Saturday Oct 5, Vila Praia de Ancora to Vila Nova de Cerveira

Hotel “Minho Belo”

It was raining cats and dogs when we left our hotel. Luckily there was a Chinese store close by where I bought a green plastic raincoat from head to toe, I think I paid 3 Euro for it.

And as I mentioned before, the 3 different Camino routes were crossing each other again. So we started walking that morning and again, hard to find the direction, so we ended up walking along an autoroute again, without a special trail for us pedestrians. We finally made it to a village and entered an hotel to get directions where to go. They mentioned that the boat to cross the water was for a long time out of service but there was another boat from a different location, not too far, that would take us to a different other side. So we walked in the direction indicated, saw the speedboat, met 2 other Peregrinos who joined us to cross the water, we paid 5 Euros each and off we went. 10 minutes later we landed on the other side of the Bay. At this landing point there were no walkways nor stairs, we just had to jump from the front of the boat with the helping hand of the “Captain”.

We all made it and there was a hotel where we went for a coffee. Guess what a surprise when they prepared us coffee and the waitress told us they were Spanish, and we were now in Spain !!!!!!!!! ???????? We crossed the border in the middle of that bay!!!!!!

Unfortunately, we were not supposed to cross this Bay as from here it was one of the other 2 Caminos and not the one we were following, so we phoned the “Captain” of the boat to pick us up again, and continue where we left off

When we were back at our “supposed Camino” we met a couple, who were just parking their car and started talking to us. I don’t remember if we initiated to ask directions or they were just friendly offering an helping hand. Anyway, as people are always so friendly and talkative, we introduced each other, and hearing Maria is from Tenerife, as of that moment he only had interest in Maria as he is a Spanish archeologist and had been in Tenerife. The lady he is with, very nice as well, very interesting, but speaks only Portuguese and I guess, she didn’t quite understand that I didn’t understand a word she was saying, but I probably nodded at the exact right times. We had lunch with them and afterwards he insisted on driving us to our next stay in Vila Nova de Cerveira as it was raining cats and dogs.

The owners of the hotel were an elderly couple who still took care of everything, still working hard to accommodate their clients.