Several things made today’s stage special. It is the last one. No more walking. Not especially sad about it, the legs had enough, honestly. Good that it wasn’t a lot longer than it was.
This road goes pretty much in between the electric wind turbines (heard of the conspiracy theory that those are in place to produce wind?)
Together with the low clouds they make the surroundings look like Herbert Wells’ War of the Worlds.
I am not very fond of Muxía. I started suspecting this after the first visit two years ago, by now I am rather certain. Yes, the nature here is a lot like back home, dark wet stone, sea, wind from all directions, seagulls. That is sort of charming, right? Yes, it is. At the same time, though, and I’m trying to not sound like a snob here, but it really looks like a back alley, literally anywhere you look.
The reception we got at the simple tourist information office, though – that was warm and overall very nice. The young gentleman working there congratulated us for completing the Muxía way more cordially than what we had gotten in Santiago about a week prior. They also have a little artisan shop with several grannies working on their lace.
And then there’s Charles. Charles is one of those tour guides whom you eventually pay as much as you feel like, after the tour. They are usually reasonably entertaining and time well spent. In our man’s case, if we stayed until the end, either I would have demanded payment myself, for the 2 hours of our lives we’re not getting back, or I would have slapped him for thinking he could treat adult people like he did. I do not think he said a single word besides what he came up with on the spot. And not much truth, actually, about any of the epochs he touched upon, up to and including the relatively recent events of the Prestige wreck. Oh, well. Spanish shame. We’ve got enough memes out of this to carry us through the next 6 months, for sure. When around Virxe da Barca he said “well, over there we have some weird stones, make sure to come back here on your own and explore”, I collected all of my un-embarassed street upbringing and said, “alright, we leave you here, thanks, bye”. Then we went into the Chapel, then hopped from stone to stone for a blissful quarter of an hour – the wind was relentless and the skies gray – and finally went back to the town, all the way fearing running into Charles again and meeting his deeply offended but shameless eyes.
The deepest disappointment though is the closed cantina that had served superb simple “fisherman’s soup” of octopus and potato two years ago. The Michelin place we found instead was a shallow but also tasty consolation.
This is now the next morning and we’re eating breakfast in a small but apparently popular café, very ready to say “goodbye” to Muxía.
Today is June 25th, St.James’ day. We’re going back to Santiago (by bus) ready to get immersed into the chaos of Xacobeo ’24 fest. All of the tiny chapels in the countryside that we are now passing in our bus are bearing flags and are ready to celebrate the Apostle.
