One more morning and afternoon in Fisterra! Whereas our arrival in Fisterra yesterday was greeted with fine mist and grey skies, we awaken this morning to clear blue skies over the Cabo. Freak closures seem to follow us everywhere; the lighthouse was closed yesterday for a changing of exhibits, so we decided to take advantage of our post-Camino break and check it out this afternoon.
Of course, even on normal days it doesn't open until 1230...so we wait by taking a walk up along the trails next to the lighthouse. When we do finally get into the lighthouse, we're disappointed to find that it serves as a market for overpriced artisanal trinkets supposedly from the local area - which are admittedly cool, but of absolutely no use to us when we must carry everything that we own with us. This is one odd thing about bike tripping: as compared to regular travel, the rate with which you acquire souvenirs is greatly reduced. We've already had to send a couple of packages home, and even those contained mostly maps with lines drawn in from our travels. (It's like a lo-fi rendition of Google Maps, hipster-PDA-style. Maybe we'll stick up photos eventually - these need to be scanned in, though, and we're kinda hoping our relatives back home will take care of all that.) Everything has weight. Everything takes space. Our lives are confined to a pair of dry bags, roughly 84 litres of pannier space, 7 litres of handlebar bag space, and a knapsack (which we had hoped the handlebar bag would replace, but which we continue to drag around with us due to several deficiencies of Handlebar Bag that shall remain unspecified.) We've named the bags: we have Handlebar Bag (your guess which one), Pantry Pannier (with the pot, spices, and dry foods/grains), IF Bag (this drawstring-equipped blue sack we have for Incidental Food, i.e. stuff we buy at supermarkets and need to carry to a campsite or other location for further cooking), Gear Bag (tools, spare parts, and the like), Valkyrie's Gear Bag (stove, cooking and eating utensils, fuel bottle, water pump)...these bags are us for four more months!
But back to Fisterra. After our visit to the lighthouse, we try to pick up the ingredients for paella so we can cook it on the beach...and are told that the local fish market is mostly closed by this time, and that it doesn't carry the necessary squid. By this time, though, we are already saddled with some vegetables from the outdoors market, so we take those to the beach instead and eat some vegetables over rice before dipping our feet in the still-too-cold-to-swim-in-reasonably water.
After our beachside meal and foot-dipping, we take a bus ride back along the coast into Noia. We're supposed to change coaches about halfway, but the bus stops in a location where we are unable to unload the bikes from the luggage undercarriage. We prepare ourselves to take an unscheduled ride back into Santiago, but the bus driver reluctantly agrees to stop the bus down the highway a bit - whereupon he jumps down from his seat and frantically waves the other coach down so we can pit-stop-speed unload our bikes and toss them under the other bus. Further proof that things work out mostly if you a) are willing to accept them not going entirely to plan, b) are patient, and c) are insistent enough in that polite-but-effective way that gets things done.
So we get back to Noia...only to find a Renaissance Fair in town! (This is listed as a Mercado Medieval - Medieval Market, in case it wasn't perfectly obvious.) We chow down on some overly expensive cheesecake (what the hell is that doing at a Ren Faire?) before hitting up a local bar, where we run into a pair of motorcyclists that we saw previously along the Camino. (Yes, we are doing this thing at high speed! It makes me feel more than a little uber-powerful to be able to keep pace with motorcyclists, even if we bike all day to match their leisurely ride along the mountain paths.) They invite us to share a round of beers with us, whereupon they share tales of their (relatively short, but nevertheless cool) travels along parts of the Camino - tomorrow they return to their hometown of Salamanca, which is known for its university.
Final part of the day. Slightly beered up, we head out of town along the coast towards Porto do Son...only to be reminded that Spanish supermarkets are open at reasonable hours! We pick up the rest of the ingredients for paella, head down the road a bit to a suitable campsite, and spend a solid 90 minutes concocting the best damn paella anyone ever made on a camping stove! We actually make too much of it, but our efforts to share it with other campers are rebuffed - no problem; it merely means we have some for tomorrow!
(Did I mention that this is the best meal I've ever eaten off a camp stove? Not sure that I did. Well, it is.)