Day 18 Canaveral 24.04.23

Updated: Apr 28, 2023

This day is the birthday of two daughters, so meaningful. Happy birthday Liz and Lou. You are both in our thoughts today and we drank a toast to you.

Today was also a day we learnt some very valuable lessons on hiking.

Our day started with an early rise, no breakfast venues open so we used our headlight to make our way directly from town on our day’s adventure. It was a cool morning, cool enough for the jacket but not cold enough for gloves.

Our path was a double lane dirt road, in beautiful condition and providing us with the ideal surface on which to walk. As so often with the camino, the beginning was a steepish hill that evolved into interesting undulations and beautiful landscapes. This time of day is always sheer magic. With dawn the beauty of the grass pastures was clear to see, with shady trees and large boulders completing the perfect picture. Hills were decorated with granite, protruding perhaps a metre from the ground and encased in grassland.

After about three hours of walking we stopped for a rest and refreshments. Chocolate, mixed nuts and an orange. With water. We had cracked 15km in the three hours, and felt buoyed by our achievement. But the sun now hung high in the sky and began to generate heat, disguised by a moderate and intermittent cooling breeze. While we sat, some pilgrims from the previous day approached us - Tom from Sydney, Jim from San Diego California and Javier from Spain. They chatted briefly and moved on.

Then as we continued the cool breeze was no more. The area opened up to low bushes but no trees and no shade. At one point we caught up with our pilgrim comrades as they ate their lunch at a totally random sheltered picnic table on the camino. Here we had another brief chat before taking a goat track up and down and around steep hills overlooking a large and beautiful lake below, many different hues of blue, an artist's delight. The lake was a pleasure to behold, albeit several metres lower than “normal”. The drought is evident in so many places.

We were on this track for about 30 minutes before descending to the highway where we walked the road’s verge for many kilometres. More steep hills, dropping twice to cross bridges over the lake. On the road was a surplus of traffic but our verge was wide, so we did not feel endangered. Instead, motorcyclists out to enjoy the curves and incline/decline of the road at their pace provided entertainment practising (it seemed) for their Formula 1 entry.

There was a disused railway line below, a victim to the new fast train which runs on vastly superior lines further to our east, and crossing valleys and lake on ultra modern bridges.

We were now less than 10km from our destination, having completed the past 10km in 3 hours. But quite frankly, I was spent. The heat had totally wiped me out. Luckily we had plenty of water and at one stage were fortunate enough to find shade beneath a sad and scraggly low set tree in a ‘parking bay’ overlooking the lake. The first shade/shelter in a very long time. (There had been shade options beneath rocky cliff faces, but the size of recently fallen boulders discouraged us from those options. It would surely be tempting fate to sit in the shade at the base of these cliffs.)

We had a lengthy stay and I lay down and cooled off before we embarked on the final leg of our trek. But the camino took us off road up a very steep ascent to the top of a hill. The vista of the lake was extraordinary. However the climb sapped my last remaining reserves of strength. It was 1400 hrs with 8km to the finish line. Jenny decanted stuff from my back back and that helped. But my speed was gone. We survived the 8km taking 4.5 hours. I took every opportunity to sit at any place where there was the slightest shade, and there were not many of those. The final effort was the last kilometre to town and we lucked upon a picnic shelter, a haven for me. I ate a small packet of bread sticks that we had obtained ‘gratis’ with pub drinks and as well, scoffed on a row of now melted chocolate. Today is the only day our chocolate has melted, showing the ambient temperature.

I can't say really if our first glimpse of our town/destination was heartening or disheartening. Whilst on the one hand it was a relief to see that there really was an end in sight, it appeared so depressingly far away. To access it meant more steep descents and ascents and then a boulder walkway to town.

And then we were there! At last! Only to find we still had 800m to actually reach our accommodation. After some misdirection by a well meaning local, we managed a round about way to locate our hostel, which was part of a rather pleasant albergue, in fact the same one shared by the other three pilgrims. Our room was private, spacious, cool and comfortable. A little piece of paradise after a difficult day. We drank well, relaxed a while, showered and then surprisingly I was able to muster enough energy to go back out again to dinner with four other pilgrims (three mentioned above and a newbie, Marian from Holland). Our 'three course meals plus drink' were incredibly delicious and a total of 11 euros each.

We also chatted at the bar-restaurant with the other couple of Dutch pilgrims who had caught the taxi. They looked exceedingly fresh.

Lessons learnt: Don’t walk over 26 km in days of hot temperatures. Don’t carry heavy backpacks. Don’t push yourself beyond your limit if you are suffering and can feel your body weakening. Learn to recognise your limit, as well as signs of heat exhaustion. If suffering beyond what is reasonable, stop and call a taxi to complete the final stretch. (There's no reward for hanging in there to the very end.)

Fortunately we had prepared and had extra water but the distance was unachievable within the desirable time frame (that is, the hours before midday.)