Woodswoman Walking

Wednesday, October 2, 2013. Well, the albergue in Foncebadon delivers a better breakfast than any other I’ve stayed so far.  No eggs, but chai, cereal, lots of fruit, yogurt, and the requisite bread, of course.  And meditation/yoga music in the background, a smiling chef, and the murmur of people headed for the stone ceremony.

The anticipation of a short hike (2 km.) to Cruz de Ferro creates an especially happy buzz in the dining room of our place, and even the crabby owner is smiling.  Each pilgrim is sure to have his or her stone to throw at the pile made by hundreds, thousands of others who come before us, and I have two in my pocket.  One is a black stone I brought back from Boothbay, Maine, long ago, with a bit of a hole in it made by a drip or a wave over a period of time.  The other is one my cousin GA sent to me just before I left.  It is in a fabric pouch and says “Good Luck” on it.   Now it has additional meaning because her mother (also the mother of my other cousin, C) died late last month, so I will throw GA’s stone for GA, C and Michael, as well as for my last remaining uncle on that side of the family.

Sunrise over Foncebadon

I head out while it’s still fairly dark, which gives me a lovely gift and photo op . . . the sunrise just barely awake through beautiful clouds (again).   The walk up to the Cruz is easy, since we are most of the way there already, and seeing the steady stream of people approach the iron cross is a mixed bag.  On one hand, we are all here together, bonded in a way, and on the other hand, the crowd creates a different atmosphere than the one I might have chosen.  I find I can’t actually concentrate on my intention the way I thought I might be able to do, so I walk up to the base of the cross, place both stones on the bed of the previous contributions, and walk down.  Christel does the same, and she also says she feels a bit distracted by the surrounding pilgrims.

A Pilgrim-laden Cruz De Ferro Hill

The Cruz itself is impressive, standing tall and all alone on the hill. So I’ll think about those intentions as I walk the rest of my day down to Molinaseca.  Christel will stop in Acebo and we’ll have lunch together before I go the last 10 km before the end of the day.

Leaving Cruz de Ferro, we pass a sort of stone chapel, a place to sit down, and some  spontaneously made stone circle pattern things on the ground.  Little altars everywhere.  Moving toward the next cafe watering hole we walk through lovely color . . .

Beautiful color in the late morning

green grasses, brilliant red blossoms on the bushes lining our path, and another of those grey-blue cloud and sky mixes above us that makes me so glad to be alive and walking at this time of the morning.

Next on the way to our individual destinations, we come across a spot which on our maps says “Manjarin”.  Population – one.  There is an albergue in Manjarin.  Sort of.  Thirty-five spaces (mattresses) and a outside toilet, water from a well on the other side of the road.  This is probably an “emergency albergue” because in another 7 km, there will be at least four real ones, with flush toilets and actual electricity. But this one does have its charms.

Approaching Manjardin

Come in and have some TEA!

“And I LIVE here!”

This is our host . . . and the only resident of Manjardin

“Do you know the way to San Jose?”

Manjarin was another of the abandoned villages, brought back to life by “the modern knight hospitalero Tomas” who is the town’s one official resident.  His renovated cabin/house/albergue was a former historic site, a pilgrim’s hospital as early as the 12th century, which links it to . . . yep, the Knights Templar.  Score another one, Dan Brown!

I walk up to the little store (sort of) on the property and hear music playing, see the hot water, hot coffee and hot milk carafes, cups, the donation box, and the requisite rosaries, scallop shell necklaces and bracelets, and CDs, if I remember correctly. A pussy cat snoozes comfortably on a makeshift bench. Everything (but the cat, of course) is orchestrated by two older dudes who look like they could have been miners in California, come up from Mexico, in the 1880’s.  These are rough guys with sweet hearts.  Look at what they’ve created.

Tomas is developing the facilities organically with solar panel and open fire providing the hot water.  And a sign tells you how far you are from cities and villages all over the world.  I think I will never again see something as quaint and unusual as this.

I notice that people hang around here.  Sit on the stumps outside.  Wander through the trinkets, though they have no interest, really, in buying.  Just a fascination for what we’ve all come upon.  Right here in a cocoon of welcome amid the beginning of the first descent in the landscape for today’s walk. Eventually one person drifts away, back toward the path.  Then another.

Reluctantly I join the group slowly walking away from this idiosyncrasy, and I focus on the easy path in front of me because I know the extreme downslide is coming.  About a third of the way down a very steep hill is Acebo, and I indulge myself with a plate of pasta carbonara and a salad.  Way too much food, but it will have to hold me for about eight hours after I leave Christel here and head out to Molinaseca.

The downhill is very steep and rough, and I take a tea break at the next little village, barely more than a dozen buildings, with a restaurant and hotel just past the stone cluster that is Riego de Ambros.  An ancient woman serves me the tea and I sit outside.  As I leave the village, the path seems to smooth out, sometimes going alongside the road, and then swinging back into the bushes.  But though it is on a sharp angle, at least it is manageable.  Christel could have done this today, I think.  And then the path worsens.  And worsens.  And becomes nearly un-walkable.  Those photos I used in my metaphor for dealing with life (see Walking Across A Country’s final segment, complete with the abandoned, cut-up boots on harsh stone ledge) came from the last three kilometers of today’s walk, and I have not met one person who didn’t mention this stretch as the worst they had experienced. Except for the people who walked the Meseta during a four-day downpour, so that the dusty trail was mid-calf-high sticky mud, the kind one uses for making bricks.  I guess it could have been worse for me.

Walking into Molinaseca on the bridge across the Rio Boeza

Here’s one of those “I see the carrot” places . . . except that even that carrot is way too far away to be heartening on first glance.  But eventually, the landscape mollifies the walker shocked from the treacherous trail, and delivers up a serene river painted by the reflection of the sky above, green grassy banks, and a collection of tables and chairs outside a bar and restaurant just at the edge of the old town.  I cross the river bridge and begin to look for signs to my Albergue Santa Marina, but instead bump into Larry.  He offers to buy me a beer, and I say I’ll take wine, but first have to check into my place, before they give my bed away.  I have no idea where it is but tell him I’ll be back within 30 minutes.  Then Ria shows up, says hello, and says she’s staying somewhere way out of town.  Maybe I’ll see her again as well.

I walk.  And walk.  And ask “Donde esta Albergue Santa Marina?”  Everyone smiles, nods and waves me down the road.  Now I am on the way out of town and after a few more blocks, I see it.  A yellow house, orangey yellow.  With 56 beds in 4 rooms.  Credencial, passport, 7 Euro, and a top bunk.  I decide to opt out of the Pilgrim’s Menu, and I head back to the other side of the village to meet Larry.  This has been another 5 km added to my strenuous day, but it’s just a walk.  Larry buys my wine, we talk a bit to catch up on life.  I visit a Supermercato and get a croissant, more pate, and a nectarine for dinner.  Walk back to Santa Marina in the rain with no umbrella or rain jacket, but I’ll take my shower soon anyway, so I’m preparing for looking like a bedraggled shaggy dog.  When I arrive, I meet Ken from Ireland, a sweet but rather needy-seeming older guy, a bit befuddled and wanting to have conversation with someone.   I’m pleased to see Ria writing in her journal out on the patio. We still have a warm feeling for our Foncebadon dinner and meeting so we sit at the same table without conversation, each in our own recollective universe.  I eat my goodies, try to write on this website, but it is just too much at the end of a strenuous day.

Just as I climb up to my bunk in the corner of a large bunk room, I meet a new couple, Shirley and Len from Toronto.  Perhaps a bit younger than I, but we’re all in “that category” of oldish walkers.  A bit of conversation and I fall onto my pillow.  I hope I don’t have another rocky pathway day like this for a while.  I can hear the water pouring outside, which doesn’t bode well for tomorrow’s journey.  Maybe it will just be a “night deluge” like some we’ve had before.  Let’s hope.  216 km to Santiago.

Friday, October 18, 2013.  I am back in Santiago after going to the end of the world (Finisterre and Muxia), and am staying in a beautiful monastery-turned-hotel, which I will write more about later, but I deliberately came back and reserved four nights here because it is the perfect place for me to sequester myself to write the rest of this Camino before I leave for Portugal on Sunday.  At least I hope I can get the rest finished before Sunday afternoon.

