Our Portuguese Camino begins in the beautiful city of Porto, outside the Wine Hostal in the centre of the city. The team is Fern and myself who honestly have begun this adventure as relative strangers, a somewhat risky decision for such a trek. We are old high school acquaintances that reconnected at a reunion and through Facebook and just seemed to be sharing the same sort of adventures.
We saved ourselves a few steps by visiting the historic start of this leg of the Camino, Sé Catedral the evening before. Our first few minutes is in rain, weather we don’t see again until the last day of the walk.
There are three different routes to Santiago de Compostela, all roughly 300 kilometres. They are the Central, Coastal and Literol routes. We have decided to take the Literol route, the one that most closely follows the coastline.
‘September 7, Day 1
Porto to Mindelo – 31 kms
With the exception of the walk out of town, and a detour to cross a bridge today’s walk was all boardwalk along the beach. It’s Saturday so there’s a fair being set up, people everywhere, mostly locals. It’s a festive start.
We’ve made a booking for the night in Mindelo. The estimate was 24 kms but in the end was actually 31, too long for a first day. We stayed at a very strange place, Hostal Mindelo. There was no sign on the building, a crazy guy running the place and pretty expensive @ $34 CDN each for 6 women in a dorm room. An additional 10 euro provided a disappointing breakfast. We booked this place ahead, which then forced us to walk too far and stay in a sub optimal place. We decide to just wing our accommodations from here on.
September 8, Day 2
Mindelo to Santo Andros – 17 kilometres
Slept in! Had breakfast ordered for 8 and I opened my eyes at 8:20. Everyone slept in due to we are sleeping in a windowless basement. Breakfast was served at 8, coffee poured and by the time we got upstairs was cold. When I knocked on the door of the alburgue owner the fellow was mostly naked (weird, creepy). Breakfast was not worthy of a photo but we did eventually get the coffee warmed up.
17 glorious seaside, boardwalk kilometres today. What an awesome day! Found Hotel Santo Andros on some app and assumed this gorgeous hotel must be out of our price range and/or full. Nope – 84 euro for two so 42 each. Beautiful room, pool and beach.
I swam in the ocean, and again in the pool. We both washed our clothes – those double knit socks can only be washed when a blow dryer is available to help dry them. 
I had a long shower and blow dried my hair, then called everyone back home for a long chat – husband Ray, son #1 Rob (got the whole family lounging in bed) son #2 Peter – great chat and finally my sister Debbie. Dinner was a hearty buffet, as was breakfast the next morning.
Fern and I are discovering each other. We walk the same pace, we like the same wine and we seem to have the same loosey goosey nature. Already I couldn’t imagine a better Camino partner.
September 9, Day 3
Santo Andros to Marinhas – 24 kilomtres
After the extravangance of our beautiful hotel in Santo Andros, we decided to try for the municipal alburgues today in Marinhas. Actually we don’t care where we stay, we are just shooting for about 20 k each day. Not all of today was on the beach and we took a bit of a short cut through a park.
We arrived at the alburgue just after 3 PM and it was already full. It really didn’t look very nice anyway. The alburgue owner called another hostal for us that was a 10 minute walk up the road and we found ourselves in a private room sharing the common space with two women from Vancouver Island. When we went for dinner the restaurant was closing, “all we have left is two lasagnas.” It was fantastic – they used eggplant in place of pasta. The wine was also fabulous, there is no bad wine in Portugal. My fitbit scored my sleep over 70 tonight.
September 10, Day 4
Marinhas to Viano de Castelo – 21.4 kilometres
Got a good start out of Marinhas just after 9. The coastal route has a large hill to climb, while the Litoral route sort of crosses the front of the hill, probably much easier. We decide to stick to our plan on the Literol path, an option that turned out to be somewhat way-marked and would avoid the hill all together.
This route was absolutely stunning and adventurous. We had to find small roads on our map to connect boardwalks, sand roads and sand paths. Sometimes we missed and had to climb sand dunes. The one thing we knew we had to do once arriving in Viano do Castelo was walk away from the beach and through the city to cross a bridge. We had met Florida (Rene) earlier in the day and then saw her here again as we were trying to figure out the map. She said she was going to take the ferry. Ferry?? So we did too.
The beach was fantastic!!!! It was super windy and full of kite surfers. My feet got wet for the second time but still in perfect shape (touch wood ). Fern started to get some pretty concerning blisters but she’s a doctor so she fixed them up and all good today. I was in the bathroom when Fern yelled “2 minutes to the ferry” so I ran – yes ran after 20+ km with my backpack and we just made the boat. The fair was 1.80 euro and saved us some road walking and a highway bridge.
Right off the ferry we secured a sweet room with ocean view, three beds and a highly rated restaurant right outside for 42.50 euros each, including breakfast. This was the first hotel we checked.
Every night we wash our hiking clothes and hang them out the window to dry. In the morning Fern’s shirt was missing. She spotted it below the window, hung up on the canopy over the restaurant. I couldn’t stop laughing long enough to get a video of her running down to the street in her nightgown, eliciting help from a tall passerby to reach the errant blouse.
September 11, Day 5
Viana de Castelo to Vila Praia de Ancora – 21 kilometres
With everything feeling good (touch wood) we stop everywhere! Every Fort, every beach cafe that looks nice and anywhere in between that invites lingering. We left Viana de Castelo right at 9 am but there were several forts to explore on the way out of town, and we explored them all. We walked along the sea until lunch time, where we stopped at a beach-side cafe. Fern had avocado toast with smoked salmon while I had pana cotta with kiwi and basil. Have I mentioned how delicious the food is in Portugal?
We left the beach here and headed up through a forest trail. The trail tried to take us up to a town along the road but we had a better idea. We found a path that roughly followed the sea. It involved maneuvering rocks over a stream. We finished our walk into Ancora along the beach. The trail wanted to take us back to a road to cross a bridge, but we doffed the shoes and waded the small stream of sea water.
We checked out a pretty nice hotel but it was 90 euro and had lots of availability so we decided to keep looking; we could always go back. We found hotel Avenita for 30 euro each. It’s adorable. I’m on the top bunk which is almost like a top floor and we have a private bath. There a lively bar right out front but our room is quietly facing the back street. Beer and wine are 1 euro each, cod cakes 1.50.
As if the day were not magnificent enough, the wind died down and a green flag was raised at the beach, my sign to go for a swim. For at least 20 minutes I swam in the frigid Atlantic, gentle waves rolled over me. I feel complete.
After a long hot shower – we even have a blow dryer, we headed out to dinner. We had a fab catch of the day grilled fish with veggies and a carafe of wine. Probably should have asked the price, it was 60 euros. Price of a happy hour back home really.
Tomorrow we see Spain.
