Yesterday I finally gave in and bought a knee support at the farmacia. My knee has been giving me pain since the Cruz de Ferro. I ice it when the day is through but the pain is persistent.
Today I wore the knee support for the entire trek. Although the knee still hurts and I am icing it as I blog, I believe the support helped with the many rocky ups and downs today.
Being from the United States, I have trouble with understanding temperatures not reported in Fahrenheit. I thought I had this problem licked by using the weather app on my tablet. But it proved to give a false temperature forecast. The app said the temp was currently 48○ and would only get up to the mid 50○ mark.
I dressed with long janes under my hiking pants, a short sleeve merino wool, a long sleeve merino wool, a hiking shirt, a fleece vest, a buff around my neck, my baseball cap and gloves on my hands.
Within one mile/less than 2 kms, I had worked up quite the sweat. Now I had to find a place off path to remove most of my clothing. Thankfully this tree came into view and I was able to sneak around it to disrobe.
Only problem was it had poured down rain last night, everything was muddy. Well there I stood, my boots off, socks on some wet grass, the backpack off and in the mud trying to maintain my balance while removing the pants and long janes. Once that was accomplished, I had no problem removing all my shirts. Everything went into the pack and after lacing up the boots, I was on my way simply wearing my trousers and the short sleeve merino shirt. So much for the weather app.
The hike was through some mystical looking forested areas as well as villages requiring cow plops hopping. Oh, the smell of the country!
I hiked 12 miles/20 kms in a very slow 5 1/2 hours. The last part into Sarria was hard and long for me today.
Thoughts and Adventures 