CAMINO HIGH LITE
As walking holidays go, it wasn’t too punishing. We called it caminolite – because a) we were having our bags carried and b) we weren’t going all the way to Santiago. This time.
That box had already been ticked. So we reached the final leg of the five-day stretch which was to take us to the pretty fishing port of A Guarda in Spain.
We’d long since stopped looking for the ubiquitous yellow arrows, the familiar waymarkers that indicate the right direction, as we’d obviously taken a wrong turn somewhere along the line.
The only soul we’d seen for hours had waved loosely towards the sea and, sure enough, eventually the town shimmered in the distance. Cute as it was, A Guarda turned out also to be almost entirely under reconstruction and finding our hotel was like a game of help the mouse find the cheese.
The bosomy concierge gave us a warm welcome but, oblivious to our weary state, in a stream of Spanish and jabbing at a map, started on a blow-by-blow account of the town’s must-sees.
We interrupted as best we could to explain that we were leaving early the next morning and that we just wanted somewhere nice to eat. Technology to the rescue — out came the laptop with voice-over translations clearing up comms both ways.
At that moment, another pilgrim appeared, one of scores we’d met along the way, who’d clearly taken the right route as she’d been here for hours.
“You really should climb Monte Santa Tecla, see the Celtic village,” she urged, fresh as a daisy, “it only takes about half an hour and one of the vendors up there got us a taxi down.”
With no Santiago Cathedral to finalise our trip, it seemed like a fitting option, so despite fatigue and lateness of the hour, we set out. We’d been advised that we could cut the climb time in half if we took the short-cut stairs between the bends on the tightly winding road up the 340m mount.
But here were no yellow arrows, no “this way to the stairs” notices so we bundu-bashed through the first few circuits till we finally found the stairs.
Good and bad timing, this was, after all, the end of the journey, but at some point in the bundubashing my fellow pilgrim did in her foot. Limping to the top was going to be long and painful. Urging her to stay put, I scaled one more set of steps to see if it was worth a last spurt.
Sure enough, there were the Celtic ruins, a giant cross and a view to take your breath away. She could surely make it up here. The concern though, was the long descent. No mobile data to make a call and no likelihood of friendly vendors at this time of day.
But miracle or mirage — there was a car parked next to the ruins and a guide explaining (in English nogal) the back story of the ancient architects (though why in God’s name they built all the way up here, heaven knows).
Casting stranger danger to the wind, I mustered courage and politely asked if they may be going down at some stage and could my crippled friend and I have a lift?
“Sure,” said the Spanish guide, “but first we go to the top?” Prayers answered. So not only did we get driven down, but were treated to the spectacular view of half of both Spain and Portugal from the very summit.
Our camino was well and truly blessed.
Do you have a funny or quirky story about your travels? Send 600 words to travelmag@sundaytimes.co.za and include a recent photo of yourself.