Caminho Portuguese Ponte de Lima to Porto

‘Bom caminho’ I hear loud and clear. The voice is so near to me that wind is not needed to carry the voice to my ears. I am walking on a stretch with some pilgrims behind me and I am happily surprised to be greeted with this standard line. Then I see the plump man who a day earlier was engrossed on his phone while I slung ‘bom caminho’ at him. I realize he does this to make fun of me. Sure enough he talks to me, asking whether the trailer is easier on a downhill or uphill. ‘None of them’, I reply ‘especially not now I have a shin splint.’ For some time we walk together, reluctantly, and we do talk a tiny bit. He’s American and I imagine him a leader in some business: a moody executive who uses few words, instead staring at a screen of either a phone or a notebook to plan the walk from Porto to Santiago de Compostella. A route that needs precious little planning. We walk a same pace, in the rain and I can’t help mentioning the rain. He, walking briskly from one dry hostel to the next dry hostel, covered in rain gear, appearing one black cone of melted plastic, answers: ‘All in all, it’s not that bad with the rain.’

‘It’s just rain’, said the young German woman, pondering to buy a poncho because her fashionable rain jacket isn’t that waterproof in heavy rainfall. Heavy rain fall such as I started the day in and ended many.

‘It’s just rain’ echoed in my head all day, alternated with ‘all in all, it’s not that bad’. In my opinion to say such things are perspectives. Sentences to make the moaner heard, the complainer fed. But it is a big pile of turd, these lines spoken by people wanting to look better than the one who whines (and camps out in just rain).

Why do birds not sing in heavy rain fall? Why do chickens and goose flap their wings after the rain’s gone? Why, suddenly, cats and dogs appear on the path when rain stops? Why people come out in a surprisingly volume once the rain’s over, and not in the rain? Why are most people not tending their garden while raining? Simply because it goes against our human and animal sense to be in rain, except in monsoon or a sudden burst in hot, humid Paraguay Chaco.

To start walking in hail, heavy rain and dark sky feels utterly unnatural. Even plain insane. Why would you do such a thing? I am a caminhero and have no where to go, except forward in the rain. Every tiny ray of sunshine, however short, makes my heart skip a beat.

Paths are under water. Rivers flow over. Fields are drenched. My shoes soaked. I have to eat in a toilet building to keep dry. Find roofs and sometimes have a floor covered in shit. Other times lacking a front wall where cold and wind comes rolling in. Unwrapping a wet tent makes a damp down-feathered sleeping bag damper. A soil drenched, the back colder. A tarp wet, the ground floor of the tent even more moist. A back sore, lacking a tree in my tent to rest my spine against. When a roof is missing and a body warm from the sleeping bag, it will gather drops when out to pee at night. A pick-nick difficult. A mood hard to keep up. A toilet cold to the privates. But no complaints. It is my choice and most of times I am able to keep up the good mood.

Singing out loud together with Amy Whinehouse does help. The car behind me drives in my pace of walking. I don’t know for how long. It is unknown to me that a car is trailing behind my Yellow Submarine. When I do notice I am ashamed for a behavior I dislike would I be the car driver. The Portuguese couple doesn’t seem to mind much. I have come to walk in a more beautiful surrounding and alberges are patterned into the landscape. It makes it more difficult for me to find a place to camp and all I can do is walking on until I find a quiet spot in the rain.

My dinner elastic bread with chai that tastes of burned milk (thanks to the lightweight Snowpeak kettle). For the first time I couldn’t find a store, even though I left the trail and walked over the main road to be quicker.

Photography is a way of expressing my creative need. Others on the trail make shots with their cellphone while in walking mode but I stop for beauty. I stop to get my camera out of the bag strapped to the trailer and while squatting down I move a little up and down and slide from left to right to get the frame that I like most. I sometimes wonder whether I would like walking that much when I can’t capture it? I wonder what the poncho clad guy (the black plastic uni cone) thinks that comes my direction? He looks at me in what is best described as ridicule and dislike. In my squatted pee-like position at the fence I smile at him but he doesn’t. I don’t dare to say ‘bom caminho’ nor ‘bom dia’ since we none are Portuguese. ‘Hello’ seems alienated, also because the man looks angry at me. Now I do wonder why but in hindsight it really might be me that is the cause for some of their contempt. Why, you’d ask? Well, the thing is, the pilgrims with their backpack covered in poncho’s makes me laugh. They look like gremlins, gnomes. To be more precise, giant gnomes on a certain mission. These giant gnomes are reluctant to greet and carry a sour look on their face as if, indeed, they picked very tart berries of which they shouldn’t eat but did so nonetheless.

