Our hotel was in the middle of town and we slept with the window open for some semblance of air flow in the stuffy room – we inevitably woke a few times to trucks rumbling down the narrow streets in the middle of the night. Translation: we didn’t sleep that much.

Our roller bag needed to be down at reception by 8am, sunrise is later here, so we were out and walking in the dark; it gave off a certain familiarity though, because we had arrived in the dark too.

Before long we found a cafe for our first coffee and pastry stop, then continued as dawn revealed the large port city around us.

We would be walking next to the water for most of the day and Margo kept kicking herself for leaving her binoculars in London thinking it would be a weight savings. Turns out this birder would have gladly carried a pair because the chirping was almost constant.

This was her first long walk, and I went on and on about the joys of walking all day every day and being open to the flow of what the trail brings into your life. Today that was a row of big box stores. We went in one that looked like a giant dollar store in hope there was something that I could use as a hiking pole. At that point I would have settled for a broom or mop handle. As luck would have it, we scored actual poles, and then we found the Halloween section. Oh our imaginations soared with the possibilities of adding a special little something to our packs, and when I spied the sword selection it was all over. I found She-ra in the aisles of that store, and we topped off the costume with a sheet of temporary tattoos each. We resolved to add one a day until we were completely covered in tatts.

I also scored a hot water bottle for my neck and shoulders. Watch out world! Next up was a grocery store where we walked the rows picking up fruit, yogurt, veg, and cheese. This was a fantastic start to the walk.

When we finally resumed our amble along the path we came upon a guy selling Camino shells at a small table. He didn’t speak English and I didn’t speak Spanish, but we managed to make the transaction. When I could tell he was making a comment about my crown and sword I pointed at my chest and said “superhero.” He laughed with understanding (I think) and posed for a photo with me. She-ra is out to play!

Then we walked, and walked some more. The sun was hot, so I broke out my sun umbrella and we both sweated in the hot and humid October sun.

We were wilting, and from the map I had made we knew we only had a short distance to the hotel, but as time passed the distance didn’t get any shorter. Turns out I had miscalculated where the stop was, and the true mileage was about 2 miles longer than either of us wanted to walk that day, so we ripped off the bandaid of needing to walk every mile and took a taxi the final distance. It would have been all uphill anyway and neither of us were too precious about a continuous footpath. It was all quite liberating.

The hotel had a restaurant that wouldn’t open that night for dinner, so we visited another grocery store for provisions. All in all it was a fabulous day.