We haven't had wifi ("weefee") in three days and now find it hard to come up with a theme, other than "beauty," that runs through all of those days.
From Cacabelos, we began to anticipate climbing O'Cebreiro, the second mountain that we had to skip on our first Camino in 2010. It's been looming ahead of us since 2010, as the steepest, if not quite the highest climb, which we did not think ourselves capable of back then.
But that sense of intimidation soon evaporated as we found ourselves surrounded by hills of lush vineyards, and noticed that many vehicles - trucks, tractors, cars - had been hooked to little trailers and sent to the fields to collect all kinds of bins and buckets of grapes picked by people who looked like they had been recruited from the surrounding areas for the harvest.
The next day we began our approach to O'Cebreiro with a climb out of Villafranca del Bierzo, over a smaller "hill" of some 900 meters.
Chestnut groves on the hill.
We stopped in the little town of Pradelo and set out next morning for the climb. It was strenuous as expected, but the views before us made us forget about our muscles and tendons.
From our albergue window in O'Cebreiro - here's where we lined up our dirty boots.
At O'Cebreiro we wandered into the restored 9th century chapel in the early afternoon, to happen upon a Mass in German. Apparently a bus tour group with a priest had arranged a special Mass for the group. They sang beautiful harmonies - might have been some kind of choir group.
Later, in the evening, we went to the scheduled Pilgrim Mass, which was very well done - before Mass, the priest taught us some songs (some familiar) and led a wonderfully language-inclusive liturgy.
Cross at the top of the hill at O'Cebreiro.
Sunrise on the way down from O'Cebreiro to Triacastela.
