Bom dia, feijoada completa, mais batatas.
Today we woke up in more of a hurry than calm, some more than others. In the dead of night, we find Alex Freixes, hood up, thinking he was one of the Assassin’s Creed lot but, with fewer reflexes than a sloth in a coma, he smashed his solid skull into the sign at a bus stop (“paragem” to the brasileiros).
This left the witnesses to the headbutt facing a complex dilemma: they didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The dramatic part: here these posts are made of stone; the funny part: yesterday he had already wrecked another stone sign with his titanium skull.
The rest of the night walk passed without incident. The string of pilgrims, all with torches in hand, made a sight that would make Starlink die of envy: we looked like a line of 84 satellites moving forward in harmony.
On today’s stage we burned more tarmac than Lightning McQueen in the Piston Cup. Even so, nothing stops our optimism, and even less so when we see Marc León busy chasing sheep with the drone, causing stampedes that could kill Mufasa.
In our round-up of memorable moments, we have the concert that the trumpeter hiding inside Fr Toni gave Júlia Ramió and Edur Lejarcegui, in rather shaky form; and Emma Sarsanedas’s trainers, which have split for the third time, determined to make her walk the Hobbiton way.
The breakfast that Luis, Laura and Jaime made us was sublime (waffles, croissants and crêpes), so we took on enough fuel to do three stages in a row. At 12 (11 in the Canaries and in Portuguese lands) we made the traditional, and last, video call with the parishioners of our parishes of Sant Mateu and Sant Rafael.
Once in Sousel, we were lucky enough to share the sports hall with another group of young people going to WYD. They’re lads with ready smiles who flew here from Colombia and Argentina. Understandably they didn’t come on foot, because there are no armbands that could hold out across the whole pond.
Our group’s Germanic redhead, Martin, has fraternised so much with the Latin Americans that he now wears the tricolour flag tied around his wrist. If we give him a week with this group, he’ll end up more Colombian than the heroine of Encanto.
Beto Gel, as was only to be expected, couldn’t resist the urge to act as the group’s PR man and rubbed shoulders with the priest of the other regiment. The Argentine priest decided to take a selfie with him and Fer Marqués to post on his Instagram, tagging our account. What we didn’t expect was to see on the priest’s account a tick bluer than his homeland’s flag… he had more than 100,000 followers. By simple maths, half of South America now knows about our adventure.
Well, family, there’s little left to tell, and nothing that can be published. Boa noite e doces sonhos.