Talk about frustration. Last night I wrote my blog for Day 10. And when I was about done, the blog just, disappeared. You have no idea how mad I was! I went to bed, and when the rooster crowed early morning, I was awake writing again. Needless to say, we had a late start.

We walked to the Pastry Shop and had our world famous breakfast sandwich. Ham and cheese on a roll with Espresso. That’s as good as it gets in Portugal! We headed out of town and realized that we really weren’t that late. Somehow we caught up with Sonya from Taiwan. She had planned to go half the miles we were today. Don’t tell George since I have much bigger plans for our walk. Twice that and some hills.

We turned from the roadway onto a dirt path. It took us immediately through groves of trees and vineyards. After further inspection, I have determined that the red barked tree from yesterday and today is a bonafide Cork Tree.

When I visited Portugal some twenty years ago, I made my way to Porto. I was traveling with a Rotary Club Member and he loved wine, but especially Port. We talked with a vintner who showed us a cork tree and explained how sooner or later the cork trees would all be harvested. This would mean no more cork and wineries would start using synthetic corks. Hogwash! There’s no way, but now, 20 years later, many winemakers are in fact, using plastic and other hard materials to close up their wine bottles. And, synthetic doesn’t disintegrate like cork sometimes does. Anyhow, a bit of a tangent but we saw some healthy and good looking cork trees along the trail. All have not disappeared.

What we also saw was a bunch of Portuguese harvesting olives. There’s a few ways to get olives off a tree. Most of the husband and wife teams are using a type of mechanical rake that shakes the tree, and the olives drop. The wife catches the olives in a net of sorts, picks through the olives and removes all the leaves and branches. Then she places the olives in a bucket. Another option is using a long bamboo stalk and hitting the tree, and guess what? The olives fall off the tree. Big business here in Portugal between curing the olives and pressing them into olive oil. Anyway you slice it, olives are abundant in this part of the world.

We must’ve walked through miles of Olive Groves today. The countryside is just beautiful. It’s very similar to Tuscany with vineyards, rolling hills, many rock walls and old rustic structures. One olive harvesting couple told us that their olive trees are hundreds of years old. Hundreds, like 500 years or more!

We had a few climbs today. George would say all we did was climb, but his perspective is a bit different than mine. We walked over many Roman Roads as we passed through Alvorge, and north. There were many reminders of days gone by with dilapidated ruins, walls and arches that were crumbling and in disrepair. But instead of demolishing these reminders, they either restore them or leave them as historic artifacts.

After a brief stop in Alvorge, we continued north through Ribiera de Alcamamouque (no, that’s not misspelled) and made it to our Hostel in Rabacal. We arrive and awaited our orders. Some of the Hostels want you to take your shoes off, remove your packs, check your US Passport and Pilgrims Passport. This place showed us the pool and said, someone will be with you in a bit. Enjoy your swim. Now that’s my kind of place.

The Pool is not heated but what it does have is jets like a jacuzzi, and a free falling waterfall that is the best neck massager on the Camino! It was heavenly. I stayed in the pool for close to an hour, floating, swimming, massaging my sore legs, feet and shoulders. You get the picture.

After relaxing for a bit, George and I hit the One-Horse Town to search for beer. We have concluded that Super Bock Stout is our favorite Portuguese Beer. It is darker, flavorful and hits the spot. We were able to get some cheese, bread and hard boiled eggs to go with our late lunch. We hadn’t eaten much today outside an apple, peach and snickers bar. Dinner typically isn’t served until 7pm so this was going to have to suffice until then.

We cruised the street of Rabacal. It truly is one street that covers the town with not much else. We did find a mini-marcado which had enough provisions to make lunch for tomorrow. Outside of that, there was a few abandoned buildings and cars zipping through town to get somewhere else.

George was ready to get back to our private room to take a much needed break. Within two minutes, he was out. I think today tuckered him out with the hill climbs, the rocky paths, the road walking and the fact he was poorly fueled. Last nights Banana Split probably wasn’t enough. I’m thinking more protein and less sugar. Just my two cents.

We headed back to our Cafe and went to order. Is there a menu? Nope. The choices are Fish or Pork. We’ll take one of each. Along with that comes your typical soup and salad, carafe of wine, beer or soda, and a basket of bread. The meal was fine. Our new friend from Denmark, Freddie joined us. He’s in his late 20’s and is walking 30 kilometers a day. We won’t see him again but had a nice dinner tonight. Our bill for dinner was 18 Euros. So today with our private room at the Hostel, our lunch of snickers bars, breakfast sandwich with espresso, set us back a whopping $72.00. No wonder there are so many Americans moving here! It is affordable and darn right, a nice place to be. I won’t be moving here anytime soon but I sure enjoy visiting. And it’s within my budget. And it has great scenery to boot!