The walls are stone, perhaps four or five feet thick (seriously, I can lie down on the floor and I’m not sure my toes would hang over the wall corners!), there is a huge room they call the “cafeteria”, though you can only get cafe con leche, tea and the exquisite thing called tarte de Santiago, a very moist, thin almond cake in this room.  There are two other dining rooms, one for the sumptuous breakfast that is included in my 23 Euro nightly fee, and the other is for lunch and dinner if you choose to purchase either of those while you are here.

The stone courtyard is reminiscent of the courtyard in  the Chiesa de Santa Croce in Florence, and the whole place oozes tranquility.

The last of my traveling friends left this morning, or so I thought, so I was really astounded to see Matthe and Elma from Holland as they came into Santiago today.  I had last seen them in Burgos and thought they were way ahead of me, but in fact they really took their time, and we stood in the rain on the stone street, surrounded by stone buildings, and talked like old friends.  Finally got their e-mail address as well. But of course forgot to take their picture while I had them together again!

So just wanted to say that I’m a dedicated little typist for this three days and that is why you will be getting a “slew”, as my mother used to say, of posts rapid-fire.  I really can’t imagine I will “finish” these before Sunday, but I will surely try.  Several are already written in Word docs, but not completed, and the next several dozen photos are being loaded to the website as I write. It feels good to be focused, especially since it’s really gloomy and wet outside and I’ve walked around already this morning, getting my train ticket, more credit on my cell phone, had a tasty buffet lunch, and visited my favorite bakery.  No more of that stuff after I leave Santiago. I am coming home much lighter than when I left Fort Collins, and I’d like to keep it that way at least until Neil can see some semblance of my form from long ago!

One of the women who witnessed my crash on the sidewalk in Sahagun is staying here, and she commented this morning, “Well, you certainly are glued to that table and chair!”

I told her I am determined to capture most of the rest of the day-by-day details of my walk before they leak out of my pea brain.   At least several more segments.  You can dump them or save them for later.  I still have to go back through everything and put tags and categories on them, but that will wait until a snowy day in Colorado, though I hear there are already some of those there.

But for now, here I sit . . . perhaps it’s time for another cafe con leche and my first piece of tarte de Santiago in at least two days!

The writer and her surrounds – at Seminario Maior – Santiago de Compostela

Monday, September 30, 2013.  Waking up this morning was easier than I expected, and really not much different from the mornings after I’ve walked 20 km, rather than 30 km.  Down in the kitchen, Alberto is serving breakfast . . . the typical Camino starter . . . cafe con leche, orange juice, toast, butter, marmalade.  Christel and I eat because we should, and gather our things.  It’s very soupy outside, and I hesitate for a moment.  I was willing to backtrack through the town so I could capture this magnificent bridge in the early morning sunlight.  The trouble is that it’s past early morning and there is no sunlight.  There is hardly light at all, and I’m not sure I could see the bridge if I were standing on it.  We are socked in.  So I sigh at the lost photo-op and head west instead of east.

Begoña has made reservations for two “baja” camas (beds) in Murias de Rechivalda, about 22 km from here, and I’m actually looking forward to this “short” walk today!  The mist might not do much for a bridge but it does do wonderful things to trees ahead on the path.  I posted this one on Facebook, but must do it again, in context.

A photo almost from dreamland! On the road to Santibañez

This mist dissipates slowly, luxuriously, so I can hold on to some of it throughout the morning.  As the landscape reveals more of itself, the mountains, the cloud formations, and the trees continue to paint themselves into pictures for the eyes of the dedicated pilgrims.

We are headed to Murias, yes, but on the way, we will pass Astorga, a bigger town with another Gaudi building, several old, old churches with character, and a very wide central plaza with shops selling chocolate here and there.

A Cantina cart in the middle of nowhere

But even before that, my book says quietly “Cantina” at about 10 km past Orbigo.  I am never sure what that means.  This time, in the middle of nowhere, there is a food and drink cart, as well as a sort of hut with little things to sell . . . necklaces, rosaries, etc.

A donation box is on the cart.  So strange to see this welcome thing in the middle of a dry patch of track.

Cantina offerings

Whoever this little cantina angel, he or she has equipped the cart with teas of all sorts, soy and other substitute milks, apples, oranges, bananas, cartons of apple, melocoton (a sort of peach), and orange juice.  H0t coffee and of course water for the teas.  And the dangly little jewelry, all with donation box for our generosity in repayment for the cantina owner’s thoughtfulness.  I will come across another strange little oasis of a different sort tomorrow.  But that will wait for now.

As I approach Astorga, someone offers to take a photo of me, so here it is . . .

Approaching the outskirts of Astorga

Rolling out the Camino carpet, literally!

Astorga even rolls out the Camino carpet, literally, on a ramp next to one of the corner churches. Coffee time, and Christel is waiting for me.  We settle into chairs around a patio table in the main square, and of course who do we see strolling by but Yves and Janice again.  They are hand in hand and it’s always fun to run into them.  They head for the chocolate shop across the Plaza and yell back that they might just stay here for another day.  We are still headed for Murias de Rechivaldo.

Onward I go.  I am wearing the Teva sandals, hiking sticks alternating in my hands, nearly dancing to the tunes on my iPod, and as I near Murias, a man with a huge grin on his face passes me, laughs and points to my feet.  I say, “What?”  And he laughs again, gives me a thumbs up, and walks past me.  When I get to the albergue in Murias, he is sitting at an outside table having a beer.  I ask him what was so funny, and he just shakes his head.  “Those sandals work well for you?”  “Better than my boots at this point . . . ” and he shakes his head again.  He should see my mint green Croc rubber shower sandals if he thinks these hiking sandals are funny.  I was walking in those for the first two weeks of my trip.

Christel and I check into our two lower bunks and investigate the laundry situation.  This place has washers AND dryers, so we arrange to do a shared load.  I still have plenty of food for part of a dinner, but not quite enough.  Still, we don’t want to buy two “menu del dia” set-ups, so I negotiate with the owner/wife/cook to get one meal.  I love soup and Christel does not.  She will have the chicken and mashed potatoes while I open the jar of pate and spread it on my fresh baguette.  We’ll share the dessert.

The table has a dozen pilgrims, mostly from Canada and America, and some of them start talking about what I’m writing.  I give my card to a few of them, and they discuss whether this bunch of rambling will ever be a book.  I say, “Perhaps . . . ” and we move on to other topics.  Most of us will head for La Cruz de Ferro in two stages, since it’s quite a climb in one day.  That was one of the reasons I chose the towns for last night and tonight.  Tomorrow I can make the partial climb and stay in Foncebadon, and have only a very short uphill to the Iron Cross.  If you have seen The Way, you will remember that this is the place each pilgrim throws a stone, dedicated to whatever he or she chooses.

At any rate, when our main course is served, the wife/cook encourages me to take some chicken as well as what Christel is having.  I say, “No, we have only paid for one meal.”  I don’t want to take advantage of her flexibility, but she insists.  She points to how much food there is and lets me know she can surely spare a chicken leg without payment for an entire meal.  Christel whispers, “She probably thinks ‘these two older women, too poor to pay for two meals . . . ‘ ”

By the time dinner is finished, so is our laundry, and it has begun to pour outside.  Pour.  I surely hope this ends before the morning, because I have been dreading the possibility of walking all day in a downpour.  We’ll see.  And it will be what it will be.

Tuesday, October 1, 2013. Well, it’s wet outside this morning, but it isn’t raining . . . a good sign.  Today’s walk will take me to Foncebadon, the village just before Cruz de Ferro.  I know I will also walk through several smaller villages, including El Ganso.  Guy Thatcher’s book, A Journey of Days, talks about this, and though the town name means “The Goose”, someone decided it needed a cowboy bar.  I can hardly wait.

Though Christel and I are targeting the same towns for the past few days, she is now walking faster than I am, her swollen feet and ankles healed from the slow pace she allowed herself for a week, so she is waiting in the next town, Santa Catalina de Somozo for me.  And for cafe con leche.   Tomorrow she will stop sooner than my planned destination, and we will catch up here and there over the next week or two.

