Enough with the rain already!

The Samos Monastery
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So we got up late and didn´t really get an early start at all. In fact it was 9:50am by the time I was on the road.

The girls left about 15mins before me but it didn´t take long to catch up and before we knew it we ran into Gregg again. He was resting his feet after having troubles. He was also walking with a Czech friend, called Rita, he´d met the night before. I could see the clouds were looking to unload another load of rain and probably more than the day before so we quickly made it to Triacastela (The place I was supposedly at last night according to this website!) We had a bite to eat and I was hoping to walk by myself after that to pick my pace up but the route was a bit confusing as I had a pretty easy to follow guidebook so they left with me and before we knew it, we were all having a good conversation. In the rain. It was about 11km between Triacastela and Samos with not much in between so it was a sight for sore eyes when we finally made it to Samos.

The Benedictine Monastery used to house 500 monks but now only has a handful.

View coming into Samos
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Samos is famous for its Monastery which these days doubles as it´s refugio. From the top of the hill it looked like something from a Bond film or something. Very remote but something very Central European about it. The Benedictine Monastery used to house about 500 monks but now only has a few. (However I did notice a young seminarian on the alter during the evening mass!)

I decided to join my friends for one final night as it was raining heavily now and showed no signs of letting up soon. I thought I´d do better drying my stuff off, having some rest and getting a good start in the morning. (A task that sounds so good the night before but is still a little hard to put into practise actually IN the morning!)

Pelegrino on top of a mountain. No, really is wasn´t THAT bad weather!
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We had a bite to eat and shared travel stories in the cafe and met up with Christian, a German pilgrim I´d shared a room with in Ponferrada.

We found an internet cafe which was I-N-C-R-E-D-I-B-L-Y S-L-O-W! So much so that after I wrote out this blog (which took 50mins the first time), the page timed out and I lost everything! Annoyed, I left it to bother someone else.

Hence why I´m now in a net cafe in Sarria writing this. Well I´d better go as I still have between 100-120km to go depending on which guide book you read. It´s going to get crowded from here on in as you need to do at least 100km to get your Compostella in Santiago so most just start from here. But the poor babies will be sore tomorrow! (LOL) Not like us hardened pilgrims!

Kathleen
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Ps. All those kind people that prayed for rain as I asked them to on Day 2, PLEASE STOP!