Camino Frances 2024 Day 16 - Jun 20, 2024

Today was rainy and overcast and foggy and I wore my poncho for most of the 26 km from Portomarin to Palas de la Rey. It felt like a long day. We walked through small villages and wooded areas and amazing landscapes of green in a thousand shades. We visited a stone age homestead and I took lots of pictures of horreos, the granaries outside many of the homes. I am noticing a lot of smaller churches and chapels along the way and we seem to be passing more cemeteries with really impressive crypts. Many of the villages seem close to abandonment - sad, but I am livinig the old stone facades of the buildings. We met more new people - a group of Texan seniors, a dad and his son from Chico, California doing mission work, and later tonight a Kenyan priest doing the Camino himself, but a family of 5 stood out. She is German and he Italian and they met in the Camino 17 years ago and today run a Camino tour company. They were walking with their 12 and 9 year old girls and 4 year old boy. The crowd moves faster and seems more intent to finish the countdown - the terrain is flat and the weather temperate so easy going. I notice fewer attempts to connect as most people now seem to just check the box and have not bonded over the longer harder distances. Even the restaurants are more transactional, more expensive, the food not as good and there is now lots of touristy stuff to shop for. The people who have come longer on the Camino just seem to put their head down and stay focused on themselves at this point. It's feels like a shuttle entering urbanization from a the solitude of space. We attended peregrino mass for the first time - quite nice.