quickie post from...god, where am I?

It´s so funny how I just lose these city names soooo quickly. I´m in Pontevedre...inching my way towards the Portuguese border, but I´ll be inching them must faster tomorrow as I am taking a bus or a train to the border town of Tui in Spain. I´ll be losing 3 days of the walk, but that´s fine...I´m ready to see another country and something came up that I want to get to...I´ll tell you about it later, plans are still in the works...but I can tell you that it´s fun fun fun!

So I go to Tui tomorrow, and walk to Porto, about 5 or 6 days. From Porto I´ll be taking a bus to Fatima to see that famous shrine. I just missed the big festival on October 13th, which is the date when Fatima first revealed herself to the three small shepherd children in 1917. I´m very much looking forward to going there.
I was going to walk there from Porto, but in talking with people who have made that journey on foot, I´ve decided to bus or train it. Apparantly the roads are quite dangerous and not set up for this sort of travel. So...won´t be doing that.




I´m pretty good. Really enjoying the serenity of this Camino. There are very few pilgrims on it, and everything is really quite mellow, including the alburgues. I´ve been having some difficulty going "backwards," as I´m having to follow all those yellow arrows from the opposite direction. You wouldn´t think this would be any more difficult than having to follow them towards Santiago instead of away from it...but it is. Can´t really explain why. Part of it I suppose is that so many fewer people are walking this trail so you can´t just hang out and wait for the next pilgrim to come by, you could be sitting there a couple of hours. One woman said that it´s psychologically more difficult to go backwards...not sure about that. But, as I´m walking I have to keep looking behind me to notice the arrows, instead of seeing them ahead, which, when you get lost in thought (which I do frequently) can lead to you being physically misplaced as well. Every once in awhile, about every tenth arrow or so, there will be one in blue, pointing towards Fatima - and I understand that once I cross border into Portugal, I shouldn´t have any problems as Fatima is the main pilgrimage destination in that country, not Santiago.
Anyway, I got lost A LOT on my first day...it was really frustrating. I got some great help from locals, including a mechanic who left his shop to drive me back to the Camino after I had wandered off it over 2 kilometers. But...oh man, here´s where my lack of Spanish is kicking my ass. Hourly.

But, today I´m getting a little better at picking up the clues as to where people are coming from and didn´t get lost once today. But yesterday I ended up walking two hours out of my way...which really sucks at the end of a day when you´re lugging all your crap around with you, you´re tired and hungry and just need to land. But...so it goes, if this is all I have to complain about...

The nice thing I suppose is that because I need to be more vigilant, I´m forced to set a slower pace and I´m beginning to really enjoy just putting my trust into something higher than myself. I´ll talk more about this later, but I can tell you that since I left Santiago my spirit has been lightened, and I´m walking these days, literally and otherwise, somehow less burdened . I dare say I´m having fun.



Anyway, my time is nearly up here. Thanks all of you who have emailed me, I can´t always write back to you personally due to the time frame, but I thank you so much. So...for Lisa and my Dad, Grandma and Grandpa, Rebecca, Matt and Amy, Big G, Carriefoot and Kathleen (thanks for those Portuguese translations by the way..you´re funny), Gwennie too. Lots of love to ALL of you and I´ll try to talk you again soon.