Day 18

We left this morning around 7 am and were surprised to find that it was raining. We weren't sad about it though because it meant it wouldn't be so hot today. 

It didn't rain for too long, but it did stay nice and cool. 

We passed a restaurant with these giant ant sculptures. 

We stopped in a rather small church to get our passports stamped. I think we averaged 8 stamps a day thanks to Mark's spirited attentiveness to getting every stamp he sees. 

Then we were on our way again. 

And back in the countryside. 

We passed through a very quaint town with this dog wandering the streets. I wanted this dog to accompany is to Santiago, but I think he liked his town too much. 

Mark spotted this lizard on the trail and I managed to snap a picture before he noticed us and ran away. 

We liked how these trees' branches seemed to shoot out sideways to give is shade. 

So much shade. Where were these trees yesterday?

Today we spotted another horse on the trail. Also, the guy walking on the right is Peter, our Australian friend. We caught up to him again last night. 

The horse walked much faster than we did. 

But we'll get there. 52.5 km to go from this point!

We crossed this bridge into what we thought was Melide, but turned out to be the town before Melide. 

The view from the bridge:

Mark wanted to soak his feet in the river. 

We realized once we left the ever that we were not in fact in Melide, so we kept going another 2 km. Here's our room in the albergue (pretty sure the beds are covered in pleather, not ideal but we'll see how it goes). 

Then we went to dinner. Not the reson we had walked to Melide specifically is because Mark had read that they serve the best pulpa there. Pulpa means octopus. Mark was very excited. 

I was less excited. 

But I was pleasantly surprised. The flavor was nice, though the texture was a little chewy.