To the end of the world and back

Well geez...its been a long few days.

On Thursday, we started walking to Finesterre. Even up until the minute before we started walking, we were talking about taking the bus. After some debate, we decided to just walk it. The first day was luckily a short one, only 12 miles. We didn´t start walking until 10 and took a long lunch about half way there. When we only had about 3 miles left, we came around a corner into a small town and saw the most beautiful river and bridge. There were people laying all over these big rocks down by the river so that seemed like the best way to spend an hour. We just layed on these rocks, soaking in the sun. Since it was just Kirstin, Hannah, Ben, Jess and I, there was no one to meet up with at the end in the albergue. There was just no rush to get there at all. This turned out to be an awful mistake...

We got into the town, walked to the albergue to find it was full. There was no where else to stay but this guy told us this guy named Bart had a tent we could sleep in. So we looked for Bart. Bart did in fact have a tent for us so we set it up and then made some dinner. When it came time to go to sleep, it didn´t seem so bad. We layed two blankets on the ground of the tent for a little mattress and snuggled in. I read for a bit and then fell to sleep. I think this lasted for thirty minutes. I woke up freezing and really really uncomfortable. I don´t think I got more than 2 hours of sleep the whole night. No one in the tent slept and at 6, we finally just got up. At this point...Kirstin and I talked about maybe just taking the bus. But we convinced ourselves to walk and started out on our way. 20 miles later...we finally reached the town we had to stay in. I have never been so exhausted in my entire life. They luckily had some mattress left for us to sleep on and that may have been the best sleep of my entire life.

So then came our last day of walking!! We had all slept well, had a good breakfast and it just seemed like such a better day. The weather was warm, the sun was out and we walked almost 12 miles before we stopped for lunch. The first time we came over a hill and saw the coast, we all just stopped and looked out for a few minutes. It was an incredible feeling to look out over the ocean and know that I had walked there. We continued along the coast until we were just outside of Finesterre. The tradition is to go out to this lighthouse at sunset the day you get in. As we were walking in to town at 6 after almost 20 miles of walking, we decided sunrise could be just as good since it was another 2 mile walk up there. We checked into an albergue and went to the grocery store to buy some dinner and breakfast for the morning.

We rolled out of bed and made it up to the lighthouse just in time. The five of us sat on there, watching the sun rise, drinking memosas and talking about all of our favorite moments of the trip. It was a beautiful, unforgettable morning. That was it, I was done walking. We took pictures of the ocean, the final marker that said we had 0 km to go and each other. Everyone, including myself, forgot to take a picture of the actual lighthouse...opps.

The rest of the day, we just layed around town and relaxed. Hannah and Jess are going to come to Barcelona with us which will be really fun! Kirstin and I took a bus back to Santiago last night and after some exhaustive walks around the city, finally found a place to stay the night. We were close to paying €50 each for this nice hotel as our Plan D if nothing else worked out but luckily we found a place much cheaper. We both slept in today and are going to take a train at 4 into Porto.

A lesson we have learned however is to book transportation first, hotel second. We had originally planned to get into Porto yesterday but since the trains and buses don´t run regularly on Sundays..we were stuck. We tried to contact our bed and breakfast but who knows if they got any of our messages. Keep your fingers crossed that we have a place to sleep tonight.