Day 27 was a relatively easy walk from Cacabelos to Trabadelo. I think most of the walk was along a highway, but the scenery was still nice and the towns we walked through along the way were fairly nice small rural places. When we arrived at the Nova Ruta hotel in Trabadelo, we noticed our friend Tony’s suitcase in the lobby. He shipped it from his last location and we realized he was staying in the same hotel as us. We also saw the Florida couple we knew since almost the beginning of the walk sitting in the hotel restaurant. The Hotel Ruta turned out to be a reunion point of sorts.
We rested for a bit and made the short 5 minute walk across the river to Elly’s World Kitchen restaurant which received a lot of hype on Google reviews. The place was small with a very limited menu. It also served only vegetarian options. I ordered the vegetable curry, Jim got the burrito and Ruth the ramen. Now you see why Elly named it the World Kitchen. Elly disappeared from the main restaurant to her kitchen we we could hear her preparing food. She was very methodical with service and the preparation took quite a while. A small three person French group entered while we were waiting and ordered a few drinks, and it took Elly quite a while to prepare them as she was working on our order. We finally received our food and it was incredible, some of the best food we ate on the Camino or anywhere to tell the truth. The curry I had was the best I have had anywhere. The brownie and ice cream for dessert was off the charts good. If you have a chance to go here…don’t pass it up. We were planning to go back for dinner, but we met up with our friend Tony, who isn’t much of a vegetarian and went to a very lackluster restaurant for a standard three course pilgrims menu dinner. The three of us were all a little disappointed afterwards that we didn’t get to experience Elly’s food a second time.
The next day, we planned an 18k walk to O’Cebreiro, which is a mountain town on the border of Spain’s Castilla y Leon and Galicia regions. We were excited to reach Galicia because this is the part of Spain Santiago de Compostela is located. We were also in Castilla y Leon for weeks as it is a very large region and we were looking forward to crossing into Galicia. The first 10k of the walk was relatively flat along roads and through small towns. We then hit the dirt hiking path that leads up through O’Cebreiro. The total ascent for the was almost 4000 feet and we reached a total of almost 5000 feet above sea level. I had little pain walking and I flew up the hill very quickly. We were all feeling very good at the top which was around the 12k point and since we didn’t have a room reserved, we decided to keep going. We past through several towns but none had rooms available. We started getting a little nervous around the 30k mark as we approached a very steep hill. Luckily, there were two places to stay at the top. We stopped in the first place which had beds available in a shared space that included about 20 beds. The place was a bit disgusting and the first thing we encountered was a young mother with a new baby who was in constant crying mode. Our beds were in a dark room where we noticed black mold on all of the walls. I quickly ran out the door, past the young mother who was now breast feeding the baby, and over to the other hotel. I had them show me a private three bed room, we agreed on a price and we got all of our stuff and ran over as fast as we could.
The place wasn’t great, but they had a nice pilgrims dinner, albeit it overpriced, but it was the only place in town.
Some pics from the last two days:
