In this post…
If this is the first post you read on this series, I recommend you take a look at the introduction post published on the 28th of February 2018. That post explains what the Faith’s Way is, my reasons for doing it and provides information that might be useful to you, if you decide you want to do it too.
In this post I will cover the 1st day of this 12 day, 600 Km, journey between the town of Sertãozinho, were I started my pilgrimage, and the town of Cravinhos, both in the federal state of São Paulo.
As explained in the introduction post, I broke the entire journey into 21 stages, as per the official map of the Caminho. There will be 1 video for each stage of the journey, so the blog post for this day contains two videos. Once covering the journey between Sertãozinho and Dumont and another between Dumont and Cravinhos.
You can download the official map of the Caminho from the website of the Friends of the Caminho Association. From there you can also download a list of credentialed accommodations for your journey. Most places in that list are simple family owned pilgrims’ hostels. Some in very rural locations (farms) others in more urban areas. Some establishments are hotels. Family owned Pilgrims’ hostels along the way have usually a set value that includes the meals as well, typically dinner and breakfast, but all hotels listed there will also offer a reduced pilgrim’s rate provided you present them your pilgrim’s credentials.
Measures and expenses for this day (Garmin Telemetry)
- Distance traveled from Sertãozinho to Cravinhos: 71.54 Km
- Please read item number 4 in this post, as this includes navigation errors on my part.
- Total duration of this journey: 8h 25m
- Overnight location at the end of the journey:
- Total expenses on this day: R$ 120.90
- Food: R$ 58.90 (pizza delivered to hotel, managed to eat only 1/2)
- Accommodation: R$ 62.00 (Breakfast incl)
- Total Elevation Gain on this track: 1,178m
- Average Speed: 8.5 Km/h
- Max Speed achieved: 46.5 Km/h
- Average Heart Rate: 146 bpm
- Max. Heart Rate: 180 bpm
- Calories burned: 4,286 CAL
- Click here to see the Garmin Connect page for this activity
From Sertãozinho to Dumont + Video.
As planned the night before I woke up early and went downstairs to have breakfast with the TV crew of Globo TV. They took a lot of shoots of the crew having breakfast and helped me with some pictures. Before leaving we shoot the interview outside at the hotel’s car park, which, for several reasons, such as external noise and mistakes, required many takes. For example, during the interview I mentioned that the recordings were going to be done in Time-lapse format with a GoPRO 4, and the mere mentioned of the brand invalidated the take (advertising).
From everything that was recorded during the interview in that morning, only a tiny portion was actually aired. In my 3 seconds of fame in national television I appear saying the Caminho was mostly done on dirt tracks, hence the reason it was going to be difficult. At first this sounds kind of obvious, but what was missing there was the fact that we were speaking about my previous pilgrimages to Santiago de Compostela and Rome (Via Francigena) and how most of them were on paved roads, so, since the Faith’s Way is mostly on dirt tracks, I considered this pilgrimage would be a lot harder than the previous ones, even though the distance was shorter. That’s OK though. Glad to have had the exposure I did.
After the interview the drone operator followed me in their car and did some aerial shoots of me as well as instructed me to do certain things, which otherwise wouldn’t be in my nature to do, such as to raise my arms at the statue of our lady by the town’s gate. Due to these activities I actually left Sertãozinho quite late, at around 10:30am. About 1 Km after the small statue of our lady were the last aerial shot was taken by the drone operator (you’ll see it in the video), I crossed underneath the motorway and took a small road out of town which soon turned into a dirt road.
A guy on a motorbike rode parallel to me for a few meters and the biker asked me questions such as were I was going and if I was alone. I was honestly very reluctant to talk to him as many robbers use this method to steal. Thankfully that wasn’t the case and my ride to the small town of Dumont was uneventful, despite the very thin sand and dust on the roads as it hadn’t rained for over 2 months there.
Almost the entire path is done among sugar cane plantations, so the views aren’t that great, but there are places worth a few pictures along this way.
From Dumont to Cravinhos + Video
As I arrived in Dumont I stopped for some pictures and to determine were to stamp my pilgrim’s credential. I figured out that the pilgrims’ hostel in the list of accommodations was actually outside of town and moved on.
This hostel is maintained by the Veronezi family in their property outside of town. As I arrived at the Veronezi farm, I turned left and went to the meat shop (Casa Veronezi) were the lose stones at the car park caused me to fall off my bike for the 1st time. It was a really stupid fall due to the fact the front wheel skidded on the lose stones on the ground and my right foot got stuck in the pedal straps. Unfortunately I ended up tearing my Castelli leg warmer in the process, a little piece of cycling wear I was very fond of 🙁
Met with Alvaro at the meat house who directed me to the hostel were I met his mother Ms Helena Veronezi. Alvaro runs the meat house while Mrs Helena takes care of the pilgrims and runs the hostel. Very nice people. Ms Helena stamped my credentials and offered me water and fruit. As I left the Veronezi’s I was told there would be a locked gate by their fish pond, but that I should just ask their daughter to open the gate for me at the bar near the lake, so I did.
Continuing on dirt tracks among the sugar cane plantations I got to Zé Goleiro bar (José, the Goalkeeper’s bar), an establishment that has been there in the middle of nowhere since 1937 which is now run by Zé Goleiro´s son as Zé Goleiro died in 2009. Very interesting place with a lot of stuff hanging from the ceiling.
The map of the Caminho indicates the distance between Dumont and Cravinhos is of 37 Km, but the map doesn’t indicate the point in Cravinhos where those 37 Km end. The two establishments listed in the accommodation guide for Cravinhos are somewhat on the outskirts of the town, especially the one I decided to spend the night in, the Cravinhos Park Hotel, which out of the two appeared to be the better one and did accept credits cards also (although not highlighted in the guide).
As I got to Cravinhos, I made the mistake of assuming the yellow arrows would lead me to these establishments. Unless I’ve missed an arrow somewhere, they didn’t seem to. I honestly only saw yellow arrows pointing in the direction I went.
Unfortunately, as stubborn as I am, I continued blindly following the arrows out of town, only stopping at a petrol station some 7 to 8 Km out of town to ask for directions. To be honest, there wasn’t anyone available to ask for directions outside of town anyway, but I should have turned back earlier.
Once the staff at the petrol station told me how far back I would have to ride to get to the hotel I was faced with the decision of going back or moving forward. I decided to go back because it was already getting dark and according to the map the nearest town was 31 Km away, perhaps a little nearer since I had already done about 7 Km out of town, so I decided to go back. This led me to ride an additional 18.69 Km, in other words, I rode 55.69 Km in total between Dumont and Cravinhos that day. So take notice of that, if you plan to start your pilgrimage from Sertãozinho as I did.
I have arrived at the hotel in the dark of night, which wasn’t cool, but it all belongs to the adventure. In a pilgrimage you should always expect the unexpected.
Pictures taken on this day.
Click on any picture for full detail
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Thank you all for your time and “Bom Caminho!”.
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