Camino Portuguese Day 6 A Guarda to Oia

One of the things you should strive to do each night while on the Camino is get some sleep. I tried to be asleep no later than 11:00PM every night, but most times I failed miserably at that and just sort of powered through. BUT this time, I was well prepared to be in bed, and out cold by 11:00PM. WHICH I did! Yes there is a "but" coming.

BUTTTTTTTT! Around 4:30AM, something woke me up. I first thought I was dreaming, but not a dream I could imagine happening. I was dreaming I could hear a cat. A cat that was making some really crazy sounds. But no, now there were two cats making some crazy sounds. Oh I should mention I had my window open because the hotel in A Guarda did not have AC. I was on the 3rd floor of this building too. I woke up from what I thought was a dream, only to realize I wasn't dreaming. The sounds I was hearing, well it went on for like 20 or so minutes I think. It seemed to me that it was two cats getting their freak on. This went on and on and on. I told my friends, who apparently heard nothing because they had closed the windows in their rooms before going to sleep. They thought I crazy.

Before setting out for Oia, it's basically "mandatory" to eat breakfast, or your life might suck while on the Camino. Some days, there are plenty of food options, but those food options are usually swarmed with other travelers. It's like going to the local bar, and it's the only one for a bazillion miles. So all the town drunks are there. However in this case, they aren't town drunks. They are just thirsty and hungry travelers all doing the exact same thing I am.  Which, is walking to a place in Spain for whatever reason they are doing it.

Any WHO

This was definitely one of the days where we knew that there were not going to be a lot of places to get food along the way, so eating breakfast was a bit of a must. In Spain, having eggs and bacon are not a breakfast staple. What they do have it a lot of sliced deli meat and cheese, more bread than you can possible imagine and yogurt. Oh and LOADS to coffee, espresso, cappuccinos. This particular breakfast served in the hotel was a bit of a hot mess. The same person that was hovering around making sure everything was available, was also the guy that was running the front desk. And since most of the people in the hotel were all travelers, I really don't want to say pilgrims, because it makes me nauseous. Because I then start thinking of some John Wayne movie that I only remember one damn line from.

The hotel employee started yelling, or shooing someone because they were putting a tray of food in a place that the dude didn't want them to do. He was a bit like the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld actually.  Before you know it, some damn ugly American was trying to give the guy a piece of their mind, but they only spoke English and the dude seemed to only speak Spanish, But oh boy that was so much fun to watch. Some people just really show their true self when they can't do what they want. The deal is, that the person wanted to put their try on a place where all the coffee pots were located and of course the tray was blocking access to it. Anyways, there were hungry people swarming all around the limited food options and of course doing what they do, complain about no eggs, and I kid you not, I still haven't figured out how to use these damn toasters. So I'm usually just eating roles of bread and making a really big jamon y queso sandwich. Gallons of coffee too.

Alright, we set off, and go to a local market just as it opened. It's weird to see people standing outside a grocery store and then swoop right in just as the big metal garage type door goes up.  I'm not going to lie I was one of those people. I picked up, ham, turkey, pepperoni, something that passes for tortillas, oh and sardines. Normally I'm a hard pass on sardines, but I have to say I totally dig the stuff they have here. Oh and some salmon and tuna pate as well. Yeah go ahead and say it. I've gone totally bougie since coming here. What can I say, I'm a renaissance man. An International Man of Mystery.

