Camino Day 5 ~ Angels among us

All God’s angels come to us disguised. ~James Russell Lowell
We eat our normal breakfast of tostados with coffee or tea and hop in the taxi at 8:00 a.m. We are fast forwarding the mountain from Vega de Valcarce, and will go about 30 miles to Sarria due to the weather conditions. The van is large enough to hold all seven of us, plus the driver.The treacherous roads are full of slushy snow and it is sleeting. The taxi driver is carefully maneuvering through the icy mountain roads and we are quiet, so we don’t disturb his concentration. It would not be a pretty sight if we slip off the mountain road. We don’t see any other vehicles going over the mountain this morning.

After about an hour, we arrive in Sarria and begin our 14 mile trek to Portomarin. We tip our driver since he did such a wonderful job and did not charge as much as we had expected. He keeps trying to return the tip. No es necesario! We finally convince him to keep the tip since he is very deserving and is well worth it.

We begin our march through Sarria and grab a quick beverage and snacks for the road.

Follow the arrows and you can’t go wrong. Rats!! It’s starting to rain again.

We look ahead and see that our path has been washed out and fast, deep water is rushing across. (It seems much deeper than the photo depicts and we don’t see the grassy area on the other side of the rocks, yet.) I hear a gasp and discover it came out of my mouth. How are we going to cross this mess?

Listen… Do I hear angels singing?

Yes, I do! Singing Spanish angels have appeared out of nowhere to save the day. Randy goes ahead to crawl over the rocks and is ready to help the rest up and through to a grassy patch that wasn’t so deep. The Spanish Angels take over the middle and rear to help us up and over the rocks.

Now that we are all safely across, they proceed to splish, splash down the water-filled trail singing their happy Spanish camino songs. Buen camino!

I wonder if we’ll see them again?

Stepping stones help us get through this flooded area. The walking sticks are valuable to help keep balance with all the water rushing by.