The taxi driver assured us he knew the way to Mosteiró and the start of our Camino.
Leaving the airport, we passed through the inevitable industrial estates on the outskirts of Porto, then on through increasingly rural spaces: small fields of maize dotted between the warehouses and factories, until finally we were bumping over cobbled streets through elderly Portuguese villages.
Eventually he abandoned us on a quiet street corner and pointed to a run-down café on the other side of the road, confidently telling us that this was Mosteiró. There was no sign of the Camino; no friendly yellow arrows pointing us towards Santiago de Compostela. Just a silent Portuguese street, miles from anywhere.
In the café a few elderly men were passing the time of day over tiny cups of sweet, black coffee. We asked if this was Mosteiró, where the start of the Camino was, and whether we could get a sandwich or a bowl of soup to start us on our way.
After eyeing us up and down, one of the men volunteered that this was not Mosteiró, that we would find the Camino a few kilometres back down the road on which we had just come, and that the café sold coffee only, and no food.
Then, recognising our disheartened faces, he broke into a smile, bundled us into tiny car, our backpacks and walking poles crammed into the boot, and drove us back to Mosteiró and the start of our Camino. He dropped us by a warm and friendly café where hordes of farm labourers were tucking into bowls of soup, washed down by carafes of vinho tinto, and pointed out the bright yellow arrows that would set us, refreshed and energised, on our way.
That simple, generous hospitality to strangers was a feature of our Camino: from the owners of the Albergues and Casas who welcomed us into their homes; the elderly couple who plied us with green figs they had just been picking from their tree; the two old men who daily came down to a river to feed the ducks; the friendly gestures of people we met on the way; and the cheerful waves and ‘Bon Camino’s that greeted us as we tramped our way.
Portugal is not a wealthy country, and much of the area we walked through seemed caught in a previous century.
Perhaps, though, the very presence of pilgrims, walking those paths over so many centuries, has endowed the culture with a sense of hospitality: to welcome the pilgrim and the stranger.