Loaded up with food from the grocery store, we set out for Oia. To date I think it was the shortest day of only 9 miles. We walked along the coast for a while and kept going up hill. Like the whole place is nothing but hills. It's been totally nuts there have been so many hills. I mean without getting all crazy about it, why the heck did the Pilgrims make this route on so many hills? I mean come on people. I'm sure I'm going to make someone mad about that. Like they could have at least installed escalators. Shhheeeeezzzzeee

All that being said, after a few hours we stopped on this cliff overlooking the oceans to eat lunch. We kind of plopped down just off the main route and had a picnic with a great view. By the time we were done, I was sure I was going to stay right where I was because the view was that cool. Well that and my legs, hips and feet didn't want to move.  I should mention that we saw this guy in a wetsuit crawling around these ginormous boulders carrying some kind of bag that was made of mesh or something. He'd disappear behind the boulders, he pop up again, and he kept heading North along the coast, disappearing, reappearing again. That had gone on for about 30 to 40 minutes. I of course made up some "story" about that the guy was doing out there. He was either playing some weird game of hide and go seek, or he was a fugitive from the law and he was moving along all stealthy like. But not so stealthy that we couldn't seem him. He obviously wasn't very good at hiding.

Off we go, and eventually come to this small church with a crowd of people around. I thought it might have been a pop up cafe that we'd come across before. I was up for a cup of coffee.

Nope it wasn't a pop up cafe, there were about 6 or so people, mostly older women sitting on the ground doing something and stuffing stuff into baskets in front of them. It turns out that they were were shucking barnacles. And not long after we arrived the dude who was playing hide and go seek appears and gives his mesh bag to someone and went off to talk to some other people.

It was really kind of cool to see how all that went down. It now makes sense what we had heard the other night in A Guarda. We had seen barnacles on the menu and when we asked for some as an appetizer we were told no. The ocean was not good for harvesting barnacles. When they tell you that the seafood is fresh, they really mean it.

We eventually made it to Oia, and the Hotel. It wasn't fancy, it was barely a 2 star hotel. That doesn't bother me so much, but the lack of AC made me a bit less comfy. It was HOT, and humid inside the room. I did find a fan so that was cool. I even had a balcony, which I promptly used. I washed clothes in the bathroom sink and hunk my clothes out to dry. It seems everyone who had a balcony in that hotel had the same idea. There were socks, underwear, shorts, and shirts hanging off the balconies.

Around 7:45 we headed off to dinner.  To get to the restaurant we needed to pass by this sea wall. We went by earlier, but it was low tide. And now it was high tide, so the waves were crashing up against the sea wall, and OMG the sea weed or kelp or whatever smelled so bad, you did not want to get sprayed by the water.  Like a good "Coastie" I stood there and counted about how much time I had from the time the water splashed along the sea wall till the time it happened again. 10 seconds, that's all the time I had to get across the sea wall or risk getting sprayed with stinking water.  My friends were a bit skeptical of my plan, which was to get as close as we could to the splash zone, but not actually get splashed. And then when I said go, well we'd run. Mind you we were all fricking tired and running just seemed like a really bad idea. SO of course you know what I did. Right after the waves crashed on the sea wall....I ran. More like a really bad wobble, because everything hurt. I was making good time, that is until I got hit in the face by a bunch of flies. I started waving my heads in front of me in a poor attempt to shield my face. Spoiler alert, I got hit in the lips by one, and then as I was trying to "spit" to get the bird juice off my lips, I ended up swallowing a fly. Oh, and my 10 seconds was almost up. While I did a good job estimating the time

I had, I did an absolute horrendous job judging how long it would take me to get across the sea wall. To make matters worse I lost count because of the flies. I was sure I was totally fucked. I was going to get splashed and I'd be the guy at the restaurant who smelled like rotten seaweed. As luck would have it, I made it out of the splash zone before the waves came back. My friends hadn't moved, they let me go first, and those ungrateful jack wagons were laughing at me. By the time they got across, they were crying they were laughing so hard. Apparently I was waving and flapping my arms like Grover from Sesame Street.

We had a great seat at dinner, a view of the ocean and a cloudy sunset. But it was the first one we had gotten to see since arriving so all good. By the way, by the time we left, the tide had gone back out so no Grover action.

One last thing, we had run into a family of travelers who as luck would have it also stayed in the hotel we had in A Guarda the night before. They also heard the cats....you know...doing the wild thing.

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

Tim

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