Driving Rain, Collard Soup, and Never Giving Up

Day 12 – Sunday, October 3rd – 15 miles of rain to Portomarin


Here’s our little group of pilgrims, posing in Sarria before taking off in the rain for Portomarin. This is the only photo we have of that Sunday. It rained like a mother so not a one of us wanted to get our cameras out of our packs to snap pics.

Of course, this would be the day that my right ankle tendon decided to develop an itis.

Kathie and I tried covering it over with moleskin.

We tried wrapping it with gauze and padding.

We tried switching shoes…just one, mind you, so that each of us looked like we’d dressed in the dark.

The rain kept coming.

Finally, in front of a little café/pub on the trail I whined, “Can we stop here for some soup?” Kathie took pity on me and we went into the nice warm pub – warm because it was filled to overflowing with other soaking wet pilgrims seeking refuge from the driving rain. (And I mean driving sideways rain – right up under the ol’ poncho.)

We sat and enjoyed our collard soup. Oh boy, did we enjoy that soup. While we ate, we pondered what was really causing my tendonitis. Finally, I just gulped down another half of a Vicodin - the first one in almost a week - and we got going again.

Before long, the tendonitis and the rain let up and the sun came out for a short while – just long enough to dry our clothes out a bit before the clouds opened back up to soak us again.

As we walked that last bit of the trail on Sunday afternoon, I told Kathie that if she hadn’t been there with me, helping me figure out what was wrong with my ankle, and generally just not giving up on me, I would’ve thrown in the towel and called a cab. (Of course, how a cab would’ve reached us in that muck I have no idea.)

“How do you just keep going like that?” I asked her.

“Throwing in the towel is not an option.”

‘Nuff said.

Next – on to Palas de Rei.