finishing my camino blog...the almost-next-to-last installment...

So...weve been back for way over a month now...and i keep INTENDING to finish the story of our travels--although the post is dated march 11th..so i guess i started it over a month ago, and just finishing it now!...Dont know if anyones still reading, but want to have it for my own reasons anyway, so im continuing....theres alot that got left out in the short, rushed, limited albergue internet sessions. mostly i havent done the final posts because i was trying to find somewhere to upload my photos, which i cant do at home because the internet connection works off the cell phone towers....so tonite im in town and will try to finish uploading at least some of the pics...then i can finish the blog from home.

These are our "leaving" photos, beginning monday morning, after having arrived in santiago on saturday afternoon. Baby G was more than happy to jump in the rental car, and in fact towards the end of the camino, she had started "watching" whenever a car passed, sometimes trying to leap towards them as if she wanted to jump in... probably because she was imitating my behavior, lol...there were some days when we were really wrecked that i would watch all the cars that passed, hoping someone would see how wrecked we were and offer us a ride ;p... but the thing about the camino is that people driving by usually assume you want to do it on your own, so unless youre actively hitchhiking, youre unlikely to get a lift...























we got pretty lost on the way back to pamplona. part of it was because i decided i needed to make a detour back by somewhere, and the rest is because the major roads i found to be very poorly marked....plus we only had a really basic map off google. we left late in the day, way later than i planned. but i got to see the sunset from near cebreiro, above tricastela. i saw the sunset from here when we were walking the camino, but was in such a rush because we were so far from tricastela and had already done like 30 k and it was getting dark etc, that i didnt really have time to appreciate it. and i KNEW i wasnt doing it justice by really appreciating it at the time, but we had more important things.. so these few sunset photos here are from up above tricastela. the small photos dont do it justice--as is always the case with cameras ;) -- anyway, the purples etc in the east were amazing. cant figure out how to use this program to caption by the photos, so anyway, further below is "YAY ETAP!!!" etap hotel was such a Godsend when we FINALLY arrived in Le Havre, on time to get grainnes vetwork done and in time to catch the ferry. ETAP lets pets in rooms for only three euro extra. we went in to get the room, and as i went back out to the car to get our stuff, the guy flipped the sign on the door to "no vacancies"!! we were SO lucky we got the last room. proceded to watch american movies that had been dubbed into spanish for the evening and sleep in a real bed, with a shower, and a blasting heater. :) Le Havre, by the way, was not very nice, im actually glad we didnt have to spend any more days there...though i still could have done without the billion dollar car break down... further down is us waiting for the ferry.





































































above is gro at le havre port while we were killing time waiting for the ferry, and below, again killing time... was SO glad to have the car back :) almost all of my photos of me/us on this trip have been self-portraits taken by me because there was seldom anyone else around to take them ;)

arrived ireland

hey all. after 2 mechanics, 2 tow trucks, 2 days sitting at the mechanics in pamplona, and a repair bill that cost more than the value of the car.... (ugh), i was able to drive through the night and arrive at the ferry port by the required time.  we have finally arrived home (a few days ago. i meant to post sooner but havent had internet access. so sorry for leaving you all hanging :) ) future pics and camino "fill-in" posts coming when i get internet back at my caravan. thx. :) kaybee

AAAARRGH!!! the camino "continues" with all of the "bad" elements and none of the good...

i thought i was finished.... but... well...i AM finished with the fun part, but.... im reliving the camino... minus the good stuff.... i arrived in my rental car back in pamplona at 430 am this morning after fighting through the messiness of what i considered poorly-marked (and sometimes incredibly expensive-tolled) spanish roads for hours.... when i arrived back at my own car, it wouldnt start. i had half expected this so i wasnt really surprised or worried...i thought it would just need a jump start...well, a jump start and a trip to the store for a new battery and a kind neighbor installing the battery later, we had to call a tow truck cuz it still wouldnt start...i spent the day sitting in the rental car outside the mechanics hoping they would be able to make time to fix it today....but by the end of the day he had replaced several parts and still couldnt find anything wrong..... so...im back in "camino living" but only the bad parts--i thought i was done with this stuff for now--sleeping in an albergue, worrying about the dog all night because shes outside and its freezing--although in this case worrying about her not only getting cold but deciding to eat the rental car if she gets lonely, wearing the same yuck clothes AGAIN, loading and unloading my backpack, etc etc ICK. i loved the camino but i dont want the camino without the good stuff ;p i really hope that my car is fix-able tomorrow or we might never get home! the ferry leaves on friday from northern france and we actually need to be there (or to a vet SOMEWHERE, if not there,) on THURSDAY!!.... ARGH. and if he cant fix it i dont know WHAT we will do as i need the car too much to junk it...nor can i get me, grainne, and all my stuff home without it! i think ill take any bad day of the camino over the current situation! argh. and the physical exhaustion over the current mental frustration anyday! so y'all please pray i can end up with a fixed car and get HOME!!! thanks ;) kaybee

i want to further update my blog and fill in the gaps but i guess it will have to wait till i get back to ireland....

