Sept. 19 leaving Oia

We were up, packed and down for breakfast by 8 this morning.  The sweet woman who was our host knew not a word of English. She would cone up to us with her phone and say some phrase in Spanish, a few seconds later her phone on speaker would say...for example...would you like coffee or tea. This would go on until she knew all that we wanted to eat!  I was amazed as I thought she was phoning a friend, then I realized she was talking to Suri or Alexa! It was certainly efficient and amusing. We walked out of town on the seaside route, passing a woman who was pushing a wheelbarrow, I tried to speak with her to ask what she was looking for in the fields but we couldn’t communicate.....she did say bon Camino!, she knew we were pilgrims!
Today was not as misty as yesterday, there were some plots of land between us and the sea, we startled a beautiful young black calf who was near the fence.....his cost was unmarked and still curly.
At different times during the day we would meet up with other pilgrims, often ones we had seen in previous days. It is fun to find out where others are from and why they are walking. There are a group of English women who met in France and now all live there, in villages nearby to each other. I found out they too had husbands at home who didn’t at all mind when they went off on adventuresome hikes/walks.
As everyone has their own pace, much time we are on our own. The seaside route at times took us uphill to a roadway....not as pleasant and hard on the feet.  We were happy when the route would take us either down to the sea or up a mountain trail. Today we had a mountain trail with fantastic views of the town below......we listened to music on our phones/iPods for awhile, or the quiet of the forest and birds. There was evidence of horse Pooh...and we learned the mountain has a herd of wild ponies...unfortunately we didn’t see any.
After we descended the mountain into a large village there was no sign of life other than barking dogs and crowing roosters as we passed through. Must have been siesta time.
Our destination was Baiona a big town on the sea. Our instruction were detailed...there will be a sport field on your left then pass 2 churches on the right, find a particular street, your hotel is the Mosquito Pensione. As was our practice we stopped at a tapas bar for beer and some tapas as it was 3:30 ish and Spanish restaurants don’t reopen till 8. Snacks were scallops in the shell, garlic prawns, patadas, and bread to sop up the olive oil and garlic! Yum. I had another beer while Joanie, Jan and Sandy had a local white wine. Before we left the tapas bar we were given 4 liquors popular here ....gratis . We retired to our Mosquito pensione for showers and a rest till later.
We heard a lot of noise sounding like it was on huge speakers and wondered if this racket would go on all night. Venturing out to the Main Street we saw there was a bike race just ending as the winner rode by carrying a huge bouquet of flowers. Joanie spotted an ice cream shop and we had dessert before dinner!
The town has a fortress that juts out onto the water, it has been turned into a parador hotel. We were able to walk around the perimeter by way of a walkway that was high above the ground with magnificent views in all directions.
At 8pm we came back to our street to find dinner....we chose a little place down a narrow street very close to our hotel and had salad with prawns, steak with salad, red wine and sangria. There were other pilgrims in the restaurant and the evening ended with two other local couples chatting with us, advising us on route choices for tomorrow......a really fun night.