Caminho de Santigo, day 5

September 27th, Saturday: a lighter walking day as we hiked a few kilometers up to Caminha along the coast. We walked through the beachtown of Praia da Ancora, to the boardwalk. We see clouds gathering, the wind coming up–rain is on the way. We walked through a long straight flat woodland trail to the Caminha shoreline and corniche. Seeking a post office, I realized that they are closed on the weekend!

We passed up the first touts offering a boat ride across the river, as Father Colin pointed out that they landed at the beach on the Spanish side, far from the pathway, so we walked on and found a roadside salesperson – Popeye the Sailor Man – with a carimbo and 6-euro tickets to ride across the river to the quay at A Pasaxe, Spain! We sped across the river, over choppy water, rain spritzing, life jackets on, in 5 minutes.

He let us off at the concrete quay, and we hiked up the hill another 45 minutes in to the port town of A Guarda, known in Spanish (Castellano) as LaGuardia. We all lodged at Hotel Bruselas, a typical pilgrim hotel, with lots of international pilgrims waiting there. A Guarda is quite a nice seaside town that shows Spain's wealthier-than-Portugal infrastructure.

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String Quartet Broken String

We attended a marvelous concert last night, at the Porto Museum of Casa do Infante , a beautifully-renovated 1325 building near the river. At one point it served as a customs house. The government sponsors Portuguese musicians to return from other European orchestras to perform in their homeland. We heard and saw this group play a traditional piece – Haydn string quartet Opus 20 #2. Then the modern Benjamin Britten's Three Divertimenti – the stunning last movement of which they performed as an encore. They performed (and I recorded) the Shostakovich Quartet #9, during which the first-violinist broke a string (it features several strongly-plucked chords!) and had to retreat&repeat!

EUA: tanto estrago em tão pouco tempo

As part of my effort to learn about Portugal, both the country and the language, I'm subscribing to the centrist newspaper, O Publico . There are plenty of newspapers: conservative tabloids, and socialist and communist-sponsored daily papers; I find O Publico to be most sober, with consistently interesting columnists and opinion pieces, in addition to some local (Porto) news, with just enough sporting news to keep me chatting with the taxi driver. Today's opinion piece sums up, I think, European pundits' view of the U.S. government. As the title puts it: so much damage in so little time. I shudder at the rank incompetence and corrupt behavior, demonstrating a cynical attitude toward public service, showing indeed that the cruelty is the point. What scandal, what damage will be the tipping point to collapse this government? And what will it take to recover from the damage? Who will be able to trust the US government again, ever? Only ni...

Música Tunas e Boémia

We attended an unusual concert last night: Música Tunas e Boémia (bands and parties) University student folk-music groups — big groups of 40 and more each! put on a great show of singing, playing, flag-twirling, tambourine-swinging, all at the major (private) concert hall. The most unusual thing about it was that nobody used any electronic device (except for microphone amplification)—no electric guitar or keyboard, no big drum set…every instrument and prop was hand-held. The singing was quite good, given the effort to synchronize 40 voices.

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