grainne in the cathedral....

for my friends who understand the reference....yesterday, i felt like i was
"pulling a Margaret" hehehe (refers to a friend who has been know to do things like the following ;P ) anyway, we busted to get to the cathedral for the 12 o clock pilgrims mass in santiago, as a suitable ending.... on arrival at the side entrance, right before 12, i marched right through the door with grainne, entered the cathedral, and plunked down my backpack, my stick next to me, and me, right inside the door on the top of the steps, with grainne curling up and sleeping in my lap. now i know well that in spain they think dogs are outside animals but darn it we just walked from pamplona, and i felt like we were ENTITLED to sit in the cathedral for an hour while they said mass (never mind that i didnt understand a word of it as it was in spanish, hahahaha), and i was NOT abandoning my dog to sit outside and bark and be miserable and possibly get stolen after she had just trudged 3 or 400 miles as well. as far as i was concerned, we both had as much or more right to be in that cathedral as anyone else. plus there was noone to stop us and no sign saying no dogs. i got a lot of looks from people as we sat there but i was partly amused, partly aware i was callign attention to myself and partly didnt care cuz we had just walked a billion miles and we were entitled to be there. she was silent and curled up in my lap. i was enjoying not having to be anywhere do anythign and jsut being able to sit there. maybe we shoudl have gone somewhere less obvious but i was afraid to go much further than jsut inside the door, i figured i was being as "respectful" of their rules as possible by staying just inside the door. anyway, my peace and quiet only lasted about 1o minutes until we got kicked out by a security guard.....to whom i insisted we had just walked from pamplona we required to go to mass etc etc et c in my awful spanish. he made us leave. i was so pissed at the time and he ended up letting us stay in the entryway later with her covered with my sleeping bag, but now im more amused than pissed at the fact that i even so nonchalantly tried to pull this off. but why the heck not. i am SO sick of rules about animals in this country! must go, computer time up. but at least gro made it into the cathedral too. hahahah. take that, spain!!! hehehe. my dog was in your famous cathedral. ;p

how do you limp on both feet?...WHAT THE HECK HAPPENED TO KILOMETER MARKER 12???¿¿¿¿¿¿...and...I AM NOT SLEEPING IN A CEMETERY!!

arrived santiago yesterday. would like to fill in the gaps. but going to start with most recent and fill in gaps later. internet time is limited as gro is tied back up at albergue, probably barking, and im down at the cafeteria at monte do gozo using internet. so ill probably have to do this in stages..a.nd finish it in a week when i get back to ireland. yes, it will take me a WEEK to get back :)

