May 14, 2018

Day 1

Lisbon, Portugal

The alarm sounded too early this morning but we awoke with anticipation of what this day would bring. It takes meticulous packing in compartments of our backpacks to get them just right so we can situate them on our backs with ease and not bottom or top heavy. We learned the tricks on our last Camino but somehow this morning it seems foreign to me. I lather up my feet with the infamous Vic’s Vapor Rub and feel confident my feet will be in good shape by the end of the day. A hikers nightmare is blisters. Michael meets us for breakfast in our hotel and we all walk with all of our gear to the main Lisbon Post Office to mail ahead our clothes we wore on the plane and the weekend. We definitely don’t want to carry any more weight. My goal was to have my pack at 12-13 lbs. and I haven’t been able to get it under 16.5.  I’m sure I’ll get rid of something along the way.  

    At breakfast I learn the correct Portuguese pronunciation for coffee with milk. In Spanish it was Cafe’ con Leche and Portuguese is Coffee com Leiti.  Similar but Portuguese is very different and the locals don’t appreciate foreigners speaking Spanish to them.  

       Shipping my box of clothes took an hour so we are super late heading out at 9:30am.  It’s gonna be a long day. We start hiking out of town and walk thru industrial sections with cobblestones and very narrow roads. The Camino arrows that lead our path are not as well-marked as the Camino Frances which is frustrating at times. The industrial walk continues for almost 2 hours until we stop for a short break at 11:30am just shy of Sacovem.  We sit outside under umbrellas and have “mini beers”.  Michaels laughs because his is gone in 1 sip.  It’s the only size of beer this cafe sells.  As I took my pack off I noticed that my ACTS Retreat cross I brought to wear was gone!  It must have fallen off the cord it was tied on and I’m heartbroken. Something special I had brought to walk with. I also brought a picture of my brother, Ronnie, tucked inside my Camino Passport.  I’m wearing a yarn bracelet given to me by Desi from my last Camino and have a colorful scarf she gave me, a Camino ring that Mary and I had bought together on my last walk and a medal that the nuns gave us that same year at the Vesper service. All these things have meaning to me and I cherish them. ❤️

  As we are getting ready to leave, a couple of Pilgrims walk up and introduce themselves. Greg and Jerry from Tallahassee. Ironically they both have walked the Frances before, Jerry in 2014 and Greg in 2015. Small world. They are staying in hotels this walk so we know we won’t be seeing them in Alburgues but hope to run into them again. It has been quite a surprise that these are the first hikers we’ve seen so far. Amazing to us because so many Pilgrims hiked out of St Jean together for the Camino Frances walk. The Camino Francis is by far the most travelled route of the many Camino’s however Portuguese ranks second. 

     Once we leave our little cafe stop we eventually turn west and head away from the riverfront we’ve followed this morning. We walk along a smaller river bank that is lined with beautiful flowers of white, pink, purple and yellow.  It’s quite beautiful but very long and we don’t see any civilization for over 9 miles. We walk past several ruins but the map doesn’t tell us what the history is.  By this time we are starving and thirsty. As we round a corner we find a little pop up trailer with drinks and snacks.  There are no bocadilla sandwiches or healthy food... candy and greasy hamburgers which we pass on. It’s a bag of peanut M&M’s that end up holding us over til 9pm! The treat of stopping at this one and only snack shack was meeting Richard from Lithuania/Norway. He’s 29 and walked the Francis the same time we did before just a couple of weeks earlier. He’s come back alone to walk on his month long vacation. He walks with us the remainder of the day and educates us on customs and traditions of both of his homelands. 

    The rest of the day is very windy and at one point walking 6 miles down a boardwalk in the middle of swampland I feel like I’m going to get blown over. Really fierce winds that don’t let up.  We walk until what seems like another 10 miles and finally at 7:30pm arrive at our destination , Alvacara.  It seems like a sizable town however we find NO Alburgues to stay in. We spend an hour looking and finally taxi to the next village, Villa Franca and end up sharing a room with Michael and Richard at a hotel. Oddly enough only 1 room is available in this entire huge hotel so Greg and I sleep on a fold out and the guys share the larger king bed. The blessing of the evening was a really hot shower and delicious meal before we all crashed. We walked almost 25 miles today. My feet and ankles are killing me from the terrain and I go to sleep tonight praying my Advil will kick in soon!