Triacastela to Sarria - September 7, 2024

With the first 21 kilometres of the Camino de Santiago in my rearview mirror, I felt energized as I got ready to meet with my friends, Carla, Giulia and John for breakfast. They seemed just as pumped to get started on our 25 km walk from Triacastela to Sarria. Carla suggested we go through Samos to see a monastery. She said the route would be slightly longer than the San Xil one, but the monastery came highly recommended by a fellow pilgrim she met yesterday. We agreed to walk the extra few kilometers.

At 8:30 AM the air felt crisp after the rain from the previous day. We strapped our backpacks and Carla snapped a selfie of the four amigos in front of our hotel, a tradition we started from our first Camino in 2022. I whispered a silent goodbye to Triacastela where past pilgrims’ footsteps seemed to linger just a moment longer. Once out of the town, we marched over undulating hills, winding along scenic wooded paths through large swathes of farmland dotted by a few houses. Sometimes we passed a hamlet that must have been around for hundreds of years.

Deeper into the trails, I smelled manure. Sure enough, the cows weren’t far away. In one shed, the cows chilled to music prompting John to say, “What a life. Even the cows are happier here.” For my part, I learned to step over the cow patties like a foot pianist. With practice, my feet dodged these turd-mounts and turned into a game of dexterity which I handily won. It also helped that we often emerged from the woods onto asphalt along rural roads where pilgrims had free reign and the occasional tractors passed more often than cars. 

On such a road shortly after 11 AM we caught sight of the Monastery of San Xulián de Samos nestled in a lush green valley. Rooftops, turrets and windows emerged among the trees. When we descended into the town of Samos we immediately came upon the monastery grounds, serene and picturesque. We found our way to the entrance, a large imposing structure. The monastery was founded in the 6th century, and over the years, additions like the large cloister and the baroque abbey church were built in the 17th and 18th centuries. Tours are available at scheduled times, but we had just missed one and the next one would delay our journey to Sarria too long. Although Giulia, John and I were mildly disappointed, Carla seemed much more so.

Now that we’d settled on not waiting for the next tour of the monastery, we found a cafe and sat at a table across the street from it. I wanted to taste the Camino de Santiago almond pie found in this region. The cafe owner brought me a slice along with café con leche. The pie tasted sweet and crumbly almost like the flourless almond crisp I baked once during the Pandemic. I discovered a couple of days later that the same pie in a different town tasted completely different—moist and dense and more like cake, which I enjoyed more.

After our rest stop in Samos I felt happy to be on the trails again. Thankfully we didn’t have to deal with rain today, although unfortunately Giulia’s knee started to develop a pain around this time. It pinched with every step she took downhill. When we got to our hotel in Sarria, she iced her knee and applied Voltaren. She insisted that we not fuss about it and I hoped the pain would go away or be manageable. 

Hotel Alfonso IX was modern and just what you would expect of a four-star accommodation. My room was clean, the bathroom spacious with lots of towels, and I felt I’d woken up in heaven after a long day on the road. I also had to talk myself out of some guilt over the un-pilgrim-like space I was enjoying, but that lasted as long as it took to say, “Wow!”

The main town of Sarria, teeming with pilgrims in the evening, is across from Hotel Alfonso IX on the other side of the river Río Sarria. During the Camino season, the number of pilgrims swells many folds here. This is the launching ground for the last 100 kilometers one has to walk to qualify for the Compostela certificate. The vibe and energy were palpably different from Triacastela where we stayed the previous night. Triacastela left one with the distinct impression of being steeped in history. Here a bridge connected our modern hotel to a town with medieval streets and stone churches like the Iglesia de Santa Mariña, amidst bustling albergues and contemporary bars.

Later in the evening when the four of us retired to our own rooms, I paused to reflect on the day. I felt a fleeting sense of a new self emerging as my old self slipped gently somewhere in the unknown different layers of me. I tried to hold on to this elusive feeling, to analyze how this journey was changing me, like each step forward was a new layer waiting to unfurl. Perhaps my realization that I have the endurance of a horse—exaggerated?—might be the only truth I’ve learned about myself. That’s fine, and then again, maybe over the next five days I’ll scrape another layer and unearth a new piece of nugget.