Portomarin, the first significant town after Sarria in the heavily travelled 100 kilometer "certificate" segment, is clearly benefitting from the exploding popularity of the Camino. It's teeming with bars, restaurants, albergues, and pensions, it has lots of attractive and substantial homes with lovely gardens, and the central square, dominated by an imposing Romanesque church/fortress, is filled with pilgrims and tourists in the evening. After relaxing from my walk yesterday I had my typical "pilgrim's menu" dinner--salad, chicken, potatoes, bread and the better part of a bottle of wine--on the porch of one of the restaurants on the square, about 25 yards from the church. For me, heaven!

When I made my way out of town this morning on the hilly streets and across two bridges it was chilly and damp. Clouds had settled overnight and the mist was thick. It was beautiful and perfect for walking. Though today's trek through the hills was only 8 miles, much of it was uphill so it was nice to not have to deal with heat and strong sun. The clouds slowly burned off over the few hours I was walking and as I write this I'm sitting on the patio of my albergue, drenching in strong low-humidity sun.

I got off to a late start today, 8:30, knowing that I had an abbreviated walk. Perhaps because of that the crowds were nothing like yesterday's. The path today led through forest and farms, and for a good hour I walked in total silence. As I went on, I saw more people but it never got oppressive. Now I'm in a tiny mountain village, Ventas de Naron, a handful of stone buildings with slate roofs. I'm looking at vegetable gardens and trees and the birds are singing and about 5 minutes ago a farmer guided about a dozen sheep up the driveway less than ten yards from where I'm sitting.

All across Spain there's a wealth of beautiful stone buildings. Many are in good shape and are occupied and kept up. But I've seen literally thousands of them in various states of disrepair, left to deteriorate. Some of them are too far gone, but many are not. Once in a while I see one being renovated and repurposed but I've been dismayed at how infrequently that's been the case. Today I was encouraged. I passed about 8 buildings with construction crews, shoring up walls, putting in steel supports, pouring concrete floors, repairing the stonework. I hope this is a trend. To me, putting a modern interior in one of these magnificent shells would be a dream project. I hope they end up being seen as a national treasure.

I'm down to my last 5 days and 50 miles. I'm getting really excited. I'm ready to be done, I don't want to be done, and I'm already feeling nostalgic about the experience once I will be done.

In the department of I might be losing my mind: I hear hundreds of roosters crowing every day, it's a ubiquitous sound. I never hear it as "cock-a-doodle-do", I never have. But at least half the time I would swear that they're screaming "BUEN CAMINO"! Seriously.