Epic day today. Over 19 miles with varied terrain, incredible views and cute towns. It was exhausting but really enjoyable. A fantastic stage.

Officially, I have left the Camino de Santiago and I’m now on the Camino de Fatimá. I’ll rejoin the Santiago route in 4 days.

Fruit and flowers

I’m out of the Ribatejo region where there are gigantic farms, but I still saw some interesting things growing today including peppers, olives, apples and flowers.

Amiais de Baixo

All the towns in this area are very small, but this town is a little bigger with about 1600 people. It’s got an industrial section and some expensive houses but mostly pretty run down. There are a lot of kids out playing which is a good sign for a community like this.

There is exactly one restaurant open on Sunday for dinner. Right now, I’m waiting for it to serve dinner at 7:30pm.

Pilgrim Hut

There was an interesting little hut for pilgrims at about the halfway point today. I brought some Michigan postcards with me, and I try to leave one with my hosts at each lodging. I added one the postcards to the hut’s collection of pilgrim paraphernalia.

Officially today was 19.11 miles. I’ll probably finish the day with about 45,000 steps. It was the first stage with any serious hills. I climbed a total of 1550 feet. This should be my longest hike of this Camino, although I have another that will be close. The next two days will be shorter ones (about 8 miles each) so plenty of time to rest and recover.