Lets begin with Friday, the 20th.... i forget where to i dont know where.... hmmm.. lemme look at my shirt i just got a shirt with all the places on it and im wearing it so i can wash all my other clothes....... um.... yeah ok ribadiso. ribadiso to ....well....you´ll see...
started off in ribadiso frustrated from the night before (see in later postfor previous day in post i havent written yet...) but motivated. I wanted to try to do 35-37 k. ok not that i WANTED to but i didnt want to stop at arca after 22 and then have to do 20 to santiago the next day. i was having major feets problems and would rather just trash it through one really long day then stumble into santiago from mounto de gozo the next and make it for the pilgrims mass than have two long days and/or be trying to do 20k to santiago in the morning and make it by noon which i knew we absolutely couldnt. so i decided to see how much mileage we could put on even though id only done 15 the 2 previous days and even the 15 felt like it was gonna kill me. my feet have been reaching their last... and i didnt know how many more days i could work through the pain. the walk from ribadiso was nice once we got through arzua. we went a km or so out of the way though getting lost which was frustrating because we were already on a sort of tight schedule. we went through alot of eucalyptus groves which were really pleasant, but my feet and tendons were really killing me. we were going quite a pace nonetheless but after retying my shoes 15 different ways, i realized i actually had one last weapon to break out for the last few days... ALEVE painkiller. 4 left. and i tried to use it only sporadically when absolutely necessary. now was the time. i ate the most dense stuff i could find in my bag for lunch so as to not have the aleve burn a hole on an empty stomach, had a nice lunch in a eucalyptus grove, and we kept on trucking. we passed the last albergue around 6 pm..the next being 14 k away... i was still hoping maybe we could make it, even if it meant making it in the dark, or at least make it to the churchyard at labacolla, which would leave us only about 8 k the following day. we kept busting through the kilometers, and i felt like the last few kilometers were just melting away easily.....except at that poin t i thought the km markers were a countdown to santiago, which now im not so sure they were.... i think they were to monte do gozo or something...anyway, the markers and my book didnt match but i decided to trust the markers at that point which i think ended up being shorter.... right at dusk, when we couldnt possibly go any further on treed paths, we were supposed to be arriving at km 12 marker and then crossing some stream, the highway, then following the path to labacolla. i could see the lights of santiago in the distance, and i was still trying to judge whetehr we could make it to MDG with my tiny flashlight in the dark. i SO wanted to get there that night.... WELL.... the markers ceased to exist. i was doing my best to follow instructions in the book, but apparently failed.... i went over a stream then through a tunnel under the highway, headed for some lights which i imagined to be san paio, where i thought i would set up my tent cuz i was wrecked and it was dark. i had toyed with taking the road routes but didnt think that would make an authentic pilgrimage and my book made it look like MDG wasnt on a road runnign through it anyway... so we trudged in the last glimmers of dusk down this dirt road after the scary tunnel to this "village" which turned out to not be a village anyway but a farmer with a bunch of tall lights for a garage for fixing tractors or something..... we hadnt been follwoing a yelllow arrow but i hadnt been able to find ANY yellow arrows or markers or anything at all after the camino path started alongside the roadside. so i was going with my best judgment--which ended up being wrong. so now i saw only this farm had no idea where i was it was dark i didnt want to go back the way i came and i couldnt even ask at the farm cuz there were big dogs barking at us. so when i saw a guy at the farm barn i started hollering hola hola and finally he came over but im still unconvinced that he properly showed me wehre we were on my map as we remained lost for about the next hour or so.... we went back the direction we came but he told us we had already passed san paio or at least i thought he did and told me stay in labacolla. he said go back through the tunnel and along the road but i didnt want to go back through the tunnel and couldnt see a road to follow on my map anyway so we ended up trudging down the scary dirt road down alongside the raised highway becasue i had seen a highway sign for labacolla. but we couldnt get onto the highway because of fencing. so i was hopin g we could at the exit. problem was that there were TWO highways on my map and there was no way for me to figure out which one i was following. we finally came to another tunnel and got to the other side of the highway but then it was still jsut highway and no helpful signs. at least it was higher up and lit though and not quite as scary but still no civilization in sightn. eventually i saw another tunnel goign off under the highway again and it was marked with shells...but it was dark, AND no yellow arrows (NOT LIKE YOU CAN SEE YELLOW ARROWS IN THE DARK ANYWAY, EVEN WITH A FLASHLIGHT)...so we kept walking and finally saw houses, flagged down a car, and learned we were in san paio and that that WAS the camino path with the shells. the lady told me to just follow the road to labacolla though and it woudl be lit. i told her that we just needed a church we would camp in the churchyard and she said yeah there was a church there. it was really late like probly 930. plus we had passed no supermarkets all day even though i expected to so all i had was the food on me. i was glad at that point i had dragged extra food around that day. still not enuff though but by the time we finished grainne wanted sleep not food anyway. anyway, we finally got to labacolla and crossed the camino path and headed for the church, thinking we were home free... except i didnt count on the churchyard being a graveyard...one of those with the box-crypt type graves that you see so often around this part of spain. and there was NO WAY i was sleeping there. i was totally creeped out. so we looked for a spot of grass not on the main road or camino path cuz that didnt feel totally safe, but for something still in the town. i finally found something half suitable though if a car had been a drunk driver he would have gone off the road into us as we were only a few feet from the edge but it was a quiet road and the best i could find. there were 2 small dogs accosting us froma distance barking barking barking. grainne curled up on the ground and went to sleep while i pulled up branch stumps to put down the tent. those darn dogs barked at us for a good hour from a distance even when i threw sticks at them. then they stopped being as loud for a little while as if they had been put inside, then got let out again a little later. then at 7 am on a saturday they were at it again ..... we had a not very restful night but at leasxt we were not walking. i hung my shell on the outside of my tent, hoping noone would bother us when they saw it. noone did. except the dogs. i meant to take picture of the road littered with all teh sticks i had thrown at them but forgot ;) anyway that night my feet were killing and i didnt know how i could even walk the next day but suprisingly i was able to. . ok i want to finish this post about our day of our arrival into santiago but i want to put something on the next post too and im almost out of tim e so will have to finish later..... a nice lady gave us breakfast the next day..d.etails later...and also the end of the path the last few km into monte do goza is VERY POORLY MARKED...

PICS: GALICIA today Sunday Feb 15th

in brief, these are galicia this morning. except i forgot i was supposed to upload backwards. so morning is at the bottom and top is later this afternoon pics are self explanatory i guess...except the one with the door. go figure:there was this building...and there was all this water running out in a waterfall under the door. like a stream had decided to make its way through the building or something. anyway looked funny.

pics of gro...

i realized that in most of the previous pics i had published of grainne, she looks bewildered. so i wanted to show she isnt...or at least not all of the time :) though i think she will be happy to be sleeping in one place when we get back to ireland, instead of a different place every night. but she will miss the exercise/adventure and attention