At this point, the villages are beginning to change in construction, with very old stone buildings, many of them only two partial walls  with what was the roof now in the middle as a rubble pile.  Reminds me of the time Neil and I looked at Italian “real estate” in LeMarche, much of which used to be houses, but were now rubble piles, ready to be reconstructed with their original materials.

I’m such a sucker for old stone houses (evidence my Stone Walls retreat property in Vermont), and I try to imagine who might have lived in these falling down buildings, and who still lives in the ones that are intact, some with newly painted window trim and doors.

I will see this type of building in every village until perhaps Molinaseca (tomorrow’s destination), and then again in slightly different form once I get into Galicia by the end of the week.  But for now . . . ta da!  El Ganso!

The Cowboy Bar in El Ganso

Brierly calls this town a hauntingly crumbling village, evoking “a sense of loss or perhaps a reminder of a less hurried time.”  The Cowboy Bar owner speaks in Spanish, but then in Italian and says he is really from Italy.  I cannot imagine what brought him here and how he has a cowboy connection, but the inside of the building is full of cowboy hats of all sizes, colors and styles, a foosball table (seriously) that is collapsed in the middle, and long tables for cowboy drinking.

Another cafe con leche here, of course, because we have to say we drank in the cowboy bar in the middle of the Camino de Santiago.  I wonder what St. James would have made of that.  Hey, he was supposed to be a cool Apostle, so he probably would have a beer.

Still my favorite Camino-road dog

Then onward to Foncebadon.  We are climbing today to save us from much of one tomorrow morning, and I am pleased to find that I am ready for this one.  It is a steady climb, with what has become my favorite dog-on-the-road following us for awhile, then lying in the road again.  You’ve seen this one before, in my Walking Across A Country post, but here she is again.  The other detail I can’t avoid is the type of flower that sprouts out of the ground all along the pathway.  First I decide not to take a photo, because it isn’t such a big deal, but then I come around a corner to see a field of these purple things, with no green stem or leaves.  They seem to just peek out of the ground fully formed.  No buds, no supporting stalk.  Just these lovely lavenders.  Okay, I think.  I get it . . . take the picture!  If anyone knows what they are, I’d love to have a name for them.

We pass two really well-constructed, rectangle fountain/pools, though I’m not sure whether the water is potable.  I have plenty of water, so I won’t take a chance.  On the meseta . . . well, I might have at that point.  Fountains and spontaneous lilac petals on the ground.  Lovely to look at.  And at the rise just before Foncebadon, I think, “Well, that hill wasn’t much at all, was it?”  I see by my map that I started the day at 900 meters of altitude, climbed a bit to 1000 meters at the Cowboy bar, and then another climb to Foncebadon at about 1425 meters.  It doesn’t seem like much, and I’m pleased about my developing strength and/or endurance.

Today’s map, ala Brierley, though we started on the section before this . . . and I will do the rest of this one tomorrow.

Cruz de Ferro will be the highest point of our journey, at 1505 meters, but tomorrow’s map also shows a downhill to 600 meters again in Molinaseca, with one of those warning marks (!) in red.  Treacherous, and I hope the path will at least be fairly smooth.  Hahahahaha.  I will make the full descent tomorrow, while Christel will opt for a mid-way stopping point in Acebo, to take care of her knees.

Arriving in Foncebadon to stay for the night at the Albergue Monte Irago, I’m not surprised to find a crabby host when we arrive, because already this morning he had barked at Christel on the telephone, wondering why she had called so early for a reservation for tonight.  He even asked her how old she was, but I now find that this may have been because in some albergues, we oldsters get a bigger break in the cost.  So our beds are 5 Euro each, not extraordinarily inexpensive for a bunk slot, but for a private albergue, a bit less than many.  The guy is a real grouch to me, but we see some familiar faces, and they are all drinking wine, eating some half-shelled nuts, of which there seem to be an abundance, and generally having a grand time.  In the center of all the fun (why am I not surprised?) are Yves and Janice, and two of the people who had been asking about my writing last night.

I settle my belongings into my little cama space, and then go looking for the open tienda that is advertised on a sign just outside the albergue door, to get some bug spray (the flies are incredibly irritating on the pathways . . . something I tried to avoid mentioning here for the past month) and perhaps some of the delicious tomatoes two of the pilgrims are already eating at the albergue.  So I walk a block or two up the street and though the store has no bug spray and the tomatoes are all gone, the packaged trail mixes and nuts are tempting, so I choose two packs and a banana and walk back to the albergue.  On the way, I see Judy, the American  (or Canadian) from Carrion, and she asks whether I have gotten a wi-fi password.  I have not.  She tells me that the albergue owner won’t give it to her because he says, “Pilgrims should be talking to one another.”  Yes, that’s probably true, but who appointed him the parental conversation god?  I can’t help her, and apparently none of the other places can either.  Perhaps in this only recently unabandoned village there is no wi-fi (or wee-fee, as they pronounce it in Spain).

I get back to the Monte Irago and see several groups of people congregating at the outside tables in front, right on the road.  The two I recognize from last night shout to me, “Joannah!  You missed a story for your book!” “My book?”  I’m still thinking about passwords and tomatoes and flies.  The couple points across the street.  “A building just fell down in front of our very eyes . . . and you missed it!”

Only minutes ago, the right side pile of stones was an upright wall! Notice the blue-grey shingles mid-height.  Perhaps a recent roof?

The two eye-witnesses . . . I not only missed the wall fall-down-go-boom, but I didn’t get a chance to ask these two for their names! Some reporter I am . . .

Ah, yes, so sad, missed it and there weren’t even any tomatoes at the tienda.  Apparently there were some peregrinos standing directly in front of this sort-of building/wall who screeched and jumped out of the way when it fell.  Since I can do nothing about my personal missed opportunity, I take a photo of the two eye-witnesses as well as one of the wall itself, in a tumbled pile of, yes, rubble.

Though it looks just like any other rubble pile I passed during the day, and would continue to pass for another day or two, this is a newly unconstructed pile, sort of hot off the presses, if you will.  I doubt my story would be much different if I had been there, but one never knows.

Clockwise, Zabrina, Sven, Ria and Kevin. Christel had already left us for the night.

As disappointing as my host is, (and his wife and children are delightful) the dinnertime is quite special.  Christel and I are at a table with four other people we haven’t yet met on the Camino.  Kevin from LA, cancer survivor, heroin survivor and quite a fun guy in his mid-late 40’s, looking like someone my kids’ ages.  Still wears the baseball cap backward on his head.  Ria from Germany, a no-nonsense conversationalist, someone you just want to know better.  Sven and Zabrina from Germany, on bicycles but taking it easy.  They are young, but it’s always hard to tell ages.  Adorable.  She with the blond dread locks tied neatly up on top of her head.  He with shorter hair and a cap.  The six of us stay at the table long past the time the paella is consumed.  Maybe that albergue owner has a point, not giving us the password to the wee-fee.  And I will meet these people here and there, one, then another, for the rest of my Camino.  Kevin.  Sven and Zabrina.  Ria.  New names that will float in and out along with Christel, Yves and Janice, Larry, Neal, and new others I meet each day.

Apparently I can have my cake and eat it too.  I can walk in solitude and choose to connect with other pilgrims who seem of like mind in one way or another, from all countries, at all ages, for many reasons or none at all.

Sunday, September 29, 2013.  Well, after two rest days in Leon, many of us (Yves and Janice, Larry, Christel and others) either begin our walk out of Leon or catch the bus just another few kilometers to avoid the UCK and get just a bit closer to the countryside, in the Leon suburb of La Virgen de Camino.  From there, the trail splits, again taking either the path along the road or the one through pastures.  We’ve done this through the meseta, but now the landscape will change, becoming more spotted with trees and rolling hills before approaching the next batch of mountains.

Christel and I choose the countryside pathway, and we, though we walk solo for most of the day, have agreed that our goal today is Hospital del Orbigo, 30 km from our start.  This is the farthest I’ve walked on any one day, and I have a very heavy pack, with food I haven’t consumed yet (Mansilla supermercato and the Leon Farmer’s Market), as well as the boots I had previously sent on by post.  I’m wearing the boots, but if they misbehave, the will add another few pounds to my pack weight.  But ah, I’m feeling like Superwoman, and have made a reservation at Albergue San Miguel in Hospital de Orbigo, so here we go.

