Camino Portuguese Day 4 Vila do Castelo to Vila Praia de Âncora

Today was a 12.7 mile day. We left Vila do Castelo for Vila Praia de Âncora. Âncora would be the last city in Portugal and the next day we would be taking a boat over to A Guarda, Spain. This particular section took us through a ton of small agricultural villages, and also through another Eucalyptus forest. The forest was pretty cool, no kola bears though. I know, I know they kolas are in Austraila not Portugal, but you never know. It's worth mentioning that nearly every road, and by nearly, I mean every stinking road we were on was some kind of cobblestone. I mean it was cool and quaint and all that jazz, but holy shit bags, my feet were screaming at me. I swear if they weren't attached to me, they would have stopped and called it a day. AND, to make it way more fun, it freaking rained on and off, but mostly on. Each time you thought the rain was done and you take off your rain gear it would start raining again. I'm pretty sure there was some kind of evil conspiracy going on. About halfway through the day, we came across a small café in one of the villages and of course we stopped, got a bit to eat and coffee, café com leite to be exact. I almost always got that to drink and some kind of ham and cheese sandwich too.

At some point along the way, the villages, which ALL seemed to be up a fricking hill went from having vegetable gardens to grow grape vines. It was here, that I was able to "showcase" my incredible awesomeness.  At this point in our little adventure, our group had grown to a total of 5. 2 of the 5 had gone on ahead and I and the other 2, took up the rear. Which is just a polite way of saying I'm old and slow.

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Downhill

We had started a long walk up a....wait for it. A cobblestone road when we saw what looked like an

"awing" made from wood, and grape vines growing all around it. It looked really cool.

On a fence just to the left were two young women, they were both really. Well, I'll just say really attractive. They were climbing on a wooden fence and picking grapes off the awning, thingy, and they had picked the area they were at clean or grapes.  Well I wanted grapes too, but the only way to get grapes was to jump up from where I was and grab a handful. This is where things started to NOT go as planned. Well maybe it did goes as planned, but whatever.

I was standing under what I thought was the lowest hanging set of grapes. Looking up at the grapes, kind of like that story about the Fox and Sour grapes.  And before I could decide NOT to do this. The young women, started calling out my name. Like cheering me on, OR egging me on. I'll go with cheering. At the time it didn't matter, all I heard was "Tim! Tim! Tim! Tim! Tim! Tim!" You get the idea, tired and worn out, my Achilles was killing me. I had my pack on my back. Now everyone is chanting "Tim! Tim! Tim!" It's like the crowed demanded it.

With that kind of energy in the air - I jumped! My hand reached up and saw and felt my hand grab onto a bunch of damn leaves. I landed on the ground mostly unscathed and threw the leaves onto the ground......and then they kept chanting. I had to do it again. NOT to do it would be a let down for the 4 people watching, and if you know me, my poor little ego just wouldn't let it go either. With a bit more "umf", I jumped, and this time I managed to grab a bunch of grapes. I was "Da Man"!

And then.....I came back down and felt my Achilles do something weird, but not enough to actually hurt, but I'm pretty sure it did a "thing" that it probably wasn't supposed to do.

It was just a mild throbbing earlier, nothing that was worriesome. But now it was like REALLY throbbing. But that didn't matter. I had the grapes, my adoring fans clapped. Seriously,  they early did! I passed around grapes and ate them. Everyone said thank you, and I did my best impression of Maui belted out "You're Welcome", and then we were off.  My group took the lead, but because we're slow and old, or at least me. I decide to move to the left to let the women pass. And not this is when things just got embarrassing. I stepped to the left on the trail, I stepped on something and proceeded to fall straight on my arse. The blond women reached out to try and help me. Everywhere heard, saw me go down. As I was in the middle of trying to recover, I looked up the girl was putting out her hand to help, and I said. "OMG did you see her push me?!"  That women didn't miss a beat, she made a motion like she was pushing me, and said. "You need to watch out for us crazy German girls." She did reach out and help me up. I was fine, although my ego was mildly bruised and my Achilles was in full on revolt.

Without much effort, the German girls sped past my group. We eventually caught up with the other part of our party at another cafe. This place was super cool and it seemed like it was in the middle of nowhere, which is precisely where I was. I had a sandwich and an espresso, oh and a stamp for my pilgrim passport. A pilgrim passport is exactly what it sounds like. It's used as evidence that you completed the Camino.

It's here that Amanda, left our group. She needed to make up time because she was staying in the

next town from us, and had a few more miles to go after we got to Vila Praia de Âncora.

We said bye to her, we finished our snack and took off again for Âncora. A few miles before we entered the city, the route split and Hika wanted to take a different route to get to her hotel. In just about an hour, we went from 5 back to our original 3.

When we arrived in Âncora, people all over the place were hanging decorations around the city and the local church. We had arrived just at the start of a 4 day celebration in honor of Our Lady of Bonança. She is like the Patron Saint of Âncora. And in honor of that, the town also was having a crochet festival too. Yes I went to it, why you ask? Because I had no idea such a thing existed, and I thought it might be kind of cool. AND Yes it was.

After that, we went back to the hotel, had dinner and was off to bed so we could get ready to make the trek to A Guarda Spain.

Until next time, stay outta trouble and if you can't do that. Don't get caught.

Tim