May 24, 2017
Camping Regalina to Stealth Campsite outside Penera
Km walked: 31
Km total: 582
The walk today wasn’t too bad, and we mostly followed gravel and dirt roads through a bunch of small towns and one larger town, Luarca. It was a touristy place with a large outside market and lots of people browsing the merchandise. African men were out in force pedaling knock off purses and shoes. They lay them out on white cloths for people to look at. We have seen these gentlemen in every major town now, including Barcelona. I wonder where they get the items from. I envision a central warehouse with tons of fake Nike shoes and Gucci bags, with guys lining up by the dozen to buy a sack full of cheap merchandise to bring to the streets.
We went grocery shopping in Luarca and bought food for the next few days. Groceries in Spain are actually fairly cheap compared to US prices for the same items, especially meat and cheese and bread. We have almost exclusively been living off grocery store food, and have only eaten out about 4 times the whole trip. Eating at cafes and restaurants, which most pilgrims do each day, multiple times a day, can certainly add up. It’s easy to do, Id imagine, because restaurants are plentiful all over the place, pretty much all the time. It helps not being able to speak Spanish to avoid restaurants. It’s a chore sometimes. It’s far easier to just pick something out at the grocery store to eat.
We had planned to stop at the Alburgue in Penera which was another 15km for Luarca and ask to camp, but when we got to the small town we learned that it was actually closed. This ended up working out well, however, and we got some water and headed back a third of a kilometer to where we had just passed a very nice pine forest.
We are camped underneath some pine trees in a secluded forest right near the Camino. It’s actually quite pleasant here. Birds chirp and everything is fairly quiet. It’s the first night we haven’t taken a shower at the end of the day. One of the great and only perks of the trail is that you can shower at the end of everyday, and it has been quite nice to sleep clean.