Load up that little wagon!

One of the first things I see is something out of a fairy tale.  A group of locals are loading a flower-decorated cart onto the back of a flat-bed trailer.  I have no idea how they will keep it on the truck once they get it up there, but I stand delighted to watch this scene, wondering where they might be taking this.  Could I have a ride?  IT only has two wheels, so it must have something on the front that will attach to horses or donkeys.  I don’t get a chance for the follow-up, of course, but it does tweak my imagination for part of the walk ahead.

After just a few tiny villages, one with only tables and a fountain for filling up water bottles and taking a rest, I begin to enjoy the change in scenery from the past week.  No more meseta, a few trees beginning to show, and the sky a wondrous whirl of clouds that seem to change continuously over the peaceful little hamlets.

Though after a day or two of rest, sometimes my walking legs feel more challenged, this environment allows my mind to sway with the breeze and the clouds.   The temperature is right for me, and 30 km or not, I know it will be a beautiful day for walking.

Sooner that I imagine, Mazarife is in sight.  This will be a stopping place for many of the walkers, because it is “in the book” as such.  I come to a bar with a wide patio and see Larry, Yves and Janice, and two Canadian priests on sabbatical, Tim and Robert.  I only know they are priests because Yves has talked about them by name, so when I’m introduced, I know exactly who they are.  Robert is showing someone his watercolor sketch book, a 5×8 one, with beautiful renderings of some of the countryside and old churches that have captured his artist’s attention.  Pencil sketches at first, and then the water colors added.  I wish I had asked him for permission to photograph one or two of them, but that ship has sailed.

Everyone seems ready to settle into this town, but it is only about 2:00 p.m., and we still have 15 km to go before Orbigo.  Yves calls the Albergue San Miguel to tell the man that the two women who reserved beds under the name “Joannah” will be late, perhaps two hours.  I say, “No, more like four hours,” but Yves has already hung up the phone.  Later I will call the man again, but now, I need to get moving.  My backpack is ridiculously heavy, but I swing it onto my back, feeling sort of like a pack-horse or an elephant with a side-heavy burden, and begin again to walk.

It is later on this path that the sheep herd spills out in front of me (see Walking Across A Country from October 8). We stop in one more town and I call the albergue again, letting them know we WILL be there, but just later.  As a note, I had wanted to go to Orbigo especially because it has one of the oldest Roman bridges in the country, and is supposed to be spectacular.  Photo ops swim in my mind.  However, we will get there too late to take good photos and tomorrow the early morning will be too misty to even see the bridge.  But now, we just want to get there.

At about 7:30, perhaps 8:00, we walk over the beautiful bridge, now in shadow, and I make a mental note to retrace my steps in the morning to get a photo.  A few more blocks, at the other end of town, we stumble into our Albergue San Miguel, and our host, Alberto, with his assistant, a lovely younger woman named Begoña, greet us with near shock.  Alberto is about 75, and he hovers over us like a loving grandfather, muttering in Spanish about how long we must have traveled, don’t worry about taking off your boots now, sit down, sit down, here, have a glass of wine, no, no, we will check your passports in awhile, but for now, tranquilo, tranquilo.  He picks up my pack and looks at me in astonishment.  How far did you come today, he asks?  I say 30 km.  He again picks up the pack, pats my shoulder, tranquilo, tranquilo.

After about 20 minutes, we go through the registration for the bed, payment, stamp the credencial, and Begoña shows us our beds.  I ask whether they are both “baja”, that is, lower bunks, and she says no, only one is lower.  I tell Christel she should have it, since she has finally begun to feel better in the ankles than she has felt for the past week.  As I fling my pack to the top bunk, Begoña returns to our bunk room to tell me she has found another “baja” in the room across the hall, so I move my things.

A shower is always in order after finding exactly where you will put your head at the end of a day’s walk, and tonight is definitely no exception.  Clean body and clean clothes.  Relief.   I take all the food I’ve been carting around, and spread it on the table in the kitchen, gathering plates and silverware to cobble together some sort of dinner for myself.  Alberto gives me a carton of gazpacho to add to my bread, olives, tomatoes, mushy strawberries, artichokes, and pate.  A bit of this and a bit of that, and I’m full, exhausted, and ready to head upstairs to bed.  It is already nearly 10:00 p.m.

30 km.  We did it.  Greeted by the nicest hospidaliers yet!  Crash.  Boom.  Sleep.

Baaaaaah! Again!

NOTE:  My most recent post about Leon didn’t get into Facebook without “hand-delivering” it.  And I notice it didn’t come to my e-mail address either, where I am my own “follower” so I can check on these things.  So if you are a “follower” and didn’t get the “48 Hours in Leon” notice on your e-mail, please check in with the website itself.  I hope the problem will be solved with this current Map Post.

Tuesday, October 15, 2013.  Well, as I sing with my iPod . . . “Step by step . . . one by one. . . ” and I’m not climbing Jacob’s Ladder, I am walking . . . the Camino de Santiago, still walking across a country.  The intense walking will end with this segment.

Day 31 – Murias de Rechivalda – Santa Catalina de Somoza – El Ganso (complete with Cowboy Bar!) – Rabanal del Camino – Foncebadon.  22 km.

Day 32 – Foncebadon – Cruz de Ferro (where a peregrino throws a stone with intention) – Manjarin (population 1) – Acebo – Reigo de Ambros – Molinaseca.  22.4 km.

Day 33 – Molinaseca – Ponferrada – Compostilla – Columbrianos – Fuentes Nuevas – Camponaraya – Cacabelos.  25 km. with all the town walking.

Day 34 – Cacabelos – Villafranca del Bierzo – Trabedelo – Vega de Valcarce.  21.2 km.  Last 4 km. by cab in the torrential rain.

Day 35 – Vega de Valcarce – Ruitelan – Herrerias – La Faba – O’Cebreiro.  14 km. uphill.

Day 36 – O’Cebreiro – Liñares – Hospidal de la Condesa – Fonfria – Biduedo – Triacastela.  22.4 km.

Day 37 – Triacastela – Rest day for my shin splints.

Day 38 – Triacastela – San Xil – Montan – Furela – Calvor – Aguiada – San Mamed – Sarria – Barbadelo.  22.4 km.

Day 39 – Barbadelo – Morgade – Ferrerio – Mercadoiro – Vilcha’ – Portomarin.  19.2 km.

Day 40 -Portomarin – Toxibo – Gonzar – Castromaior – Hospital – Ventas de Naron – Perrere – Lameiros – Ligonde – Eirexe – Portos – Valos – Mamurria – Brea – Rosario – Palas de Rei.  25 km.

Day 41 – – Palas de Rei – Carballa – San Xulian – Mato-Casanova – Cornixa – Lobreiro – Disicabo – Furelos – Melide – Carballa (again?) – Ponte de Penas – Raido – Boente – Castañeda.  22.8 km.

Day 42 – Castañeda – Portela – Ribadiso – Arzua – As Barrosas – Raido – Cortobe – Pereiriña – A Calzada – A Calle – O Outeiro – Boavista – Salceda – Oxen – Ras – O Emplame – Brea – Santa Irene.  22 km.

Day 43 – Santa Irene – Arco O Pino (Pedrouzo) – San Anton – Amenal – San Payo – Lavacolla – Vilamaior – San Marcos – Monte del Gozo – San Lazaro – Santiago de Compostela.  22.8 km.

Not quite there yet, but at THIS point, it isn’t raining, let alone pouring! And I like the stone sculpture.

Day 44 – Santiago de Compostela – Saying goodbye to familiar faces, attending the Pilgrim’s Mass at noon.  Eating.  Wandering.  Discussing the strangeness of being here.

Day 45 – Santiago de Compostela – Finisterre.  This was going to be a five-day walk, but since it will rain (90%) all week, we took the bus.   Staying in Finisterre tonight.  The bus route is very different from the walking route, so I’ll just be fair and put the bus cities.  Ria and I threw up numerous times on the bus, during this winding 3-hour ride so we would rather have spent five days walking!
Santiago – Noia – Outes – Muros – Carota – Cee – Finisterre (the end of the world!)

