Camino De Santiago - Day 6

Time of Visit: October 5, 2022

The typical early-morning clamor of albergues was notably absent today, no doubt due to everyone's exhaustion from the previous day's climb. I was shocked to wake up at 7 and find everyone else in the dorm fast asleep - I had been counting on them to wake me up so I could go catch the famous sunrise of O Cebreiro.

I didn't make it to O Cebreiro in time, but I found something better...

Sometimes the view is so nice you can't help but turn into copper oxide.

Your move, Switzerland.

O Cebreiro is an impossibly quaint hilltop town with thatched-roof stone buildings. A few albergues caffeinate the exhausted stream of pilgrims passing through day after day.

Early October had brought hints of fall colors and chilly mornings to the hills of Galicia. It made me nostalgic for the New England autumns I had grown up with. In middle school, autumns meant listening to Pasteboard's wistful reverb-soaked guitars in the cold feeling depressed and lonely and thinking about the memories I should have been making, and in high school autumn meant sitting alone in my unheated car and feeling nostalgic for my middle school angst, and in college autumn meant nothing because I moved to Berkeley where there were no seasons.

Ferns and moss spring out from the forest floor in eternally damp Galicia.

Fairytale landscapes.

Go forth, intrepid pilgrim, servant of God.

Even by midday, some valleys remain shrouded in fog.

The things I would do to see this every day...

Prospective pilgrims should bear in mind that the laws of supply and demand still apply on the Camino. Any cafe located right after an uphill stretch is invariably awful, as I found out the hard way.

A cold, inedible slice of tortilla española with supermarket OJ.

A cafe 100m down the road serving hot tortilla española and fresh squeezed OJ.

Cattle trough on wheels.

God, if I'm reincarnated as a cow, please make me a Galician cow.

But if I'm reincarnated as a human, please don't make me a Galician human.

Caldo gallego will haunt my dreams forever.

song of the day: Ulrich Schnauss - A Strangely Isolated Place - early-2000s spiritual-ish downtempo. Some people say he's just a budget Boards of Canada but if you listen to Ulrich Schnauss in the right mood he evokes imagery from sound like few other artists can.