Along the coast

I´m not going to whine about the hills, the wind, or the rain. I´ve had a bit of all three, in all possible combinations, and when the time comes to face those elements, you can face them, or you can stay put. What it comes down to is that I came to Spain to travel and see, so I did not stay put. And I´m so glad.

From Muxia I traveled to La Coruña, one of Galicia´s largest and most beautiful cities. It reminded me a lot of San Francisco, but with sunnier weather. This was my first night not staying in a pilgrim´s hostel, so I decided to try to make it to a campsite early to set up. Given that, I could not dedicate too much time to seeing the city, but there wasn´t much going on this particular Sunday afternoon. Just sun and sights. When you have such limitations on how well you can explore a city, you look at a map or look for a tourist office and ask for the main attractions. It was evident that the main attraction was the waterfront path, which led to Hercules´Lighthouse. Some photos are on the Picasaweb site.

According to my map, the nearest camping site was in Santa Cruz, 4km away, so I headed out and found the spot, or at least I thought I did. It was right next to and overlooking a beautiful beach. There were other tents set up, and plenty of space, so I figured I would hit the beach first. I took my first dip in the brisk Cantabric Sea, and returned to the sand to dry off. My outrageous biker´s tan was catching some glances, but I was almost too distracted by the many topless women. If I lived in Europe, I wonder if I would ever get used to the sight of bare breasts in public places?

When I returned to the "campsite", I found that all the other tents had been taken down and their owners had left. Apparently this wasn´t the campsite, just the parking to the campsite. But it did have a great view of the beach, no one seemed to be patrolling, and it was free. And so it was that I set up the tent, and spent my first free night outdoors in Spain. Can´t say I regret it. After the tent was up, I walked back to the beach to use the bathroom at the beach restaurant and call Burgos. The waitress, out of the blue, asked me where I was from. She had long, straight, deep black hair, and big brown eyes. I think she was the prettiest girl I had seen in the trip so far. Turns out she was also from Colombia, and she informed me that there is a large Colombian enclave here, large enough that she was headed to a Colombian salsa-only club that night. Who would have thought? I guess we really are everywhere.

I won´t go into the nitty gritty details of Coruña to Viveiro, or Viveiro to Navia. It rained on Wednesday night. Hard. For about 12 hours, the pitter patter of rain hit my tent. I was lucky to have set it up before the rain started, but the worst of the rain came overnight. It kept me up, and at some point early in the morning it started seeping in through one of the seams. To be fair to the tent, it was pouring a heinous amount of water. I´m not sure many tents would have stood that. However, it did suck to lose some space inside the tent to wetness. I woke up to the unpleasant task of packing in the rain.

The night before, I had walked around the small little fishing town of Puerto La Vela. It was a whaling town, and like other whaling towns I knew in Massachusetts, it had a certain smell of foggy streetlight and cold air blowing through. There was also the smell of seafood, but that had been more or less permanent since I got to the coast. Not that I can smell great these days, as I´ve been congested, on the winning end of a battle against a stubborn cold. Puerto La Vela was too small to even ask if they had internet. It had been declared the prettiest town in Asturias in 1995, and there were 5 things to see in the town. One of them, an art deco style hotel, had a long historical plaque explaining the history of immigrants in the area. I´m still not really sure what or when these migrations ocurred, but what seems certain is that the entire northern coast of Spain has a lot of hispanic influence and immigrants. My sense is that Galician and Asturian natives left Spain, settled in Latin America, and then eventually returned with uniquely Latin American culture. I will find out more tomorrow and the Museum of Emmigration, which is on my path.