In 14 days I will be back in Colorado, after returning to Santiago for a few days of retreat at a (ha) Seminario Maior, a wonderful place that offers rooms and no religious agenda.  I will attempt to finish my scraps of web posts there.

Then to Portugal, I think, until my flight on the 29th.  Porto, the Algarve, and Lisbon.

Friday, September 27, 2013  The bus from Leon is full of pilgrims, our backpacks on our laps or in the storage shelf above us.  Larry, Jim, Patte and I sit near one another and make small talk for the ride.  I actually didn’t check to see how long it takes us to get to Leon, but it seems short enough.  It’s about 18 km., a bit more than 10 miles, so it doesn’t take long.  We arrive at the main bus terminal and everyone disembarks, scattering like captured ants spilled out on the sidewalk.

Larry and Neal are staying at a hostal somewhere in the old city and I know I’m right near the Cathedral somewhere, so they accompany me through the maze of entrances and exits until we finally arrive at the street level.  We can see the spire of the cathedral in the distance so we head for that, down the long Calle Ancha, the main “wide street”, half promenade for pedestrians, but also a very bustling shopping street, with retail and cafe storefronts lined on both sides without end.  I drop off into a mountain equipment store to buy a replacement day pack for myself, and the other two go on to look for their rooms.  Many of us are staying in Leon for two nights, and I’m sure we will all encounter one another here and there throughout the weekend.

Rare Gaudi building, now offices – Leon

After my backpack purchase, completed easily with the help of another one of those gorgeous Spanish men who speak excellent English, called out of the back room when a English-speaking customer arrives, I continue down Calle Ancha, which leads past this Gaudi building (one of the very few outside of Barcelona) and a few million stores, and right to the main Plaza and the Cathedral.  It also, quite conveniently, leads to my little Hotel Albany (thank you, Rick Steves!).

Hotel Albany – my little weekend home in Leon

I glance toward the Plaza and the beautiful Gothic cathedral and see Larry and Neal having coffee or rum, and they wave me over.  I tell them I want to check into my room first and then I’ll have some food.  The little room, my own private room with private bath, is another fancy nun’s room, but the hotel is lovely.  Red tile everywhere and an efficient layout. So after I get settled, I return to the little Plaza coffee shop and find they have bagels and lox.  Of course they don’t call them lox, but a smoked salmon by any other name . . .

Tiny bed and desk area . . . don’t you love the red?

I don’t tarry long at the little table, but wrap up half a bagel for later, and get a map from the information office. My first real order of business is to retrieve my packages from the Leon post office and bring them back to my little red room.  One package has essentials for the next leg of my trip and the other one has my boots, which are going to get another chance to prove themselves tolerable.  I accomplish this task easily and once back in the room, let my belongings spill all over this pristine single bed for sorting.

The view from my hotel doorway!

When I am finished with most of that task, I again go out onto the street, and see that I have a direct view to the busiest place in this old town.

I already know I will like Leon much better than Burgos, just as I know I like Florence much better than Rome.  Heresy . . . so shoot me.  Leon and Florence feel smaller, friendlier, more intimate somehow. than their bigger brothers.

The tourist information office gives me a brochure for the XXX Festival Internacional de Organo –  Catedral de Leon – which lasts for a whole month.  Free concerts in the Cathedral and in other venues around the area.  One is scheduled for this evening and I plan to go.  It’s a stone’s throw from my hotel and it’s free . . . any more questions?

The rest of the afternoon is spent wandering the streets, ducking back to the hotel during a drizzly siesta, writing, sorting, and realizing that it has begun to rain fairly hard, so I will need to acquire a cheap umbrella.  Maybe it will even serve me on the Camino, since my rain gear disappeared on the second day.

Elvis? In Leon?disappeared the second day.

Elvis is hawking glass snow-ornaments

Returning to a store that sells inexpensive travel umbrellas displayed outside their doorway, I pass this oxymoron.  Elvis in front of a shop window full of glass snow ornaments, the kind you shake upside down.

Have to take a photo of this, but then I go next door to the plaid-umbrella store and make my purchase.  I need it right now!

I wander to two historical sights, trying to be at least a bit cultural in the midst of my peregrino persona.  The first is the 11th century San Isodoro Church, though the Museum attached to it is apparently the big attraction with its library, cloister, chapter house and a “pantheon” of royal tombs with exquisite Romanesque frescoes according to Rick Steves’ book.

Old Roman wall section – Leon

But of course it is siesta in Leon, so that part is closed now, but the church is always open.  I love sitting in churches, little atheist that I am, when the spaces are solemn, so very old, and no completely ostentatious.  This one is quiet and peaceful, and I sit nearly in the dark for about 20 minutes.  Then I take myself around the corner to a long section of the old Roman wall.  Amazing that it is still standing.

As I make my way back to my little hotel, I see a book store . . . the kind that has handmade books, journals, and a little bindery in the back part of the shop.  In the window is a leather journal that catches my attention, but of course it is still siesta, and this store doesn’t reopen until 6:00 p.m., quite a bit later than most.  I will return to take a real live peek this evening.  I do spot Yves and Janice, eating ice cream in the rain, and am happy to see them again.  It won’t be the last time.

Then I see Christel, the German/Dutch woman I’ve met a few times in the last week.  She and I have coffee and we both want to see the Cathedral as well as attend the free organ concert tonight.  We make plans to go to dinner, and on the way, I step into the book-making store.  This is my purchase.  It is hand-stamped with old Spanish text, though who knows what it says or whether someone Spanish could read it.  Sort of like the old DaVinci text on Italian journals I’ve purchased.  I will send it on to Santiago by post tomorrow morning along with some other things I won’t need until then.

Christel and I go to dinner at an Italian restaurant, and then head for the Cathedral, which we had visited earlier.  This Cathedral give me none of the misgivings I have in the Burgos Cathedral, though I’m sure the money it took to build this one could have fed the hoards as well, but somehow it feels so different.  This one took 50 years to build and is truly Gothic, with tall, narrow stained glass windows that remind me of the Chartres Cathedral in France.  The Burgos one took so many hundreds of years and the styles changed with each new section, it seemed to me . . . I’ve had pilgrim discussions about this very thing.

Leon Cathedral at night

At any rate, now it’s night time, and we’re ready for the concert.  We are about 30 minutes early, but see that we will stand in a line that is out the door, across the Plaza and around the Calle Ancha, which means we will not get a seat, but will sit on the floor, listening to Poulenc and Saint-Saens, neither of which are my favorites (another heresy!).  But the organ is magnificent, and it is accompanied by a small orchestra in this dark and Gothic church, so we are happy.

We see that tomorrow night there will be another concert in Leon at the Cathedral, but I also notice that tomorrow there is also a different venue, whose location is still a mystery to me, but the program is all Bach sonatas, with a small organ and a viola da gamba.  Now THAT is worth investigating, and Christel is curious and excited as well.  We will get information tomorrow about how to get to this little place.  Tonight, I’ve had enough, and am ready to crash.

Saturday, September 28, 2013  I wake up in my little red room, after tossing and turning until the wee hours, listening to a woman down two floors with the courtyard window open (and my window closed) screaming either at someone who is silent, or screaming into a telephone.  She is quite angry, and her tirade goes on for at leas an hour.  Sigh.  This part is better in a municipal albergue with 100 beds.  At least everyone has to be quiet after “lights out” at 10:00 p.m.!

Christel and I have agreed to meet at the upscale cafe across from the Cathedral, the bagel cafe, so I get dressed and intend to wander out to the plaza in a leisurely fashion, see what’s what, and be on time for my meeting with her.  When I leave the hotel, since the plaza is in plain view, I’m surprised and delighted to find this awaiting me:

Leon Street Market

This street market is full of vendors with home grown fruit and vegetables, as well as olives, nuts, assorted cheeses and meats.  Heaven!  I wish I were staying for a week, with a full kitchen!  I buy a few veggies and some cheese, hoping to eat in my room so I don’t have to carry more food with me tomorrow when I leave Leon for the next stops.

After asking around at my hotel, the cathedral, the tourist information center and beyond, we learn that the other music venue, the Monsterio de Carrizo de la Ribera, is in a little mountain village, about 30 km. from Leon and that no one, and I mean no one we spoke with in these established offices has a clue how we could get there.  But we are determined, so we decide we will ask a taxi driver this afternoon.  First I revisit the post office to send my little box of shuffled belongings to Santiago to await my arrival in a couple of weeks.

