Rain

     When we walked in the spring, mandarins were in season. Early September on our last Camino featured grapevines burdened by the clusters of sweet grapes. All the grapes have been harvested by early October. This Camino only offered us raisins from unpick vines that the birds turned down. But the roads in November are carpeted with green chestnut fruit and everyone is picking them up from the ground. We have no place to roast them so we play chestnut golf with our walking sticks. We play all day long as chestnut golf has a steep learning curve. Apples are also wildly abundant, they are just not my favorite fruit until they mature further into pies or turnovers.

     In anticipation of drenching rain at noon, today's walk started an hour and a half in complete darkness. Despite just headlamps with dying batteries, we discovered five beautiful salamanders. Actually four live ones after I accidentally squish the fifth one's head after an errant side glance.

We took pictures of all four of them but they really all look alike. The fifth one got a moment of silence.

     Well we got rained on but the heaviest part fell while walking under a canopy of trees. Otherwise the weather held unless Laura decided to take off her poncho. Happened enough times that I made her wear her poncho the whole rest of the way-it stayed dry.

Just a few more steps left to Portomarin.