Oct 10
I’ve reached the apex of my trip and now start heading back to my starting point in Lisbon.
Today could set up to be the most boring of my trip. I’m starting this morning from my alberge in Finnesterre – which I need to vacate by 10 am. I then have a 2.5 hour bus ride to Santiago at 11:45, followed by a 3 hour layover before a second 3+ hour bus to Porto.
The alberge was comfortable and quiet last night and I got a great night’s sleep after a dinner of paelle, Padron peppers and wine.
While waiting for my bus, a man was wearing an Oregon Ducks t-shirt passed me. I stopped him and asked if he was from Oregon. He laughed and said he was from Australia. His son’s girlfriend had given the shirt to him and he had no idea what the Duck image represented – until he started meeting people from Oregon. “And they are all the nicest people.”
Our massive, double decker bus was more than 15 minutes late arriving and by the time they off-boarded and then got all the backpacks and people on, we were over 30 minutes behind schedule. All the through-passengers to Santiago were put the upper level, which gave us a nice view.
The bus was so large and the streets so narrow that we had to drive down to the commercial fishing docks to have enough room to negotiate a Y-turn. Those sitting in the front row up top got a straight down look into the water as the driver pulled forward as possible.
The second leg of the trip was surreal heading down the highway at 120kph. What had taken me two weeks to walk passed by in a couple of hours + stop times in Vigo and Braga.
I arrived at my hostel after dark and for the first time in 30 days, I was assigned an upper bunk. That’s what I get for getting here late! Hopefully tomorrow I can switch to a lower bunk when others move on.