The taxi stand has a young man in the line who tells us he will take us to the monastery in the village 30 km from Leon, and return two hours later to bring us back to the city.  He will charge 50 Euro, whether it is just two of us or more.  I ask for his card and his cell phone #, and tell him we will let him know in an hour.  After consulting our sensibilities, we advise him that we will meet him near the taxi stand at 6:30 for this 8:00 concert.  After all, if the concert weren’t free, we might have to spend 25 Euro per ticket to attend.

What a wonderful decision we made!  We get to this little village by 7:00, and no one seems to know why the doors aren’t open yet.  At 7:30 we begin to get a bit concerned, but  at 7:45, the old stone door to the convent/monasterio that looked as though it hadn’t been opened in 100 years finally creaks and swings wide, revealing a very small chapel, with a large organ at one end, a smaller one set up in the middle next to a chair we assume correctly was for the Viola da Gamba musician, and perhaps fifteen sets of pews for attendees.  On the large carved seats lining the sides of the church between the organ and the audience are perhaps a dozen little nuns in white habits, waiting for the concert to begin.

The viola da gamba is a late 15th century instrument, which in descriptions says it’s not like a cello, but I liken it to that, one of my favorite instruments.   Christel and I are in the second row so we can see very well, though I close my eyes to listen more clearly to Bach on old instruments.  The evening is well worth the taxi fee, and despite our slight apprehensions, our driver does come back on time, delivering us to our original Plaza Santo Domingo in Leon.  Christel and I split up, each headed to our respective hotels to prepare for walking again tomorrow. From the person at my hotel desk I request a large dinner plate, silverware, napkin, and salt shaker.  Taking these up to my room, I uncover my goodies from the Farmers’ Market this morning and eat a late dinner before I organize my Camino belongings .  Heaven!

My dinner in bed . . . last night in Leon – olives, green plums, strawberries and delicious tomatoes with SALT!

No, I didn’t skip the last ten days, and I am writing those days, but just want to say that it is Friday morning here in Palas del Rei and I will be in Santiago by Sunday late afternoon!

I’m scribbling in my pocket notebook, on this MacAir, and in my Libby journal, so the Leon posts are next.  However, my awareness has shifted from the walk without end to the bald fact that I have only 68km to the CITY.  Can’t say I have 68 km. to “the end”, because I am more aware now than ever before that there will be no end to this journey.  In the best sense.

And of course on Wednesday, I’ll don the boots again, and the pack, and head to the Atlantic Ocean, another 7 day journey there and back!  I wonder if I could walk to Newark and pick up my flight to Denver from that point?  Nah!

Soon . . .

Scarecrow or mystical vision?

Note:  On this rest day, I wanted to finish my Meseta posts and get closer to my current days, but I’ve been writing this as well, so no, I haven’t skipped Leon and moving from Castilla y Leon to Galicia.  I’ve moved into my mind this afternoon.

Monday, October 7, 2013

I talk to scarecrows on the way to Sahagun, (yes, I know . . . first sunflowers and now scarecrows  . . ) and as I approach them I wonder whether if I turn away and look back, they will disappear.  That would freak me out.  Some sort of saint showing up in the middle of the fields.  Then . . . poof!  I do not feel mystical magical.  Walking like this each day is not, at least for me, a spiritual experience.  Some days have a bit of magical in them, yes, but most days are just present.  And so am I.  I am just walking across a country.

My backpack is inordinately full of electronics, since I am writing on this MacAir with its itinerant cords, back-up hard drive and cord, camera and cord, iPhone and cord, iPod and cord, European conversion plug, multi-plug, headphones.  Get the picture?  Without all this, I would be about six pounds lighter, but then I could never remember the things I want to write about.  At least I wouldn’t remember town names, details, and the kinds of things I write down on the trails in a little notebook, scribbling with a teal blue Pilot G-2.  Some people would say, “So what?”  I would respond, “A lot what . . . ”  Brierley would say leave it all at home.  Remember it in your mind and heart.  Yeah, well that’s fine if you can do it, but I have always been an archivist, first an unwitting one, and then a deliberate one.

Since my parents gave me that little five-year diary with the tiny gold key, a Christmas present when I was eight years old, I have written things down to remember them, to sort them out, to celebrate or rage about parts of my life.  On this walk, I have a little notebook that is easily accessible all the time, as well as the lovely half-size journal Libby made for me, tucked in my pack, the pack I always carry.  When I am walking, I can pull out the tiny notebook.  When I stop in a town for juice or cafe con leche, I can use Libby’s lovely one.  And then there is always the Mc’Air in the evening after I’ve checked in somewhere.   So “So what?” just doesn’t fit for me.  People who really know me don’t say that.  Ever.  And as for the rest?  Well, I know they have their own intimate friends.  Maybe the mantra always is, “Well, it’s your Camino,” with absolutely no flippancy or sarcasm.  Just a sincere acknowledgement that we each do this our own way.

One thing I would bring next time is a voice activated little dictaphone. I have two of them at home.  I do use my iPhone occasionally on the trail, to talk messages to myself, or make notes on its Note function.  But the rambling stream of thoughts I have will never be remembered, let alone captured, and perhaps that is fine, though sometimes I do lose those brilliant insights.  I’ve been asked, “Well, what’s going on inside you while you walk?” (No one on the Camino asks this question.  They’re probably too busy trying to figure out how to answer that question for themselves.  Or not.)

My response would have to be:  Everything and nothing. But I can’t nail it down.  If I had a voice-activated dictaphone, I’d just talk instead of muse internally.  Whether that would be good or bad, I really don’t know.  As it is, the answer is “everything and nothing.”  The birds and the bees. My family and love and weather and trees and which sunflowers are on moist soil, which are on hardscrabble.  Solitude.  I said I wanted a long quiet walk, and while it’s hardly a walk . . . often more like a climb, I’m definitely getting alone time as I walk across a country.

Noticing people who pass by and the fact that there is quite often no one near me on the road at any given time.  Being deliriously and unconsciously happy in my little walking bubble, whether it be comfortable or teeth-gritting at any given moment.  I am aware of that even if I’m walking in a crowd.  And the fact that I am walking across a country.

My inner noticing sensor sees the way this person rolls his socks down over his boot tops and that person is wearing flip-flops. The number of people who clearly ship their packs every day.  (I am not alone in this, though I carry all of it some of the time and some of it all of the time.) How many couples vs. groups vs. single people are walking on this (any) particular day.  How many languages did I hear today?  How many non-English speakers who do speak some English and with what accents?  Who has sticks and who doesn’t?  Two poles or one?  Knee braces or ankle or neither.  Who on a hot day wears black long pants, a black long sleeve shirt and jacket, and who is barely wearing anything at all . . . shorts that have a fat quarter of fabric, a sports bra, and a cowboy hat.  And I am walking across a country.

About once a week, with no plan to do so, I get my iPod out of my zip-off shorts pocket and select the collection of courtship poems Neil used to leave for me once a week on my old answering machine.  I have quite a collection of them there.  The archivist in me again.  I didn’t really plan to do this at all, but sometimes I want to hear his voice in that tone new lovers have, the one that fades away no matter how much love is still in the relationship after 25 years.  The tentative, dreamy voice of a new man long ago  in my life delivering some of the loveliest or funniest or most puzzling poems ever written.  W.H. Auden, e.e. cummings, Marge Piercy, Emily Dickenson, Theodore Roethke, John Donne, Maxine Kumin.  And I see that while I no longer get poems, he no longer gets love cards.  I ponder the usual way these things drop off, even in the best of relationships.  Perhaps that can change. I file possibilities away in my brain.  I listen to his voice from 25 years ago.  I am clearly aware that from the day he first walked in my door, I have never even looked at anyone else.  I am grateful for what we still have.  And I keep walking across a country.

