Rastrexo Camos 2022: A Nighttime Adventure Race in Galicia

by Felix Wong | 10 Jul 2022

“The race will be from 12 a.m. to 5 a.m.,” Andrea told me. She had put together a team of hospital colleagues and friends to do the fifth edition of Rastrexo Camos, an adventure race.

As I never had done a Spanish adventure race before, I did not know what to expect. I did, however, take a two-hour nap the evening before to make sure I could stay awake during it.

The event turned out to be mostly a nighttime hike through the woods with lots of elevation gain, with seven pruebas (tests).

1. A sprinting/Tic-Tac-Toe competition.
2. A hand-foot hopping challenge.
3. Carrying a stone over to a kettle through a short obstacle course using a pipe and two strings.
4. Using a spoon to move cotton balls into a plastic cup on your head while blindfolded.
5. Throwing balls into buckets, like basketball.
6. Using cups to capture balls rolling down a ramp.
7. Bowling with tires.
8. A stand-on-one-foot balancing challenge.

Andrea took the following video of Prueba 6:

The theme of the race had something to do with gnomes and “patica con pan” (bread), which I didn’t understand and had to ask Andrea about. Patica con pan, she explained, is a song and dance, with pan signifying a sound, much like bam! does in English. Of course, pan also means bread in Spanish.

Puns aside, I enjoyed the nighttime hike, which had beautiful views over the route of at least seven kilometers. (I had my Garmin on auto-stop so it may have measured the distance short. Ali recorded nine kilometers, and Andrea ten.)

The evening nap must have helped because I stayed wide awake during the entire event!

Photo by Andrea