Day 3 - From Palas De Rei to Arzua

Hi. It's been awhile since I posted on this blog. My internet is very slow and this creates a new excuse for me. The only time for me to go online is in the morning (like now).

This is the story of the 3rd day of walking the Camino. I can't remember what time we left. I guess around 5.30 or 6am. It was still dark too, but not as cold as the morning of the second day. We walked in the dark for around 2hours, until we stopped for breakfast. As a reminder, this will be our 30 km walk. We'll pass Melide town after around 10km. The aim was to reach Arzua by 4pm and meet at a restaurant called Ultreia. Our guide as also told us that there would be quite horrible uphill and downhill along the way.

During breakfast, we decided to deliver Lilynne's backpack to Arzua. We also dumped our 'unnecessary' stuff during the day (our sleeping bags!!). We still need our sleeping bag at night though. Actually we walked with a good pace on this third day. Audrey and I kept singing and we did an 'experiment'. When we sang upbeat songs, we walked faster. Hahaha. I think the song that made us walk the fastest was "Give me oil in my lamp" =P A few hours after breakfast, we reached a beautiful bridge and took photo for awhile. We also did our half-an-hour mental prayer as we walked from there. On our way, when we passed Melide, we saw a...Sim card shop!! YEAY! I finally got a sim card. hahaha.

morning =)

view from the bridge

this way!

Near this river, a guy who had lost one of his legs sat and provided the 'pilgrim stamp'. I think he was a soldier. After he lost his leg, he participated in paralympics (he was really fit!!)

We also stopped at a Romanic church that had a statue of Our Lady of Snow. There, Carol, our Spanish friend, told us the story about Our Lady of Snow and how we would visit St Mary Major Basilica in Rome that was built because of this apparition of Our Lady and the origin of this title. Anyway, in this Romanic church, a guy stood there and explained about the apparition and he had a thick notebook with various ways to say greetings (hello, thank you, buen camino, etc) and some terminologies of things that they had in that church (e.g., ancient baptismal font). Many visitors from various countries translated the words to English, Japanese, Korean, etc. When Carol told him that I am an Indonesian, I was asked to write down some Indonesian words too. I don't know how to translate "baptismal font" to Indonesian language!!

Our lady of snow!

Inside the church

Some of us took 'profile-picture-worth' photos here

A guy playing recorder at the bank of the river!

We also stopped at an old lady's house along the way. She is Conchita's friend and Conchita brought us there because this lady prayed a lot for young people. This lady also showed us her small chapel. We also sang a Chinese song (朋友 = peng you; friend) for her.

Congrats! We've reached Arzua ^^

We continued our journey and started eating our chips =P I guess it was around 11.30 because soon afterwards we said the Angelus. It was quite a terrible downhill. Audrey and I were really like non-stop-radio. Fast forward the story, I also managed to teach Audrey Indonesian song (kindergarten song =P). I think the funniest part was when we sang Bon Jovi's "It's my life" when we walked uphill and some guys that walked faster said to us, "Continue singing, I like Bon Jovi." Once we stopped singing because we were panting, but our foot were really aching, and we decided that singing was the only way to forget our ache. =P

We reached a wide road and a church that had a big clock and lots of prayer cards in the Church.Okay now I can't remember which one comes first, but at one point, I think Wei Lian took out her recorder (flute, not audio recorder) and played Sound of Silence, A Whole New World, and the Hobbit soundtrack. It was really an amazing experience ^^

Fast forward again, we reached another terrible downhill (a wide road). According to Conchita, our guide, we need to walk zig zag to reduce the pain. That's how we survived downhill so far. However, we were really tired and decided to sit for 5 minutes outside a small store. Lili got her Aquarius here (an isotonic drink). Well, this part may not be significant to you, but this brand (Aquarius), was so nice! Not too sweet like 100+ or Pocari Sweat and less 'gassy'.

Anyway we walked and walked. We passed another bridge and we saw a guy playing his flute at the side of the river!! Hwahhhh.. We thought, aha..just 3 km more, so let's sit and listen to our friends playing flute. Anyway, by 3.40 we continued walking, and I think the signage 3km was a bit deceiving. We walked for quite some time on a wide road after we saw the sign "Arzua". We reached the restaurant at 4.10!! Congratsss! It was the first time we reached our target.

The food was just amazing!!! This time I chose wine instead of water (they're same price anyway). Citing Carmen, we had the "best ribs we've ever had". We also sang the same Chinese song "朋友" for the waitresses. Afterwards, we proceeded to EFA, a school and residence for girls who'd like to study administration / nursing etc.

We attended a meditation and Mass in English!! (yeay!!) Apparently the priest spent quite some time in Australia, so he also had exposure to Indonesian language and he kept telling us that he knows how to say 'book' in Indonesian (buku). =P We also had chance to go confession ^^ On that day, the priest talked about St James because we would reach Santiago in two days.

At first they told us that the students may be shy because they just arrived in the residence a few days beforehand. After a short Q&A sessions during get-together in the living room (they asked us few questions on what we think about Spain, what we like about Spain, etc), we sang the same Chinese song (again!!) plus another Chinese song (Yue Liang Dai Biao Wo De Xing = the moon represents my heart) because Carol could accompany us with a guitar there for this song. After that, seems that the girls 'warmed-up' already. One of them started to demonstrate how she played the tambourine. So fast and skillful!! Then, another three of them danced while this girls played the tambourine. Hwah...so nice!!

Well, the most memorable experience of this Day 3 was I guess the lesson that even though things seemed difficult and I was often unsure whether I could get through a difficult moment (i.e., this walk), God helped me a lot and He sent many nice people along the way. I also experienced the 'loudness' and family atmosphere of Spanish people =) I was not scared to say that I felt much at home when I stayed in EFA, even though it was only for one night.