Sometimes I think regular people in whatever area we are traveling must perceive that peregrinos are a nuisance on their roads.  Or perhaps just crazy.  Why walk when you could drive?  And indeed, what am I doing here?  Some people, those who think they know and who usually mean well, often said to me before I left, “Well, you will find out why you’re there once you get there.”  No.  My answer to the question, “Why do you want to do this?” is still the same.  I have no f&%king idea.  But I get up every day in the dark, feel around for all my little packing cubes, my watch, glasses, pills for today, etc.  I test my feet to see whether it’s boot day or sandal day.  Whether it’s “Send the pack” day or “Carry it” day.  And then I walk another 20-25 km. across a country.

I watch Camino walkers who light up a cigarette every time they take a bar/town break.  WTF???  I cannot understand that.  Most of them assure themselves and me that they only smoke two or three cigarettes a day.  Whatever.  But they are walking, and one would think they’d like the extra lung power.  They have their own Camino, a smoker’s Camino, I guess.  And we are all walking across a country.

I think about fresh squeezed orange juice at any next opportunity.  Now I am a new diabetic, and even before I fell off that A1C cliff, I avoided juice, especially orange juice, though I dearly love it.  Just full of sugar.  However, here, it gives me energy without requiring bush stops, and lord knows I’m getting enough exercise to keep my blood sugar way down.  There’s another electronic device – my blood sugar machine.  And the strips for 60 days.  And the pill packs as well.  At least that weight is diminishing.  My docs say perhaps I can get off the newly prescribed meds when I get home.  That would be nice.  Not expected, but a nice reward for walking across a country.

When I walk with someone for awhile, I enjoy the conversation, but am always conscious of whether that other person also prefers walking alone.  We generally get a hiccup of friendly back and forth, and then change pace enough to resume our solitary places.  The people I meet again and again are a comfort to bump into.  New people often join that comfort group, but sometimes one encounter is all you get.

My usually good radar about whether I want more than “Buen Camino” with/from them has sharpened.  The nicest person might also be one you just sense you need to be careful about.  I don’t mean in a safety way.  This is the safest place on the planet, I’m convinced of it, as long as you stay off the highways.  Personal safety?  100%, I’d bet.  And no one wants to steal anything, because then they’d have another ounce or pound to carry! But I just mean careful because that person seems to need someone with whom to start and/or finish the day.  There are others like that, and they will meet up, either for the long Camino haul or for a few days and then, like a square-dancer, change partners.

The sweetest face I’ve seen on this Camino

Despite what people at home might think I am experiencing, the Camino is not all harps and majesty.  But on MOST days you can pay attention to what is even a tiny majesty.  A huge dog just sleeping in the middle of a road, and then stretching and getting out of the way when a vehicle comes by.  Scares the shit out of me but after all, it’s the dog’s Camino.  And it’s her country.

Baaaaaah!

I hear the birds chirping, cawing and the roosters crowing, see truly free-range chickens running down the road in a little stone village, pecking at the moss growing from the stones, looking for bugs.  I hear the cows mooing, the sheep b-a-a-a-a-h-ing.  Usually the animals are off the road, but occasionally they are crossing it in front of us.  And on one wonderful occasion on the way from Leon to Hospital del Orbigo, I watched an entire sheep herd and their real live shepherd pour out into the road in front of me like liquid mercury (there might not be any other kind, so forgive the possible redundancy) right in front of me.  As the end-straggler sheepsies went on and off the road, looking for green nibblies, they really did resemble a some aberrant white mercury, the kind you used to try to catch when the old-fashioned thermometer fell on the floor and broke, spilling wobbly silver beads all over for you to capture.  Now THAT (the sheep, not the broken thermometer, of course) was a wonderful moment, earthy, nearly cuddly, and warm.  Definitely magical.  If it hadn’t been that 30 km. day for Christel and me, I would have just walked s-l-o-w-l-y behind them until their shepherd naturally took them off to the other side of the road, rather than doing it prematurely to clear the path for us, the peregrinos.

Sometimes the noise in the ear is traffic, an ugly, oxymoronic sound on this isolated journey.  A good time to get out the iPod and turn on some favorite tunes.  Old Steve Winwood.  “Defying Gravity” from Wicked.  Todd Rundgren with his 42-years-ago flood of memories from my Denver life.  Al Jarreau with his courtship crooning songs from the old days of my beginnings with Professor Neil.  “One thing isn’t very clear, my love . . . should the teacher stand so near, my love . . . graduation’s almost here, my love . . . teach me tonight.”  I’m reconnecting with music in my life, and realizing yet again that my memories are so often anchored in music.  This while I walk across a country.

My thoughts are often not thoughts at all . . . they are just flits . . . sometimes strung together like those old biology diagrams of DNA and RNA and compounds and elements.  They must make sense to someone, but not to me.  Not the diagrams and not the flits.  But on this Camino, I have the luxury of not caring one whit about whether flits make sense.  I hope I can bottle that and take it home with me.  I am walking across a country.

Grateful path

The days are so very different from my days at home, but on some level, they are exactly, at least metaphorically, the same.  Look at an easy path and breathe in/out in tranquility.

Where do I step now?

Holy shit! Get out the crampons, or the wings!

Things get a bit worse, more uneven, with stones of all sizes at your feet, but after all this time, you have your confidence.  And your sticks.  Then you get the one you couldn’t imagine . . . a really rocky one, pure diagonal ledge, and you hope you can find one footstep and then another that is at least manageable.  See bottom of this post for the “abandonment” possibility, when the equipment or resources you have just simply will not do, though the direction is clear.  (The photo just won’t fit in sequence, and it’s worth being larger than these are!)

When you think you can’t take much more, the “carrot” shows up . . . you can see your town barely visible ahead of you, and you know you can do this for one more hour, one more kilometer, one more near slide on rock ledge, caught only by your blessed sticks.

The ‘carrot’ – in this case, Molinaseca

If I have one real, articulate, insight it is this.  When you are on the Camino, you don’t leave your life.  In part, you can tuck it in your backpack and send it on ahead, but clearly you bring it with you in some fashion and sort it out very differently while you walk.  You are that turtle, large or small, with all of your life and “stuff” on your back.  And you are always in awe of your very self (at least I am), walking across a country.

You cut your boots, took out the laces, finally . . . PHFFFT! Leave behind what doesn’t serve you on the mountain. You are on your own now!  (Thankfully these are not mine . . . yet.)

If you are a good girl, Senora Meseta makes you taller!

NOTE:  Okay, I’m posting this again.  Hope it doesn’t disappear a second time!

Thursday, September 26.  Well, party day in Hermanillos is over, though it was just a Tienda and food party.  Everyone was sound asleep by 10:00 p.m.

It’s  Zero-Dark-30 again, and I am scarfing down huevos and jamon in the restaurant, with fresh juice.  The other Neal is eating breakfast with a woman from Australia or England and I join them for my desayuno (breakfast), until they head out, and then I’m alone for a few minutes to collect my thoughts about today’s path.

I walk out on a gorgeous dark morning, with just a hint of light at my back.  While I wouldn’t want my entire Camino landscape to be meseta, I’m beginning to appreciate it . . . of course, now that it’s almost over.  Neal and the Brit/Aussie woman are either ahead of me or have been diverted, and I’m sure Larry, who hates early mornings, will be sauntering along past me in a couple of hours, but right now, there is no one but me.  And the dark.  And the very beginnings of the day.

The sunrise behind Hermanillos on the Meseta

Soon I hear people behind me and as they come alongside, they introduce themselves.  Jim and Patte P. from Westminster.  They seem like the kind of couple I’d like to see again when I get back to Colorado and I give them my card.  We walk together for perhaps 15 minutes, though their pace is faster than mine, of course.  But as we reach that stage where they will go on and I will mosey as I am wont to do, we can feel/sense the light coming up behind us and Jim and I reach for our cameras.   It truly is gorgeous, and I am happy that Senora made me do this meseta . . . even though that first surprise day sucked!  Surprise = anticipating 20 km.  and getting 165 km.  Nearly 100 miles of it.  Just so you get the picture.

Brierley warns of another day with nothing but meseta – not even sendas, which is the term for the pilgrim paths directly next to a busy highway –  and one bit of trees near a river somewhere ahead, but this time I am prepared, and again, with the weather about 20 degrees cooler and my “meseta-mentality” in gear, I peacefully walk through this.  I don’t even ask myself (0r Brierley) whether or when this landscape will change.  I know I’m not all that far from Leon and it isn’t in the Meseta, so happily I roll along.  I run into Neal and the Brit/Aussie woman, and then by about 9:00 or so, as I predicted, Larry is on the path stops to talk and walk with me for awhile before moving on at his pace.

