31st May 2024 Arzua to O Pedrouzo

The penultimate day!

First – breakfast!  We sat down while chatting and heard voices asking what part of Australia we came from.  Adelaide was met with joy as the couple, Phil and Jodie, were from Flagstaff Hill!

They had got to breakfast before us but weren’t happy and I think they were annoyed as they had arrived in later yesterday and missed out on a restaurant booking and that coloured their experience quite a lot so they were complaining about everything.  We didn’t agree with them at all as our breakfast was delicious.  There was even some cake that we wrapped up and put into our back packs for later!

More countryside and more gum leaves to pick and put into our backpack fronts with the question being asked by many people “Why are you doing that?” We explained that we are from Australia and these trees are the smell of home.  They couldn’t believe it when we crushed a leaf and they smelt the eucalyptus oil. One of the young American girls commented that we were walking with our own day spa!  They said they wondered what the trees were and we pointed out as many different types as we could see and they were quite amazed at the variety.

Into O Pedrouzo and up to the accommodation address to find it all locked up so we headed back to the bar on the corner to wait until 2pm then I went to check but found it once again, locked.  I ended up ringing the number and she told me 5 minutes so I headed back to Steve and a few minutes later saw two girls in their thirties hurrying up the hill and I wondered if it might be them so I headed around the corner and, sure enough, it was so I followed them upstairs to the guest house and found out the in’s and out’s of the place before heading back to Steve.

We had wondered about having Ron and Esther over for dinner as there was a kitchen and a lounge but the lounge was quite small so we asked them if they knew of anywhere we could meet for dinner later.  Esther is staying at a hostel and the owner there has an interest in a Spanish/Mexican restaurant so we decided to go there for dinner.  In the meantime we headed down to the supermarket to get some things to make for lunch and to gather some ingredients for breakfast tomorrow morning.  Of course we had to buy some tetilla cheese and jamon and this went down very nicely with a crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside bread roll.

The bar/restaurant that Esther had found was great and even had an area where you could do a wax “sello” for your credential rather than a stamped one.  It was quite the experience and we had fun doing that.  Dinner was great and I had a pisco sour which was the best I think I have had.  One of the workers there even gave us a caberet show and sang some lovely Spanish/Mexican songs.

We are blessed as Ron and Esther are such lovely people and we are going to miss them when we all leave Santiago on Monday.