Sept 27: 1 day and counting

Today we hiked from Castaneda to O Pedrouzo, about 25km.  However, before getting into that, I wanted to share a picture Linda took of the inside of a church dedicated to Saint James (Igrexa Santiago) that was in the town of Boente, just before Castaneda.  The view is of the altar, and Saint James appears 2 times.  He's at the very top, riding a white horse and holding a flag that has the red Saint James cross on it.  When he is portrayed this way, he is Santiago Matamoros, which means Saint James killer of Moors.  Back in the 1200s through 1400s there was a lot of fighting in Spain between the Christians and the Moors, and the Christians often invoked Saint James to help them in these battles.  The second place where Saint James appears on the altar is smack dab in the middle, where he appears as a pilgrim, wearing his hat with the scallop shells in the top and cloak.  This is the milder, calmer Saint James.

The second photo is of the inside of our room in Castaneda.  The hotel was called Pazo de Sedor, and it was a 400-year-old stone manor house that had been converted into a boutique hotel (I call it boutique because there are only 14 rooms in the whole place, and it has more of a homey feel, ie. there's no reception desk, but there are two different sitting rooms with comfortable chairs, and one of the sitting rooms has a fireplace).  Anyway, as you can see from the picture, a lot of the original stone walls are still in place and being used.  And these walls are typically 2 feet thick.  Also, it had a swimming pool and a tennis court.  Linda took advantage of the pool to cool off her feet.  The tennis court was untouched (somehow, we didn't find room to pack our racquets :-).  This place was about 1 km off of the Camino.  We were told about it by some other people from Cincinnati who had done the Camino a couple of years ago (thanks Roger), and we were thankful for the nice stay there, as it was out in the country and very relaxing (and very popular, too, as the night we were there all 14 rooms were booked).

The third picture is of eucyplytus trees.  They have been around a lot the last 2 days, and when you see the trees they are all in exact rows, so you know they were purposely planted there.  In the picture, the left hand side of the road are the more mature trees that are getting close to being harvested, and on the right side of the road are some younger trees.  The interesting thing about eucyplytus trees is it appears that the shape of their leaves change as they get older.  They go from looking somewhat like maple leaves to something that is much longer and skinnier.  Actually, on some of the "teenager" trees, you can find both kinds of leaves on the same tree.  Anyway, they are not native to this area.  Our guide book says they were brought in for the pulp industry, and there have been a couple of times when we have heard a lot of chainsaws hard at work, but we still appreciated the nice shade they provided along our hike.