Cabo do Mundo 2

This Casa Rural has a lot going for it, if only the owners were in residence. I was relying on them being here to talk to me in English about the various local attractions (as reviewers on TripAdvisor had mentioned). Instead they had left a local woman, Esther, to attend to visitors. She was very excitable and spoke rapidly in Spanish, though she claimed to have been attending English lessons for a month! She didn’t know about using Google Translate and was attempting to communicate via Siri. She also comes and goes from her home in Chantada.

So I was alone overnight in my Wine Cellar room, looking out onto my view of the River Miño down below, until darkness fell at 9.30 pm. For dinner, I cooked myself a cheese omelette with bread and red wine. “I have dined well” as the pirates said in Bendinat, Majorca. I explored the house, left to my own devices. There was a bar with an honour system, full of various whiskeys and gins - you name it, it was there! But my bottle of Cabo do Mundo red was enough. There was also a lounge, with books in several languages and a better supply of Galician tourist brochures than had been available in the various tourist information offices I’d visited.

When I woke up at 7.00 am. There was a thick mist hanging over the tops. At 8.00 am I heard a church in the neighbourhood somewhere with Westminster chimes. It was 4 degrees outside; no wifi and no phone signal inside the bedroom!

Imagine my surprise when I went for breakfast and discovered a French family helping themselves to the buffet: mum, dad, little boy and grandparents. Mum had studied in Perth 20 years ago. Esther enlisted her help to translate for me. 

View from my room early today.

Cherries for breakfast from the tree in the garden.

This woman was spraying her veggie patch on the terrace below me.

Her little dog came to visit me.