Episode 7-Road to Finisterre

The first couple of days we rode inland on the Camino Finisterre to Muxia but the last two, were on the Ruta de Faros (Lighthouse Route) along the Atlantic coastline known as the Costa de Morte to the Cabo Finisterre.

Galicia abounds with spectacular natural beauty. It reminds me so much of Vermont. It’s a place that seems to have remained unchanged for generations.

There are lots of small towns and villages but few large built up places. And the towns and villages are all strung together by ancient country roads, carriage and bridle paths with gravity stacked stone walls everywhere you look. Lots of family dairy farms, fields of maíz and corn, beef cattle and sheep, horse farms and people have their own vegetable and flower gardens.

In the highlands, there are old growth forests of oak and pine, chestnut trees, pine and eucalyptus plantations, beekeepers, rabbit farms, sheep and goats.

Everyday we rode on cobblestone paths into and through multiple small towns and villages. People are always so happy to see the horses and it’s so fun greeting the locals with a hearty Gallegan “bos dias” and the Peregrinos with an encouraging “Buen Camino.”

The Atlantic, of course, is something Vermont doesn’t have and riding the Costa de Morte is just fabulous. You gallop along long stretches of beautiful isolated sand beaches then canter up into the hills with views of the Atlantic on one side and panoramas of the Galician countryside on the other and then amble back down to the next isolated cove to gallop along the beach again.

And the food is authentic ‘farm to table’ with regional wines that are crisp and delicious and just too easy to drink. It was a brave man who ate the first percebes (barnacles) but they are so good. They have the flavor of the ocean with the texture of the best calamari. And the picanha, a special cut of beef from the vaca rubia gallega, is certainly the most delicious steak I’ve ever eaten.

I never rode a horse until my early 30’s when we were expecting our first child (NB that I eschew the use of the grammatically incorrect and anatomically impossible “when we were pregnant”). Cary’s OB/GYN had told her that she couldn’t ride her horse while she was (not “we were”) pregnant so I started taking riding lessons on Lady, her palomino quarter horse.

A year and a half later, in the fall of 1990, we made our first trip to Portugal for our first Inn to Inn riding vacation. And our love of Vermont began with a subsequent riding holiday in South Woodstock. My first time in Spain was on our honeymoon.

So riding horses and travel to Spain and Portugal played no role in my life before Cary but they do now and always will and she too it seems.

I love a day spent mounted on a nice horse and even better multiple days in succession.
Winston Churchill said it best, “there’s something about the outside of a horse that’s good for the inside of a man” and that’s certainly true for me.

So come to Galicia and ride a horse. Rafa is a great host and wonderful horseman. You’ll have the best time and more fun still if you have the good fortune to ride Lucera. (asantiagoacaballo.com)

And now I’m on the train to Lisbon with a list of places that I want to revisit. Tomorrow morning, being Tuesday, it’s the Festa de Ladras. Of course, I’m going to Bon Jardim, Cafe Trindade, Cafe Nicola and Cafe Brasileira. I hope the funiculars, Bica, Lavra and Gloria, are all still in operation because I want to ride them all and the Elevador Santa Justa too.

I’ll go to Belem for a Pasteis and to the Museu Nacional dos Coches. I’ll visit the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga and from there I’m gonna walk a big arc from Lapa to Estrela to the Praça Eduardo VII and Praça do Pombal to the Jardim Botánico, the Miradouro de Sao Pedro de Alcantara and on to the Chiado, Praça do Comercio and Baixa before heading back to my hotel in the Rossio.

The Gulbenkian, the Solar do Vinhos do Porto, Livraria Bertrand, Luvaria Ulisses, Tram 28 to Graca, my favorite of all, and on my last night, it’ll be Fado in the Alfama. The closer I get to Lisbon, the longer grows the list.

We traveled to Portugal so often in the early 1990s that going to Lisbon felt like going home. They say you can’t go home again. But it’s not because your old house has a new owner who doesn’t like visitors, rather it’s because the place to which you long to make return never actually was the place to which you long to make return, not as it is in your mind’s eye.

But I think I understand that and I feel like I’m prepared for that so I want to go anyway.

Buen Camino!