261 more kilometers to Santiago
We woke up and decided to take a slight detour off the Camino to visit the fishing town of Cudillero. It was about 1 kilometer straight down hill to the sea from where we were staying. I thightbI had read we could follow a scenic coastal trail back to the Camino Norte but I must have read about a different town. The walk down to town was worth it. Cudillero is a town built right into the hillside with the ocean on the other side. Unfortunately, the only way back to the Camino without backtracking was a 2 kilometer hike up hill on a winding road. Needless to say John wasn’t happy about this – I wasn’t either. But it is was still worth visiting Cudillero.
After the long hike out of town we headed inland for a couple hours. We decided to take a bus 8 kilometers to shorten our walk. We consulted Google and found there was a bus coming in the next hour to Soto de Luina. We made it to the town in time to get a bite to eat and figure out where the bus stop was.
We found the bus stop and found it was no longer in use. Alsa is the big bus line in Spain and their busses are clean, large with Wi-Fi and usually on schedule. Since they built the highways, the Alsa buses now do not go into the smaller towns but instead stop at the rotaries at the exit. There is no actual bus stop, the bus gets off and directly gets back in the highway. In this case, the exit was 2 kilometers up a steep hill. There is no sign or shelter. We asked a woman out walking her dog and we thought she said to just stand at the rotary on the exit. We hiked up the 2 k and found the exit and just prayed the bus would show up. Luckily it did. 😊. We got off at our planned village but again the bus stopped on the highway and it was 2 k to the village and another k to our pension. We had to wonder if this time taking the bus to save some kilometers was worth it.
We got to our pension and after a quick shower I headed out to see what was around. . I had seen some people walking down the road. I looked at the map and saw the ocean was nearby. When I got to the end of the road I saw the most amazing views. I was standing on a cliff and below were beautiful beaches – one with some surfers but the others were deserted. It was quite amazing. We headed down to the bar for supper and saw Hank from Belgium. We had talked with him a few days ago. We invited him to join us and ended the day with great conversation. This is what the Camino is about – finding beautiful unexpected places and meeting friendly interesting people. I love it !
Spectacular!