Near lunchtime, I stopped at a bar in Augapesada—which, without confirming in my Spanish-English dictionary—I believe translates into “Heavy Water.” Seems like an appropriate day for that, although I still had managed to miss the rain. The tables and chairs outside were wet from rain earlier, and the guy running the place went around with a rag to wipe off the water and dry them all. I took a seat and ordered Coke.
Before my Coke even arrived, however, the rain poured lose in buckets. A drenching downpour that had me scrambling to pick up my bags and go inside. The sudden change was remarkable.
I finished my Coke and stamped my credentials, looking outside occasionally to see if the rain might let up, and about 15 minutes later, it did. It still dripped from the trees and other overhanging objects, but it no longer fell out of the sky at all, so I paid my bill and headed out again. Although it wasn’t raining at the moment, I still knew that I had gotten lucky so far and it would still likely pour rain before the day was out. In the meantime, however, I enjoyed the lack of rain.
I arrived in Negeira, booking myself into the municipal alburgue in town—but, I was informed—they were out of beds. No more room.
I had a couple of options. The most obvious would be to find some other alburgue that might have still had beds available. But it hadn’t rained since my lunch stop at the bar—incredibly enough—so the ground wasn’t entirely wet. I hiked out of town, and in an attempt to find a place to camp and set up the tarp before any rain started. Ultimately, I settled on a location a couple of kilometers out of town, on an obviously abandoned dirt road that hadn’t seen traffic in years based on its overgrown status.
Remarkably, despite the absolutely dreadful weather forecast, the only real rain the entire day was during those 15 minutes I was indoors at the bar. I got really lucky in that regard. I was completely prepared for a very wet, very miserable day, but miraculously, I missed it all!
I was stunned—holy cow! 88,022 kilometers to Finisterre?!!
I had a lot more to walk than I thought I did….
Of course, any of you familiar with how they write numbers
in Spain know that they switch around the commas and periods,
so it’s actually 88.022 kilometers to Finisterre. But
that’s almost as funny to me because it seems like an
unusually precise number. Not just 88.0 kilometers.
Not even 88.02 kilometers. But 88.022 kilometers?
Given the fact that 1 kilometer is 1000 meters, it’s like
stating 88,022 meters to Finisterre. Who the heck measure
such distance down to the meter level? Not 88,023 meters.
Not 88,021 meters. But exactly 88,022 meters. *shrug*
Drinking a Coke in Augapesada as it pours buckets of rain outside.
Interestingly, they always gave me a lemon slice whenever
I ordered a Coke.
I get a little friendly with a statue
Camped in the middle of an old dirt road.
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