June 5 Portomarin to Palsa  de Rei  17 miles

Song of the day:  Walking Man by James Taylor:

And the walking man walks

Doesn't know nothing at all

Any other man stops and talks

But the walking man walks on by

Walk on by

We decided to leave an hour earlier today to try and beat the crowds and also walk more in the cool of the morning vs the hot afternoon.  We were successful in taking an hour out of the hot afternoon, but alas, not in beating the crowds!  That said, even though the trail was very crowded again today,  it was a much more subdued and quiet crowd.  As opposed to the carnival like atmosphere of yesterday, today was almost  procession like.

The day started out cool and misty.  We immediately ascended 1000 feet and it was a good way to get the muscles warmed up!   At this level, we climbed above the clouds, although they remained in the valley below.  Once again, it was a warm day.  By the end of the day, I was down to a short sleeve shirt, which is a first for me on this entire trip.  I may even break out the shorts tomorrow, which will probably scare the hell out of the other hikers!

We have developed very strange tan patterns on our bodies.  Our hands are very dark, although our fingers are relatively white since they are usually wrapped around walking poles.  Our arms are also white, because we have always worn long sleeve shirts.  Linda wears a pair of Capri like pants most days, and has developed a dark tan from just below her knees to the top of her socks.

We stopped for an early lunch around 11:30.  We overheard a English woman saying to her husband that she was sick and tired of the Spanish food and couldn't wait to get back to England to eat toast and beans!  I've visited almost 100 countries in my life and the only one that has worse food than England is Russia!  That said, the restaurants along the trail are not serving the normal top quality Spanish food that we enjoyed when we lived in Barcelona.  

Our early lunch was once again fried eggs and bacon.  This has become a staple in our diet and we have probably eaten more eggs in the last several weeks than we have in the last year.  Perhaps this is why Linda has started clucking at me so much recently....hey, it's a yolk!

Over the past several weeks, we have been traveling more or less in parallel with four older French couples.  They have often stayed in the same hotels as us and of course we see them on the trail.  And whenever we see them, I will say "buenos dias" and like clockwork, they respond "bonjour."  I have written about this previously...so today, I decided to mess with them a little and when I saw them I greeted them with "bonjour"!  The surprise was the French guy responds "good morning"!  What the hell?  I guess the Camino is trying to teach me forgiveness today, so I take back most (but not all) of the things I have said about the French!

We are only about 40 miles from Santiago now, and plan to arrive there early Saturday afternoon.  Tomorrow we have a walk of about 16 miles to Ribadiso....we plan to leave even earlier tomorrow to beat the heat.