Hola a Todos de Santiago

Miguel, the man who fixed my sandals on the way to Fisterre
The beginning of the walk from Compostela to Fisterre
A piper in Compostela at sunset
The view from Fisterre, el fin del mundo.... the end of the earth.
The view from where we slept last night. I had a wee swim just before sunset.
Our night cap meal from last night. Las vavias found only in this particular bay where we stayed last night. Muy muy sabrosa....
The most precious momento other than memories from my camino
The view from above where I found my scallop shell.
The beach where I found my concha just 8 or so kms before Fisterre. It felt sooooo good to take off my hot boots and walk in the warm soft sand

Efren, Voy a recordarte siempre....

So.... after walking for 3 days and many special special moments I am waiting for my train to leave tonight destined for Madrid. My camino is over. However, I had many many magical moments on the way to the coast in Fisterre. I felt extremely strong so I had long days in order to spend the last day getting there taking my time. I found my scallop shell on the first beach I walked on. Fine powdery sand. It was so good to see the ocean again. On my second last day, the day I was walking 40 kms, I ran into a camino friend, Efren. Efren was born Alicante and spent the first 25 years of his life in Spain and then moved to Germany. Our language together was spanish. We ran into each other many times along the way and I always enjoyed our conversations. We agreed to meet up in Fisterre on the last day. We spent hours and hours talking but not nearly enough. Last night I joined Efren and his friends for dinner in Muxia, another seaside town and we gorged ourselves on various plates of tasty tasty seafood. Afterwards, Efren and I went to a another bar closer to where we are staying and that´s when we had the most devin plate of strange looking clams that taste like lobster that are only fished in that particular bay. We watched the sunset together. Today Efren drove me back to Santiago and we spent the day wandering around Santiago savouring our last moments together. The parting was kind of harsh. We got stuck and a little lost in horrendous traffic and then we said goodbye in a smokey grotty cafeteria in the train station. I was going to wait there until my train was ready to leave but it was too unpleasant to the senses. At one point people were running around in circles cramming on to a bus because their train was broken down. Too crazy for me.

Many highlights in the last few days aside from Efren.... and Efren Esto esto es para ti. Te extrano mucho y espero nuestros caminos van a encontrar en otra vez .... Es verdad, a veces la vida esta muy sabrosa.... Perhaps I will post some pictures to save some words.

I feel strong, svelte and very content. I hope the camino stays with me for a while. This was the most profoundly wonderful trip I have ever taken. Now I am off to Madrid, far away from the camino. When I wake up tomorrow morning I will be in a new place. I don´t have a place to stay yet but I will figure that out in the morning.

Hopefully the train station will be a bit more tranquila now.