Flooding in Santiago!

As we walked in yesterday afternoon we were buffeted by very high winds and then the rains began. Not just normal rain, but torrential rains which have continued all night. Last night on the tv news they referenced some 80+ mm of rain in a 6 hour period. Not unaware of this volume where we live in Canada, we have some sense of what this looks like. 

Sitting here at 6am the rain seems to have eased, but the wind is still blowing...no doubt our ponchos will be an interesting sight today! At least they behave like coats which is why we selected them. The more common type will be very difficult to keep on in high winds. There has been wide spread flooding where we are headed and in also in the city of Santiago where many businesses were damaged and homes flooded. The forecast today is for more rain, high winds and thunderstorms so should be interesting. I guess no one said this would be easy...just when we thought the next two days would be.  As we've learned, the Camino gives you what you need, but not what you necessarily want!

We will see what this means for walking today as much of our route is on trails, and these could be flooded and covered in deep mud...we have seen this before, but Galicia is more set up for rain, so could well be a non-issue.  We will wait until daylight to set out so that we are visible and can try to avoid the worst of the mud. Never a dull moment. Hopefully our friends who are a day or two ahead of us are safely in and ok. I just repatriated some of the news paper that I shed from my pack yesterday...have a feeling we'll perhaps need it!

Below is a link to show photos of some of the fun in Santiago...hope it works when I post, but if not then you can just Google something like "Santiago flooding".

http://www.elcorreogallego.es/fotos/ecg/inundaciones-galicia/idGaleria-7440/idImagen-12/