Today I am going to take an all day bus tour to Muxía and Finisterre. A number of the St. Jean Pilgrims who arrived in Santiago last Sunday went to the Pilgrim Mass and posed for the obligatory pictures in Cathedral Square, did laundry, had a rest day and then started walking west to Muxía and then on to Finisterre. Both of these villages are on the ocean. It is a hike of about 120 kilometers and according to the weather forecast when I got to Santiago last Sunday it was going to be wet and cold for most of the walk. Instead of hiking in the cold and the rain☔️, I decided to take a bus tour and see Muxía and Finisterre from the comfort of a motor coach. You could say that I have successfully made the transition from Pilgrim to tourist.
The tour bus left Santiago at 9:30 AM and we drove west through low clouds and rain squalls. We got to our first stop, Muxía, at about 10:30 AM.
This is me standing on the Rock of Arlan.
These pants really don’t fit. I am either going to have to gain some weight or get new pants. I am starting to look like a circus clown 🤡.
In days of yore the locals in Muxia used the Rock of Arlan as a judgement stone. The accused would be forced to stand on the stone. If the stone moved, the accused would be declared innocent. If the stone did not move, the accused would be declared guilty and thrown into the raging sea. And this is a massive slab of rock that I’ll bet hasn’t moved since it was laid down when dinosaurs 🦕 roamed the earth. Muxia is and was one tough town and not much of a chance to be judged innocent if you step out of line. As you can imagine, I was on my best behavior in Muxia. If I was caught doing anything illegal or immoral in Muxia, I would skip the whole Stone of Arlan rigamarole, and do a swan dive into the raging sea, trusting that Neptune or St. James The Moorslayer would come to my rescue.
This is me standing on the Rock of Arlan, minding my Ps and Qs, with the Muxia lighthouse in the background. As you have probably guessed, the Rock didn’t move.
This is the Muxia lighthouse.
This is mile marker 0 on the Camino to Muxia.
This is the arch of Muxia.
Legend has it that if you pass through this arch seven times with your backpack 🎒 on your back all the emotional baggage that you have been carrying around in your “backpack” will disappear. This sounds like a bunch of Galician hocus pocus.
This is a cross at Muxia. We stopped here and said a prayer for Anna.
This is the church at Muxia.
Now it is on to Finisterre. This is mile marker 0 on the Camino to Finisterre.
This is the famous lighthouse at Finisterre. It has a bar/restaurant and a few hotel rooms. I have heard that it is a great place to spend an evening
This is the view from the lighthouse.
Now that you have seen the view from the lighthouse you understand why is is a great place to spend the evening. Less well heeled Pilgrims stay down in the town of Finisterre and hike 7 kilometers uphill to sit on the rocks near the lighthouse and drink cheap red wine 🍷 and marvel at the spectacular sunsets. Once the sun sets the rag tag Pilgrims realize that they are more than a little tipsy and now they have to hike 7 kilometers downhill in the dark to get to their crappy alburgue while the fat cat Pilgrims are staying at the fancy dancy lighthouse hotel eating oysters Rockefeller and gargantuan lobsters 🦞 and quaffing the finest French champagne 🍾 . This doesn’t seem fair, but as St. Rita always said: “Fair is where you go to see the Butter Cow.”
It is a tradition for these intoxicated and financially challenged Pilgrims to burn their clothes before they start their drunken hike down to their humble lodgings in Finisterre. This is a recent burn pile.
Burning your clothes at the lighthouse at Finisterre makes no sense for a number of reasons. First, you are going to need those clothes for your walk down the hill to your alburgue in Finisterre. Second, most of your clothes are quick drying synthetic fabrics that might smolder and melt but they are not going to create much of a fire🔥.
Apparently Stephen Hawking visited the lighthouse at Finisterre and thought it was pretty neat. I doubt he burned his clothes. He was too smart for that.
After visiting the lighthouse we went down to the town of Finisterre for lunch. This is the harbor at Finisterre.
After lunch I was walking back to the bus when I spotted these guys weighing buckets of recently harvested sea urchins.
You all seem to be interested in how much weight I have lost so I thought I would mosey on down to where they were working and ask these guys if I could weight myself on their scale. I don’t think they understood me when I asked them if I could hop on their scale and weigh myself. Imagine that. Apparently they thought I wanted to try a raw, just out of the water, sea urchin. I most certainly did not want to try one of these slimy smelly crustaceans. But they insisted and I finally gave up and told them I would love to eat a few sea urchins with them. So they cracked open a bunch of these prickly crustaceans and we had a little raw sea urchin picnic right there on the dock. The raw sea urchins were actually quite tasty.
I am sure you are wondering how these guys harvest sea urchins. Well, I’ll tell you. They don wet suits, as the water is quite cold, and then put on a face mask with an air supply tube. Then they swim down to where the sea urchins live, attached to the rocks. The divers pry the sea urchins off the rocks and put them in baskets that are hauled to the surface. These ugly crustaceans are sold to sushi restaurants all over the world. As Paul Harvey used to say: “Now you know the rest of the story.”
This is our next stop, the Ezaro waterfall.
Our next stop was the second largest horreo, or traditional grain storage structure, in Spain. This horreo is owned by the local Catholic church in Carnota. The parishioners of the church in Carnota had the largest horreo in Spain for a couple of years. The parishioners at a neighboring church built a horreo that was one meter longer and now they have the bragging rights to the biggest horreo in Spain.
This is the pigeon horreo. Our tour guide told us that the small openings at the top are for pigeons to enter the horreo and eat the grain. The pigeons gorge themselves on the grain in the horreo and then get too fat to fit through the openings. When that happens the farmers open the door to the horreo and grab the obese pigeons and pass them off as chicken on the local pilgrim menu. I am more than a little upset that all along my Camino the wiley Spaniards have been serving me pigeon and calling it chicken, but I am glad they are finally coming clean on this issue.
This is the Galician coast. It is some of the most spectacular scenery on the Camino.
When I got back to Santiago at 6:30 PM I met Marco and Giorgio for a farewell dinner. What better place to have a farewell dinner than the sushi 🍣 place in Santiago.
We had a feast fit for a shogun and then went to Cathedral Square for a Three Amigos farewell picture.
I hope everyone had a great Friday.
Good evening from Santiago de Compostela, Spain.
AbeAndMarkontheCamino 