Day 12 | Camino Portuguese | Spiritual Variant | Combarro to Vilanova de Arousa | March 29, 2024

Day 12 on the Spiritual Variant was magical! This stage was a bit too long for us, so we took a taxi from Combarro to A Armenteira which skipped 5.65 miles (9.1km), and only took 15 minutes. It also skipped the steep accent! We started with exploring the Monistary de Armeteira which was beautiful; however, it was raining pretty hard and gloomy out. Our initial thought, when we were planning our camino, was to stay in the monastery but they were not accepting pilgrims because of Samana Santa (Holy Week). If they had, we would have split this segment into two. Shortly after you leave the monastery, you start the Ruta de Pedra e da Auga (Route of Stone and Water). There are no words to describe how magical this segment is! You MUST take the Spiritual Variant just to do this! Just beautiful! Also, the rain stopped for us while we walked this segment which was wonderful. The trail had some wet areas on it from the past days of rain, but it wasn't too bad. After we finished the Route of Stone and Water, the sun actually came out for the first time in days! So great to take the poncho off and put the sunglasses on! Of course, it didn't last too long and the rains were back. We stopped off for a beverage and lunch in Ribadumia to wait out the heavy rains and hit the trail again when it lightened up. We continued to walk until 5pm when we arrived in Ponte Arnelas. At this point, we had walked 11.08 miles (17.83km) for 7 hours and 40 minutes...we were done! More than the miles, it's the time on the trail that really gets to us. We kind of hit our wall at the 7 hour mark. As such, we decided to hitch a ride and we got picked up from a sweet older Portuguese couple who took us to Vilanova de Arousa. Overall, it was a wonderful day...probably our favorite on the Camino Portuguese! We also met some new friends on the trail which is always lovely! Of course, as everyone does, we continued walking around Vilanova de Arousa exploring the town. We found a great restaurant with a wonderful view to the water and we enjoyed the live band, our meal and an adult beverage as we watched the sunset. We spent the night in a mixed 4 person dorm at Albergue A Corticela.