Today we crossed the highest elevation point on the Camino at La Cruz de Ferro. We left our albergue at 5:45AM to watch the sunrise over the surrounding mountains. The experience was arresting. The beauty of the colors changing over the vast landsape was truly astonishing. I was so engulfed in the moment that I never even thought about taking any pictures. The photo below is a stock image I found online. Sadly the picture doesn’t do any real justice.
After an hour or so after sunrise we headed down the mountain range. We were quickly encapsulated by low lying clouds, diminishing our visibility to about 20ft. The slow decent was actually quite nice as there were very few other pilgrims on the trail. Making good time, Michael and I decided we would try to push on past our guide book’s recommended stopping point.
We have opted to stay in smaller villages from here on out as the Camino is becoming more and more crowded the closer we get to Santiago. As the midday sun began to beat down, we realized that none of the city names we passed were any where on our map. After talking to some of the locals we found out that we had taken a scenic route, which was about 4K of the main trail. After readjusting our path, we eventually reconnected to the main Camino trail.
We arrived at our destination around 5:30PM… almost two and a half hours later than we planned. Michael calculated that with our small detour we had walked just over 50K (31 miles) for the day. Although it was difficult at the end, we arrived later than expected, and our bodies ached a little more than usual, the day was still relatively peaceful.
Looking ahead, the next few days are some of the most mountainous on the entire Camino.
– Luke