Day 5 of our Camino trek, Monday, August 29th, was another long walk. Given the heat issues we experienced the day before, we left our hotel in Santarem at 5:45 am, hoping to walk a few more miles in the cool of the early morning. Rich opted to not walk, instead hoping to recover somewhat from the previous day’s toll on his body.
We wound our way down through town, at times having to use our headlamps where there were no streetlights. We passed an impressive castle we hadn’t seen the day before and picked our way over the narrow, rocky path past the castle. Our destination today was the town of Golegã, a distance of @ 22 miles, mostly traveling through vineyards and corn fields.
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| Grapes that look like they're ready for harvesting |
We stopped mid-morning for coffee, juice and pastries at a cafe in the small town of Vale de Figueroa and then again early afternoon for lunch in Azinhaga (birthplace of Polish Nobel Laureate Jose Saramago) where we had hamburgers cooked on a George Forman grill and the best salad we’ve had since arriving in Portugal. Shortly after leaving Azinhaga the Camino joined the busy N-365 highway (with absolutely NO shoulder), which was our path all the way to Golegã.
As we marched single file along the highway, we could see another pilgrim ahead of us, thinking it looked like our friend Miguel from the previous day. Once we got closer, we called out to him and he stopped and waited for us and we walked the rest of the way into town with him, learning along the way (from a native Portuguese) how to authoritatively wave down traffic so to get drivers to reduce their speed (a handy skill to have in this country where everyone seems to drive at least 30 miles over the speed limit).
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