Arzúa, Day 33

We awoke very early this morning, in hopes that we might be able to outrun the rain. We had no such luck. Well, I shouldn’t say that, it did not rain for about the first hour, and then the sky’s unleashed fury on all of the peregrinos. The end of our Camino was so close, yet at the moment it did not feel that way.

We stopped for a breakfast break just as it started to rain EVEN more. One of our friends had a very accurate weather app. It could tell you about how many minutes the rain was expected to last, and this time it told us that it may stop raining in about 19 minutes. Waiting that long sounded better than continuing through the rain, so we decided to test our luck.

Indeed, about later 20 minutes and the rain was letting up. This was our queue. We started up again, and made it to Melide for lunch. We found a pizzeria and crammed into one long booth. After sharing pizzas and fries we all felt stuffed, but knew that it would be good fuel for the rest of the day. We left Melide, only to stop to begin the process of re-applying ponchos and full rain gear almost immediately.

Apart from our very first day leaving St. Jean Peid de Port, the next 15 kilometers were the coldest on the Camino. It consistently rained the entire way. The rain fluctuated between a haphazard drizzle and a dark downpour. If there was ever a time to run the rest of the way to town, this would have been it. Physically unable to run with my pack on (for fear of complete knee explosion), I resorted to putting on the most motivating playlist I had (the playlist I used for my half marathon) and keep a quick pace. Stopping didn’t feel like an option at this point. I was walking fast enough that my base layers were soaked in sweat, and it was raining hard enough that the rain had soaked through my rain jacket and my quarter zip. This made me too cold when I stopped walking, so I simply didn’t stop until I reached Arzúa.

We had reserved a room for the 8 of us and luckily our hospitalero was nice enough to let us shower and change into warm clothes before starting the albergue check in process. We all laid in our bunks swaddled in blankets for awhile, but eventually the need for dinner overcame our desire to remain vegetables in our beds. We decided that we would go to the grocery store and make a family style taco dinner in the kitchen of our alburgue. This turned out to be one of the best nights!! Everyone hung out, cooked dinner, and impromptu haircuts were even administered. In all, we had a tough day walking, but the time we spent together that night was memorable.