooted up earth where another boar had been at it again. So, back down I went, and the rest of the walk was either along the ridge with those huge windmills at my side, or winding through small green hamlets with ancient buildings.

One thing I´ve seen a lot of today has been something called "peto de ánimas", 16th century granite blocks with carved out figures of souls suffering in purgatory, and with a slot to make a donation to ease their suffering. Of course the boxes aren´t still collecting donations, but it is kind of funny to think about how people could have thought that paying money to the church was going to help the pour souls in purgatory.

So, if my arithmetic is right, I have four more days of walking and I will be in Santiago. I have really enjoyed this walk, but the solitary part is a bit hard -- today, for instance, I didn´t see one human being for the first 20 kms, and after that it was only a few farmers till I arrived in this town. But my last three days will be familiar ground, when I connect with the Via de la Plata, the camino I walked last year. From the reports I get from friends who are there, there is an abundance of pilgrims, so I will not be alone for long!