The morning beauty on this Camino can literally make you lose your mind. Sunrises here feel like that first look between two people falling in love. The path today escalated from beautiful to stunning and ended the day with a full-on fantastic. Just look and be amazed. My jaw hit the ground from all the beauty around me. On this Camino, I don’t get woken up by an alarm—I wake it up, because missing the morning Picasso in the sky would be a sin. The morning hike shot straight uphill. A 1000-metre climb. My stomach digests these kinds of ascents way better in the cool of the early morning than under the lunchtime sun, when it’s burning hotter than a marathon runner on their final stretch. So that 1000-metre climb was a piece of cake. The reward? A sunrise so magical I started jumping and squealing with joy. Pure Red Bull for my body. And then—just to top it all off—a perfect morning mist.
The 9 km descent (with 900 metres down) felt like my brakes gave out—I was leaving smoke behind me, but no one could see me. The path twisted down by the Navia river, all the way to the dam, and then—bam—another cute little uphill stretch on asphalt. I passed everyone in sight. Absolute poetry for my soul. My brain started to malfunction in the best way. And because I simply cannot live without music, today’s soundtrack was classic breakbeat—my favourite genre of electronic music. There’s never a dull moment in it. The Brits were masters of the style, even though today’s youth probably doesn’t even know it existed. Extinct like the dinosaurs. Shame.
Then I crossed paths with a guy from Slovenia. During our short chat, he told me that a few days ago he got hit by a car while walking the Camino. Well—to be exact—it hit his left arm. The guy gave me the full rundown: the driver’s side mirror smacked his arm, and while it wasn’t a full-speed crash, it was still strong enough to send him straight into surgery. The doctor’s instructions were simple—rest. The man took that advice and, a few days later, returned right to the scene of the accident. Camino called. “It was just my arm, not my leg, so I can keep walking,” he said. I nearly died laughing. A king. A hero of this Camino, if you ask me. My kind of person. He deserved a high five and a kiss on the cheek. The kind of human who can turn pain into a melody and just keeps going, no matter what. The kind of people who give their all, who live the way most only dream of. He had a great sense of humour too, so I teased him—said it was his own fault for walking on the wrong side of the road. Since it was his left arm in a sling, it should’ve been the right one if he was really heading toward Santiago. I even threw his own line back at him: “Good thing it was your arm and not your leg.”
But curiosity got the better of me—I had to ask: left- or right-handed? “Left,” he said. Well then. Looks like this Camino’s going to teach him how to get things done with his right hand. Which, honestly, isn’t a bad life skill. You learn something new every day.
