John arrived last night and it was good to see him again. He is in good spirit, and ready to finish what we started two months ago.
Had a great dinner last night, but got up early and walked out of Santiago in the early hours, and started looking for Way signs for the last of our adventure, the Camino de Fisterre. This is short, and to the coast, so today we plan a medium distance haul, right, that didn't work out.
It was dark and we hit the forest earlier than we planned, kind of like going down the rabbit hole

Climbing out of the valley, I looked back at Santiago as I may never return, something thats hard to process right now, and I saw the cathederal looming out of the mist as the town still slept, maybe its calling me back

picking our way through the Eucalyptus forests we were presented with climb after climb, I estimate we climbed for about 15 km, it never seemed to end.  Later in the morning, we dropped back into a valley and came to this little bridge where I needed to rest my body awhile

from here we walked on and came across Jason, damn that guy can book when he tries, he was hauling the mail up some of those hills. Then we came up on Amelia from Lithuania who I had met on many occasions on the Franchise. Was good to catch up , but Matt had stayed behind and will join us in Finistere by bus as his knee is done. You can't leave that boy alone, he stayed back and before you know it, he has a tattoo. He sent us a photo, if his parents don't like it, he can always hide it behind a postage stamp.

Stopped at the beautiful village at the Monte Maceira bridge,this bridge was built in the 14 th century and still stands, the village is a bunch of restored grain mills and its so quiet and peaceful here.we took a break and cooled off by the river Tambre, and tried to figure out where we would find supplies along the way.

from here,you guessed it,it went up. We arrived at the night stop, had a beer and something to eat, in fact, a cheese and ham baguette, we were about to check in to the albergue when we had this amazing idea, lets walk another 8k to the next town, more k today means less k tomorrow,and the Camino punished us as it does,by turning on the heat.

We arrived at Casa Pepe in this tiny village where they have cows, and cow sh- t, so here i am trying to blog and the flies are coming in in squadrons. If you listen carefully, you can hear the leader calling ". South African on the left,dive dive". 

Cross the mountain valley during our stupid stage this afternoon, this brought back memories of the Meseta earlier on in this trip.

Tomorrow I see the sea, a huge moment in this journey, the next day will be 11 kilometers to Finistere, and the end of another year for me, Ill be 64, or the start of a new year that will be immeasurably influenced by the Camino.