After my first day on the Camino de Santiago in Spain last August, I continued on to hike from Portomarin to Palas de Rei.

It was a great day as well! Though my calves were sore in the morning, from having hiked the first day (note to self: stretch/train better), but this feeling mostly went away as I got going.

In many ways, the route was fairly similar to the first day – similar length and uphill/downhill profiles. In both cases, I hiked from about 8am to 2:30pm or so. It was also foggy in the morning during the uphills and warmed up in the afternoon. The PDF guide said that the trek was 24.8km (14.8 miles), but with walking around town, my phone said 28.0km (17.5mi) and 36,400 steps.

There were parts of the route from the second day that I liked slightly better – particularly the views from the hilltop mid-route were really nice and hard to capture well on camera. Also, the “pilgrim” ambience unique to the Camino is somewhat hard to capture in a blog, I have been trying to figure out how to convey this.

In any case – I got up, put my luggage in the pile for the transfer service, and had breakfast. I got going on the route around 8am. It was foggy and cool outside, but the fog burned off by mid-morning. The fog made the area around the river look more mysterious than it had the afternoon before.

The route was mostly slightly uphill in the morning, and slightly downhill in the latter part. I loved the look of the fog in the forested area as well The landscapes seemed to alternate between small farms and forests. As I got higher and it got later in the morning, the fog was starting to diminish.

My favorite site was the section at the top of the hill. You could see the cloud-filled valleys from the hilltop, it was beautiful all around.

In the latter part of the walk, there were some small towns and farms, similar to the first day. Some folks stopped for coffee or snacks at small shops along the way. I think some might wonder if it got repetitive – there was an element of similarity between the days, but seemed to be enough new each day to keep it interesting, especially over a course of only 5 days.

Coming towards Palas de Rei, I didn’t get many photos of the town. My favorite picture, though, was that of the small church in town at sunset, seen below.

Arriving at the hotel in town around 2-2:30pm, I was more tired than I had been on the first day. Probably too, I hadn’t paced myself as well as I should have. But it was still fun, and the surrounding beautiful.

I found the lunch options to be more sparse in Palas de Rei than in Portomarin previous day – this could have been my fault. I ate at a more pub-style place, and walked through town, saw the church and things, but at least from a pure “tourist” standpoint the previous day had had more.

I ended up spending some time catching up on rest in the afternoon before getting some food for dinner, and turning down to prep for the third day. I think that night was probably the peak soreness for my calves – we’ve had that same experience hiking in Switzerland as well, where after a few days, your muscles just get used to it, but it takes those days to get there.

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