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Alvaiazere, Portugal

By the grace of God someone in Alvaiazere had the common sense to arrange that the church bell should stop chiming at 20h00. I die into the most peaceful sleep imaginable, not even waking up for the usual early morning stumble to the loo. Not the slightest hint of a dream. Then at 07h00, deep in REM mode, the bell wakes me up with such a start that I actually jump out of bed and is ready to start running the caminho in 100 meter sprints. WTF? Not only is it a Saturday morning, but no one, I promise you no one in Portugal moves before 09h00 or 10h00 even on a Monday morning. I don’t think I have ever in my entire life been this awake.

I have to giggle as I walk thinking of the poor Carlos, owner of the Alberque in Alvaiazere. He is so impressed with his new found fortune (he was unemployed for two years, saw a Pilgrim stumbling through the village and got the brainwave to rent out his mother’s house. Mother has a laundromat below – wonder if she now sleeps in one of the tumble driers…). His gimmick that he believes will sell his Alberque to others via the Internet, is his gold wax stamp. It is a ritual like high mass at the Vatican – very old (he stresses not sold in any shop) Port is poured into tiny glasses, the participant is warned to sip, not swallow like a shooter, while he lights the wax candle to pour onto the Credencial del Peregrino (the passport in which Pilgrims collect stamps from all the places that they visit. No stamp, no Caminho and no blessing from the guys In Santiago). I sense a moment that will never be forgotten, grab my iphone and video the ritual. And this is where I crack up – in his enthusiasm to put a fair amount of expensive wax (I was told 2 euro for each candle) for the South African pilgrim (Carlos lived in South Africa until 1975), he actually burns a whole right through my Credential! It takes all my good Virgo manners, more than it took to actually eat octopus, to not fall off my chair laughing. The poor man – 10 out of 10 for trying.

At 10 euros a night this stay is a bargain. For an extra 2,50 euro, Carlos sells breakfast from a laminated photograph showing what one can expect to receive in the morning. All self-help, so you can get going at your own time. Well, you can get going straight after the church bell kicked your sleepy ass out of bed so rudely you will not want to stay longer. (I think it is all part of a conspiracy). I decide to take Carlos up on his promise of the best breakfast ever. At this point, a fellow pilgrim, Ronaldo, from Germany has joined us. I watch the ritual again, warning Ronaldo that his credential might go up in smoke. However, trust the Germans to have their credentials made of better paper than the South African version. Ronaldo worked in Baragwanath in Gauteng (then still Transvaal) in 1993. Thought he looked as if he was suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, but decided not to say anything…

Three minutes past seven we are both in the kitchen for the breakfast of our lives. Cheese slices (the little individually wrapped numbers) and ham slices (in an opened packet) in the fridge, with a box of milk and some liquid substance that one could only assume would be juice. The selection of jams would make any Vroue Landbou Vereniging woman older than 40 die on the spot. What is it with the Europeans that they do not understand jam? Jam means “pound for pound”, nothing more, nothing less. Is does not mean boil the holy **** out of fruit and add a tiny bit of jam or pectin or some other chemical substance like asptertame to it, put it in a bottle and call it jam. No no no! Jam can spread, it does not stick to the spoon so that you need a knife to scrape it off. Jam usually maintains the colour of the fruit – it is does not turn into a boiled tar colour. Jam tastes of the fruit that it is made from, it does not taste like – well it tastes like fruit.

Ronaldo (and this I heard from the zippy English lady and the Canadians) takes a taxi to get him halfway to the next stop. I am shocked and horrified! A taxi?? Really? Never thought of it. I am invited to join him and two people from NZ “so as to have an easier start to the day”. Hell, after the start I got to this day, I need to be admitted to a clinic for sleep therapy, I don’t think I will ever fall asleep in my life again after my rude awakening of this morning….