I end the day in a truly impressive forest. Majestic almost fluorescent barks of eucalyptus and impossible to find a level piece of ground. I pitch the tent at a former terrace for cultivating, away from possible danger of trees getting uprooted by the wetness.

Once I walk the outskirts of Ponte de Lima the giant gnomes are becoming more in number, some colorful, but all transformed in one mass of plastic with a sour expression filling the gap in the gnomes outfit. While I capture cats and smile and greet, nothing is returned. By now, I don’t mind anymore. Not even the elderly woman who barks at me: ‘Sprichst du Deutsch?’ after I wished her ‘bom dia’. I decide not to speak German today. Not to tart looking gnomes. Call me intolerant. I do not care.

Once on the bridge of Ponte de Lima I see all the pilgrims I saw the day earlier. All knitted together with the flubby moody executive American man, who artificially optimistic yelled ‘bom caminho’, leading his flock of female gnomes. I meet more plastic female cones whom I minimally share words with, the expression tells me they wished they were home. When I stand in line by the Lidl I am spoken to by an American woman. Her presence is beaming, her beauty apparent, her shoes as colorful as mine but without mud. She obviously is not on the trail for she looks happy and radiant. When we talk I can not help that I mention the rain. Without using a victim manner of talking or trying to fish for consolation, she says: ‘I need sun too. I just NEED it! We had exceptionally much rain this year. I long for the sun as I get tired of being in the house’, than her much older husband pulls at her arm to go back to the car. She leaves me with ‘you got it! and ‘your way is the way to do this trail’.

Jose Antonio Garcia a true pilgrim. As a young man working as a cook aboard a ship he was the only survivor of 17 others who died in a shipwreck. After being saved by helicopter, as soon as he could, he then started to walk to places of pilgrimage, to thank God who saved his life. And he still walks. Having walked well over 100.000 kilometers he left me in awe and goosebumps.

I’d counted the rainy days until I would reach a dry heaven for myself. It did not fail to deliver! The pilgrim Jose Antionio checked me in and, ashamingly admitting, carried my heavy Yellow Submarine up to the room.

However, the trail becomes steep and narrow at this point. Geo who is far ahead of me tells me the wetness is getting worse and the amount of plastic conical gnomes is manifold in Galicia. While enjoying a roof above my head, one which Geo arranged for me, I make a plan to go around the official trail towards the border with Spain. Once there, I will turn around. At the same moment Geo and I decide a date on which to return home. And within a few hours we have a flight back home from Porto. My heels at once turn that direction: Porto Airport is my new destination.

I feel for Geo who plows through, like a dull implement in a clay soil. He’s got pangs of pain. Blisters. He deals with way too many pilgrims and full dormitories with snoring and loud people. There are floods and detours. He eats mostly junk food and bread. He meets with superior ‘waterproof’ women and a bitter angry lady who expected trail camaraderie from Geo who didn’t know that existed. I, on the other hand am on paths void of people. I walk on cobblestone and pass ancient bridges. The rain stops soon, the sun will warm me and Peter Tosh makes me dance a little. It feels as I am walking home bound and it feels I am going in the right direction. Just a little before the river Lima flows into the ocean, I set camp at its bank. Content with locating a quiet spot in an otherwise built up part I feel secure and optimistic.

Nighttime unfamiliarity with sleeping at a river so near the ocean: Shots. A motorboat several times. Bores running. Unknown shrieks of an animal. Water bubbles. Bad smell of the river. Breaking of branches. A wind direction that changed, bringing highway sounds to my sleep. Tide that went very low and up (I noticed on my pee break). I worried for the shore to crumble and me to end up in a cold river.

