Red alert--red alert! But only for a few hours until we adjusted our plan. We had all intentions of walking only 16 km (10 mi) today to Condeixa-a-Nova passing through unimaginably beautiful pastoral scenes with cool weather in the valleys and mountainsides.
In Fonte Cuberta, the town went crazy with extravagant tile Camino markers and historical tile plaques. Just a few km before our goal, we passed Roman ruins we flagged for a return later on in the pm.
At Condeixa-a-Nova, a human tsunami came through town (literally 100s of pilgrims--most on yellow shirts and of course w/o back packs that were carried by support cars). They filled ALL the sleeping facilities! PANIC--RED ALERT! They all have to arrive at Fatima on THE BIG DAY, May 13! So we had lunch to think it out and decided to take a taxi to Coimbra (our next planned stop--for 2 nights at that). Lots to see in this university town (pop. 190,000)--siesta time right now.
Check out these pics:
