I see a large group of pilgrims walking past Casa da Lima. According to a pilgrim carrying a guitar, we met in Ruina’s cafe (The new cafe in the middle of the village). in Rabaçal, they are all sleeping in Rabacals hostel, so all is full. Always when it is full in Rabacal or Alvorge, we get phone calls and Apps to ask if we have place free. Yes we have, but it is just 4 beds. We had around four days that we had four pilgrims, with nice communal dinners. These days are always nice and the time together for pilgrims to chat together is really nice.
Injuries on the Caminho
The Guitar-pilgrim writes his songs during his walk and played for us in the cafe. It was nice to hear acoustic music. He decided to go to Coimbra because he wanted to visit a doctor. Not all felt good anymore in his knees.
Also Rodrigo, a Portuguese man walking to Fatima, that would stay the night here, decided to stop in Coimbra because something was aching too much. We will see him when he walks again. I am sure we will see him soon. In May there the big peregrination to Fatima start all over again.
Malaysian Pilgrims!
We had a full house with four older pilgrims from Malaysia. It is the first time that we had visitors from that country. I greeted them with their ‘how are you’: Apa kabar. They were so surprised. They spoke English with each other, and could also speak Mandarin. They were from the capital Kuala Lumper, and told us that walking is not really for their people.. They do all by car in their daily life, it is very crowded and walking and long-distance walking is not something they do there. They walked the caminho Frances already and now they wanted to see Portugal. The woman still couldn’t believe what she was doing on the caminho.
Suffering, Recovering, Enjoying the Caminho
Pilgrim Michael answere Jenny with a nice explanation what the caminho is all about:
The first week: Suffering
The second week: Recovering from the suffering [painful sore feet and legs]
Third week: Start to enjoy the caminho.
I guess they are now in their 2 week walking from Lisbon to Casa da Lima.
It was also a surprise that coincidentally, we had a rice table with Indonesian and Chinese dishes. Of course they enjoyed. I think this evening with all homemade limanada’s and great Asian food, it was the transition from to the third week: to enjoy the caminho!
Everyone is very welcome to start enjoying the caminho at Casa da Lima in our little village:
