Moving Along

October 18
Today our plan is to make it to Arzúa.  The elevation for the route fluctuates up and down slightly for most of the way.  At the end, we climb to Arzúa.  There are a few muddy sections but the path is surprisingly dry, considering how much it rained yesterday.  The trail is through a lot of forest, but we also walk on stretches of senda (established pathway) as we crisscross a highway we are paralleling.

As we pass through villages and towns, I'm surprised that there seem to be fewer churches along the way.  The ones we do encounter are closed.  We do, however, come across a neat little museum that is basically a house furnished in the old traditional way.  A small village dog joins us and follows us around for a bit before we exit her village.

Melide is rather large and we make several stops here.  First into a bar (we've found that bars often carry some basic sundries) to ask for cough drops or lozenges, as my throat has been bothering me all morning.  Since they don't have any, but we do get a sello, I buy an Aquarius (the Spanish version of Gatorade; either lemon or orange flavors).  Not too far away, I pop into a small store that has a bit of everything, and they do have something comparable to Ricola.  Following the Camino through Melide, we come to a church with a sign instructing us to go to the parochial church for a sello.  This church is a bit off the marked trail, but we eventually find it...locked.  We hover around the plaza, looking for perhaps a parish office or I-don't-know-what.  There is a tourist information office and we go in to inquire about the church.  Jerri says the woman is surprised that no one is there and stamps our credencials with her office sello.

Outside Melide, we are back on unimproved trail for a while until we hit Boente, where we stop for lunch.  After that we are on either senda or pavement into Arzúa.  Along the way, we bump into another face from the past, a girl from Texas who had been traveling with two guys from Indiana (she previously lived in Indiana).  She was such a perky thing when we first met her and is obviously moving laboriously now.  We ask what happened to her buddies.  She, too, has had some foot and other medical issues.  Since they have a deadline and she doesn't, they've gone on ahead.  Yep, everyone has a story.