Soon I meet with the official trail and with walking against the stream I start to meet remarkable many pilgrims. Most are white as a ghost, tattoos adorn limbs that were covered all winter and many wear black clothes. Even though the rain came to a halt, many are still moody and not in to be friendly or kind, unlike the locals. Quite some seem to be unfit and rather on the fatty side. A number of them appear near to depressed or trying to overcome depression. Something so very understandable in European dull winters, though Portugal in March isn’t much better.

After having reached the ocean and turning left, after a lot of walking wrong into dead end and odd neighborhoods I follow a seedy dirt tracks (one where I helped a gypsy mom who carried her baby while I pushed her stroller through the branches of a fallen tree. In doing so I asked her obese son to help me. Alas, he was unable to untangle the stroller from a grass reed). At last I meet the yellow arrow again, and I am gleeful that I reached a cafeteria. As a hungry wolf I gulp down 3 milky coffees without pastel de nata, since the former truck driver now running the cafe doesn’t have them. I see another traveler, the kind like myself, but don’t dare to speak to him as greetings haven’t done much on this trail. Yet, feeling awkward to ignore the weary looking traveler with his two dogs, I do say something: ‘It seems you are carrying a tent too?’ And when we talk it is one where he praises the sun, the warmth, the ability to finally charge his solar panels. He then dwells on all his travels around the world and his views on the obsessive statues of an agonizing Jesus that he finds rather tormenting. At last, the middle aged Norwegian marine asks me: ‘Why are you so thin, if I may ask? Are you a vegan?’

In my successful attempt to intermittent fasting I realize I unintentionally lost some kilograms. Fueling my high energy level with pastel de nata is perhaps not the best way but for now, it’ll do.

While his shape doesn’t proof much of a marine piece, I answer that my vegetable garden lacks fat (he then rambles on about his own vegetable garden). A few hundred meters further down the road, I find another cafeteria where a lady sells me pastel de nata. Her reply when I say: ‘Two please. I should eat my bread but I rather eat nata and I need to gain weight anyway,’ is: ‘Yes, that’s true. You need’. Three insults in less than 10 minutes. Vegan, thin, eat more. Thinking this over I feel offended and then realize that I am rather hypocrite as I appreciate straight honesty, also from an obese cafeteria lady (who admitted she was too heavy).

To sit outside, anywhere, against a wall and face the sun. Feel it’s glow and be warm. Able to cut a papaya. To just sit and hear the birds and the outcry of a cat that missed its target. When I close my eyes I see a bright heaven image of dark yellow and orange, perhaps the reflection of my soaked oats and the fruit. Then I just know people who state ‘it is just rain’ are full of horse manure (waiting in my garden to be used up). They say that to look brave and tough, only really liking it afterward, when all is done. Who likes to lay in a bath tub forever? Fish and clamps.

Sure enough, I like Portugal, even this overcrowded part, where the rural is interwoven with the choices of modernity and where the rustic is still embraced, perhaps out of necessity. The most interesting part of this whole trail are the Portuguese people. Passing a closed mini mercado, I enter the neighboring restaurant where the lady who’s working walks over to the shop, me trailing behind her through private space into the shop and let me buy the little I need. Afterwards we talk for half an hour. Such delightful encounters color my day, as do the exceptional spots I am able to locate within the sprawl of the coast, where everyone seems to want to live.

Portugal has containers in abundance and I didn’t see dirt laying around. New gas cardridges can be found at the China Bazar, located in every big town.

The route continues as the ‘Coastal’ one and I overlook the ocean. I merge with the ‘Litoral’ and it’s boring wooden boardwalks. It is getting crowded and the Yellow Submarine is more of a hindrance to others. Yet, the going seems to get better for everyone since the sun is out much more and people start to greet one another and even me. But some remain stressed out and angry looking at me. It are the locals and longer term immigrants that are carrying me in their daily lives, as if I were always there.

Can someone resolve the mystery of transplanting spring onions this amount by hand? It is all done by Indian contract workers. Some beautifully adorned Sikhs, looking rather uprooted and having lost their strong natural stand.

