May 10, 2018

Camino’s are not for everyone, as we’ve told people many times; and last night was a prime example of what we mean. Our first night in a shared dorm, everyone’s friendly, everyone’s happy to share stories, everyone’s pretty much knackered after a long day on their trail, and now all you’re looking for is a comfortable night’s sleep. So, most travellers are settled and snugged in by 9:45; everyone’s quiet and just about to nod off to the land of ZZZZ’s; and then there’s a knock on the front door, which breaks the calm settled dynamic. A Dutch couple and their French friend are just coming in from a night of festivities; so they start to talk amongst themselves, in quiet, muffled tones, but enough to keep people awake; they turn their little lights on, unzip all sorts of noisy bags and backpacks, take themselves off to the bathroom. Of course, by this stage just about everyone’s awake and we’re back to square one.

Dorm life is probably the most challenging of activities on the camino. All sorts of snoring, all sorts of noises that people make throughout the night, phones ringing, text messages coming thru, and so the list goes on. And I know that the obvious remedy is to wear a pair of earplugs, but even these do only part of the job.

Anyway, by 5:15am, Michael’s phone alarm goes off, and good  night sleep or not, it’s up and at them time. Of course the cycle starts again, little torch lights go on, the rustlling of zips and bags and back pack; people scrambling to locate their belongings in the dark and make as little noise as possible – a futile exercise, from experience.

This morning is no different and we’re on our way at around 5:40. The trail today takes us from Azambuja to Santarém – a small city famous for its training and management of horses, amongst other things.

Today the plans have been somewhat amended, as Michael has decided to accompany Julie, our Australian friend who has been having issues with her feet (blisters) to Santarém, but with a 10km train journey to begin with, to lessen the load on Julie’s feet. Jose and I planned to walk the predetermined with another Italian girl – Francesca- who we met yesterday and is wanting company during the journey.

The trip started out normally enough, but soon started to go south I(even though we were going north). We had innocently decided to follow a group of Fatima bound pilgrims as we sort of assumed that they were well organized and knew where they were going and what they were doing. Big Mistake!!!!! 

We left in the dark and so it was difficult to locate signs and waymarks, but we had the Fatima people showing the way, so no problems (we thought). All 3 of us started to become somewhat suspicious, but we had faith in the Fatima people. Anyway by the time we did check, we realized that we were off our course; that they were taking the path along the N3 National Highway; and of course, it would have been a major effort to backtrack and start again. So we reluctantly took the decision to cut our losses and continue on this path; none of us were happy at all, but it was the most pragmatic decision.

Long story short, the whole of the 27km journey was shared by cars, trucks, buses, motor bikes and Fatima people. Today was also one of the hotter days so far, so it made the whole situation that more arduous and uneasy. Because of the warmer temperatures, the road surface starts to heat up and this in turn adversely affects your feet. To make matters worse, we had planned to have breakfast along the way, but didn’t find anything open for about 15kms.

Suffice to say that we arrived into Santarém a little hot and bothered and unhappy with our not so good decision making.

The Albergue we were staying in, was not open when were arrived at 12:20. Fortunately it opened shortly after, so we were able to check in and going have a bit of a scout around and have lunch. When we got back to the Albergue, Julie and Michael had arrived and by the time we got to our room it was after 4:00pm. A quick shower and some mandatory housekeeping activities, and we headed out again for a quick drink and early dinner with other camino friends; another pleasant night was had by all.