I walk. Thanks to decent signage (about the only good thing about this horrid little village) I do not get lost. Considering the mood I am in thanks to the church bells, it is just as well. Two minutes out of town and I am in paradise. Country lanes with loosely packed stone walls draped in the most sensually lush green moss, more fruit trees and flowers and fields and fields of olive trees. The olive trees are ancient – what must be fourth generation growth out of massive old stumps. With intricately shaped bent branches covered in the same lush moss, their branches weighed down by thousands of tiny green olives, each tree a painting. Oak trees that must be hundreds and hundreds of years old hosting green ivy that grows right to their tops, from where they cascade in yet more shades of green. Mushrooms share the barks of the old trees to create a magic forest – in which I gently tread my pilgrimage.

Hamlets with no more than ten houses at the ends of these country lanes deserted, all but for the barking dogs and scraggly cats. While I do feel terribly sorry for the dogs on their short chains, I am eternally grateful that some of them actually are on chains. They look scary and vicious, and I pray that their chains would not snap as the bark hysterically, all but foaming at the mouth. The shutters and windows of all the houses are tightly locked – I am not sure if it is to keep out the heat or the flies. As for the latter, they are the pest of Portugal! I walk around waving my arms and hands like a total madmen, fearing that if I don’t a swarm will actually crawl into my nostrils and lay their eggs in my brain. (Someone I know recently grew a worm in her brain – took doctors forever to find out what was wrong with her…). And then there is the strange thing of keeping birds in cages – in one village a house has a cage at the back with hundreds of birds, amongst others crows and cockatoos, screeching and squawking and making such a racket that you could hear them a mile away. Why?

In Ansiao I stop for my daily fix of coffee and pastel nata. (I am now officially addicted).

Today has been the highest climb so far – 470 meters. At the highest point above Alvaiazere it is wonderful to look back at how far I have actually walked, but seeing the road stretching up and up in front of you can be very daunting. My body tells me that 20 kms a day are enough, the guidebook (my friend the honourable Mr. Brierly) says 30 kms a day is good. I have no idea what he basis this on, and can see why people end up taking taxis and buses when they base their trip on his expectations. Both Ron and Ronaldo have mentioned that they feel subtly bullied by Brierly, who creates expectations by his description of what one should expect on the walk. I agree. I also realise that my biggest gift this far has been the fact that I do not have to walk with other people – since I left Daniel on the third day, I have not walked with anyone. It is my own pace, my own observations and my own expectations. One of the main reasons I chose this route was because it is quiet, and that it is. After 20 kms I am tired, my back aching. I decide to have a nap under the pine trees – the perfect spot with almost no flies. (These have been the thorn in my flesh!). I spread out my kikoi, take a few deep swigs of the bottle of red wine I saved from last night, and within seconds I am fast asleep transported to another planet. About an hour later I wake up, feeling like a new person. The last ten kilometers are as beautiful as the first ten, yet my back is really sore now. I take a slow pace, stopping often and eternally grateful that Rabacal is not on a hill like most of the other villages.

Arriving at Rabacal I meet Ronaldo
sitting outside the cafe across from the hotel where I am going to stay. The hotel is totally locked up, with an apology and a telephone number. Ronaldo tells me that he got in thanks to the lady at the museum, but seeing that it was now 18h00 (the bells where chiming for me as I walked into the village, the strangest tune amplified over loudspeakers!) everything was closed. As I do not have a telephone, I signlanguaged the lady in the cafe and she phoned someone. In the meantime, I joined Ronaldo in the meal of the day – a greasy cheese and ham omelet with greasier chips and green salad. Very wet green salad. And of course several beers to counteract the dehydration of the day. A man arrives (his name sounded like “Saint” – anything is possible here) and unlocked the hotel. It is a real hotel, with a real bar and dining room, without any human beings in it. It felt like a movie set – real but totally unreal. He scratched in a cupboard to find towels and little soaps, and took me to a room on the first floor. Perfect – just totally deserted. Ronaldo is in the room next to me. Weird!

And so this day draws to a close. It was perfect, the quiet forest lanes weaving through the countryside, the four puppies all curled up together, the magnificent moonflowers and the packed stone walls overgrown with ivy, the tapping of gum from the trees, the cobblestone lanes, the two blue eyed kittens. The quiet. And just my own peaceful company.

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