For me, walking this crowded part of Portugal reminds me of the time I backpacked, being in a town for some time and trying to locate the restaurant mentioned in the Lonely Planet guidebook, which could take me hours.

The feeling of villages strung together in one continuous line is less of an annoyance when the sun shines, as it is interesting to walk through a painting come alive. My trailer and me effortlessly walking on and on. In wonderment that I walked so much and that I liked walking in itself. And that the Yellow Submarine makes it so easy to do.

Coming closer to Porto airport I need to study the Google satellite profile map precisely in order to find patches of wood. When I reach ‘Litoral Norte Nature Reserve’, after a long tiresome day walking it has a sign of protected forest. It rains cats and dogs and I am not considering to not enter, I only need to do it when no car is passing by. The undergrowth is wild and furiously clinging to my legs and wheels while my mind is outraged by the ridiculous sign because as soon as an investor shows interest in building apartment blocks, a bulldozer will come sooner than they care to remove the ‘protected’ sign. All is built up. All day I walk in one enormous sprawl, madness really. As if all Portuguese people live here? Then a tiny piece of untouched forest and they call it fancy names. In my eyes it is the last original part which will succumb sooner than later. And so I sleep here (knowing it can costs me a 250 euro fine)!

‘The sun will come out soon, then it’ll be warm again’, says the man next to me in the first cafeteria after a wet night in the ‘protected’ and very beautiful last patch of original coastal forest. Then: ‘Why do you walk anyway and why in this weather? If it was for me I would book a flight and go to a warm sunny place where I can party and dance.’ I can’t really explain why I walk, so I raise my eyebrows and wrinkle my mouth in an expression that says: ‘That’s what some people like doing’. He asks me whether I am married and I show him a photo of Geo telling the man my husband is walking towards Santiago de Compostella. ‘Do you have children?’ he asks further and when I answer he says that’s a good thing because like him, without a wife and children, he’s free. He has an easy life, alone and well. While smiling, his hands make a movement as if carrying a basket with air. The waitress comes to me and says: ‘He can’t talk, he’s mute.’ That was clear from the second moment I talked to him and isn’t at all a problem.

Once at the airport area I am surprised to find out it is in a village and the authentic little gritty mom and dad restaurant where I try to order anything but pork is eased by two English speaking guests assisting me. They take my order, tell it to the mom in the kitchen and off they are. When I buy groceries in the Aldi some way further down the road I am happy with the friendliness of the cashier and the security guy. Once in the pasteleria I gleeful beam at the pretty slim business woman next to me who jubilantly praises my note that I show the waitress ‘pastel de feijao’. Portuguese people are just so pleasant. They connect, they talk, they are nice and have confidence.

Worried for shady persons roaming around, I chose a clean place without any sign of rubble but I was tucked between a beekeeper, a highway and several transport companies.

The last morning in Portugal, a very early one and I stroll through the industrial area were life has not yet started. A feeling where the day can do what it wants. I slept a less than restful night within two kilometers from the airport.

On the last day I wait for Geo and spend my time in the cafeteria eating until it becomes too loud.

Once checked in at the airport hotel Geo and I align. Our bodies washed clean put back in dirty clothes and both slimmer than before we eat another unhealthy but copious meal of fries and steak and molotov that makes my tummy stretch to its limits. ‘Vegan’, ‘thin’ and ‘it is just rain’ are not echoing in my head, as they are out cried by contentment for the amount of walking. For Geo lousy hospedajes, discomfort, crowded trails and white bread are over. What floats on the surface are endorphins and the surprise that I pulled it off: 600 kilometers on foot. Walking past everyone else our pace has become unnatural fast and our mood joyful to return to a quiet home in the forest. Knowing that walking might be my new favorite way of transport.

I walked about 120 kilometer from Ponte de Lima to Airport Porto. Total about 600 km in 29 walking days. Geo walked about a 100 kilometer more and reached Santiago de Compostella (which was overcrowded, except when the rain poured down strongly) in the same number of days.

Geo and I were in Portugal from February 8th to March 17th, 2024. Post 1: Lisbon to Fátima. Post 2: Fátima to Coimbra. Post 3: Coimbra to Ponte de Lima