Thursday, May 30, 2013

Thursday, May 30 - Olveiroa to Muxia

Terminado! We are done! We have completed the Chemin d'Arles from Montpellier to Somport, the Camino Aragones from Somport to Puente la Reina and the Camino Muxia from Santiago to Muxia. Thirty eight days, 959.8kms, 1,372,140 steps! And we finished in sunshine!!!! It took a while, ha, almost thirty eight days but the sun finally came out as we were walking along the beach boardwalk into this Atlantic coastal town of Muxia. Another milestone is that, although tendinitis teased and threatened it never settled in, so for the most part I was able to walk without pain, maybe not always without misery but at least without pain.
 
From Olveiroa to Muxia is almost 30kms but the path is fairly easy; it has it's share of ups and downs but that is a given. For a significant part of the time we walked along a path lined with young eucalyptus trees, purple foxgloves and an abundance of flowering yellow bushes - heather, mountain laurel or gorse or whatever, I don't know but it was beautiful. We took advantage of every café stop we passed even if we didn't need it. After the scarcity of these opportunities in France it just seemed wrong to pass any by.
 
 
 
 
 
Early afternoon we came out of a wooded path and we could see the ocean. I was excited to be nearing the end of our Camino but I wasn't as near the end as I thought. We still had ninety minutes more to walk our way around the huge bay before getting close to Muxia. We found our hotel, a neat, modern hotel noted for its excellent restaurant and took care of details such as checking in, sellos for our credenciales and getting our Muxia Compostella certificate, 'Muxiana.' Our quick lunch turned into a feast for Dayton as he had shrimp wrapped in a thin freshly made angel hair pasta and deep fried and then every complementary tapa that was generously served to us had fish in it. Even the Russian salad we ordered was made with potatoes and fish - who knew? And who cares, the Galician white wine they served was vegetarian and excellent.
 
After that, we lightened our backpacks, put them on and headed out to the Sanctuary at the end of Cabo; apparently the backpacks were needed for an authentic looking 'Fin da Ruta Xacobea' (End of St. James's Camino) photo. Dayton was looking for the setting of the final scene of the movie 'The Way', where Martin Sheen scatters his son's ashes into the ocean and I think we found it or close to it. The Sanctuary is set amid the rocks at the end point of the peninsula and those rocks are spectacularly impressive. Dayton kept encouraging me to go climb farther down and closer to the braking waves for a more exciting picture. I resisted - wisely - because when Dayton changed places with me for his photo op a huge wave crashed against the rocks and in those two seconds he was soaked almost as thoroughly as yesterday after all that walking in the rain. Told him so. All in all this was a really memorable finish to this Camino.
 
 

2 comments:

  1. Congratulations Karen. You are my SHERO!!!

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  2. Well done Karen and Dayton. You will not soon forget this trip. So happy for you. Now to ditch those backpacks. Have fun. Safe trip home.

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