Day # 21 Melide to Burre about 1 km off the. Camino (Albergue Camiño das Ocas). 22km

As I said in yesterday's post, we planned to walk 21 km today.  In this stage, the one before the final Santiago stage, the Albergues are few and far between -  at least within the distance we wanted to walk.  We decided to reserve ahead for this reason -- the first time we've done so.  The Albergue Camiño das Ocas was a short way off the Camino according to the map, but we weren't clear at all where to turn off.  

So we started out at about 8:00, thinking we would stop around 11:00 for lunch.  We stopped a bit earlier at a nice little picnic area for a snack ( the usual cheese and chorizo), then walked on until we came across a nice cafe near Arzua that offered fried eggs and bacon that I wanted and lentil soup that Marty wanted.  Soon 2 German guys we had talked with briefly at the pulperia stopped in and visited with us as they drank their beer.  The very talkative one was a retired pharmacist from Heidleburg.  They planned to bus from Arzua to Santiago.

Anyway we walked on through shady eucalyptus woods and very prosperous looking farmland and houses with manicured gardens.  Since we weren't passing through any hamlets with names, we couldn't really tell how far along the way we were.  At about 2:30, we came to a croosroad with a handmade sign that said "Albergue" with an arrow pointing the the left.  We didn't think we had walked far enough for that to be our Albergue, so we walked on another half km or so until we came across a peregrino sitting in the yard of a Casa soaking her feet.  We asked the señora of the casa "donde estamos?",  and found out that the sign we passed WAS the sign to our Albergue.  So back we went to the sign and turned down the road which began to feel very remote until we came to a road and found the place.

It is a great little place, very new, and we are in a bunk room with 2 bunk beds but we have the whole room to ourselves for €10 each.  There are about 15 other people here - all older people like us, German and French speaking.  Across the hall is an Austrian man and his 24 year old daughter.  Unless we wanted to cook our own dinner, which one group did, our choice was frozen pizza which was just fine with beer.  As we ate, a big thunderstorm came up and it has been thundering and gusting and pouring rain since.  We consider ourselves lucky again to have the rain start after we are tucked away in our cozy little bunk room.  We'll see what tomorrow brings --  how much closer to Santiago we will get given the weather.