There is no mystery about the route, for most of the day anyway, so I walk.  I find the necessary tall (and not so tall) grass and short bushes, as does everyone, though I only see occasional peregrinos.  That is because most of them took the road, but for the ones that went to Hermanillos.  Once you make that decision, you can’t unmake it until about 2/3 up this day’s path.  Then supposedly you can swing on over to Reliegos, but both paths lead to Mansilla, the last big (well, not really) place before Leon, which will be another day’s trek.  “Our” path, however, is nearly 25 km, so I’m grateful for breeze and temperatures in the 70s, though when you are walking all day under clear blue skies, the sun is hot even at that temperature.

Can you get there from here? Lovely to look at . . .

About 2/3 of the way to Mansilla there is a beautiful stand of trees to my left (right and behind me by the time I took the photo), but nowhere to sit, and almost no way to get into the woods.  I see a young woman lying on the ground, her pack under her head, and she is kicking up her heels and waving.  I wave back, but I’m on the road, and am not into clambering today.  Soon after that, apparently the Peregrino Guides ran out of yellow paint, because there is a three-way fork in the road and nary a mark.  I finally head left, figuring I’ll end up in Mansilla this way, either through Reliegos or not.

Is this the way?

Then I see Neal and his day-companion up ahead scratching their heads.  Did they miss something?  I assure them they did not.  So we all follow the path I chose, and then we see blue arrows and on a rock someone has painted “Reliegos” with a blue arrow pointing down another road past us.  I think we are taking that, and look forward to seeing some sort of bar for a coffee or juice, but though I can see the town, I also see clearly that we are not walking toward it.  Just grasses and a very well built fence.  Oh, well, Mansilla by the old Roman path it is.  I lag behind the other two, because I want my self.  The last bit is on a major road, but it’s not long and there is Mansilla up ahead of me.  Once I duck through the stone Roman arch, it’s only a few blocks to the municipal Albergue, where I’ve decided to stay come hell or high water, because it’s easy and cheap.  On the way, I see a nice little supermercato, closed for siesta, so I walk on, get my bed, pay the 5 Euro and notice that though there is no peregrino meal (thank goodness), there is a big kitchen and dining area and all the young people are busy chopping, seasoning, frying.  Reminds me of my daughter Ashley and her husband Justin and how they toured the southern hemisphere for 15 months, cooking in hostels.

Pack on my bed, I wander back to the first bar I saw, and order fresh orange juice and a bottle of seltzer “con hielo” (with ice).  I am soon joined by Larry, who had checked into his little hotel and wants a beer or a glass of rum.  And walking past me are Yves and Janice, whom I will see twice more in this town in the space of a few hours.

When the little supermarket opens, I think about the fact that I will be in Leon for the next two nights at a small hotel right near the Cathedral, so I buy pate, a tin of roasted red peppers, honey roasted nuts, some very thin crackers and two nectarines.  After all, I won’t have to carry the stuff after Leon because I will have eaten all of it while I’m in the city.  I also buy two tomatoes and a jar of artichoke hearts for dinner tonight in the albergue.

All I need now is a bakery for something just a bit sweet.  Most of the items in these panaderias are full of cream or chocolate, neither of which I like, but an occasional honey- coated croissant or a palmier is just what I’m looking for.  And I find them, though finding the bakery is more difficult.  But my asking skills are getting better, and my expectations are lower, so this time, finding a bakery that is open on the second try is fantastic!.  My portable cupboard is as complete as it’s going to be, but as I get nearer to the albergue entrance, I see a poster outside the restaurant across from my place, and spaghetti carbonara tempts me.  I’ll order some and take it back to the albergue.

Yves and Janice

I approach the restaurant and there are Yves and Janice having their own dinner.  They invite me to join them so I share some of their wine, and Yves orders my carbonara “para llevar”.  It looks like a little portion, a “racione” so I get two.  Right.  You can tell I’ve been in the desert all day with a half a nectarine and a bad sandwich which went to the buzzards.

Armed with my goodies, I settle into the large courtyard in the center of the albergue, open to the sky surrounded by laundry drying on racks.  I see a couple I’ve met before and sit with them.  They pour me some wine, so now I’ve had more wine in one day than I’ve had in a week.  Two glasses.  I get out my assemblage of dinner . . . tomato, artichoke hearts, banana, spaghetti carbonara, and pass one of the spaghetti portions to a young man at the next table.  He gratefully accepts, saying it will be his breakfast.

The couple has dinner plans, and I eat my food, then check in with the manager of the place to see about the bus to Leon.  The very wonderful woman who manages this albergue finishes with perhaps her fifth blister “patient” (she has a whole medicine chest of preparations and treatments for blisters), takes me gently by the shoulders and walks me outside.

“See that blue phone booth?” she says, pointing a half block down the way.  I nod.  “There’s the bus stop and here are all the times for tomorrow.  Okay?”  Excellent.  Many of us are planning to avoid walking in to Leon, though it’s only 18.6 km  and even Brierley calls it a “slog” and suggests hopping a bus, taking advantage of most of the day to explore the city instead of fighting the industrial districts and highways pre-Leon.  Further, he suggests you can “bus it to La Virgen del Camino” as you leave the city, refreshed from your break, ,and walk the 30km from La Virgen to Hospital del Orbigo.

He also inserts a nice little paragraph into his usually poetic text, asking why one would frown on people who take the bus to Leon instead of giving themselves a headache.  He says that if the idea of taking a bus seems like heresy, one might ask oneself “Why not?”  He talks about the limitations of the ego and its obsessive behavioral patterns and asks those who pass judgment on bus people (or other differences in our choices on the Camino) to take a closer look. Sounds like a plan to me.

Larry, Jim and Patte, Neal and I are all at the bus stop at 9:00 the next morning.  The meseta ends before Leon, but ours ends here in Mansilla.

Tuesday, September 24.  Okay, I think I see Senora Meseta’s game.  Present me with her stark beauty and see how I do.  Sometimes she has two routes for the day, one along the main road and the other along the wheat grasses on a dirt and rock path.  Generally, I choose the dirt path.  If there is going to be NOTHING for the next few days, I’d rather be on dirt than asphalt with cars whizzing by.  Good decision.

From the swimming pool albergue, I head out with Christel, the Dutch/German woman I met in Fromista.  She has very swollen ankles and will travel slowly, taking good care of her feet.  I feel good, and I know there will be towns today, four of them between the place I”m leaving and Sahagun, where I will stop tonight.

Some of the routing through these towns is hilarious.  Or useless, depending on how you look at it.  The Ledigos’ detour is literally around one tiny corner, where there is a bar with a very uninspired employee or owner.  It is about 8:30 a.m. and there are perhaps a dozen pilgrims waiting for service, and the customers keep pouring in . . . cafe con leche, any sort of pastry or whatever . . . and this guy makes one coffee, then goes to the end of the bar where his compadres have poured him something strong already this morning.  He drinks a bit of it, jokes with his buddies, comes back to take another order, disappears in the kitchen to make a bocadillo (an enormous bread sandwich with perhaps a slice of jamon and maybe cheese if you’re lucky.)  When he feels like it, he comes out of the kitchen, hands the person her order (not made correctly, of course), goes back to the other end of the bar, drinks the brown stuff again, etc.

I waste 25 minutes waiting for coffee and then sit shaking my head.  One man sitting near me says, “Apparently not ALL of the locals care much about giving us good service.”  As in life, there is always the grumpy or unmotivated one.  In Ledigos, that one person works at this bar.  The man who commented is Brian, from Australia, Sunshine Coast, and he is having trouble with his leg.  He too will move slowly today.  I drink my cafe and head out.  I don’t even bother to stop in Terradillos de Templarios.  (And I note yet again that Dan Brown would have a field day in this area, since the evidence of the old Knights Templar is everywhere.)

Today’s meseta stretch has to be better than yesterday’s.  Knowing there will be several towns, with places to stop, sit, get something to eat or drink, and gather up some energy, does hold promise. I have no idea how long this landscape will last (won’t be fooled again, as Pete Townshend says), since the original trickery of the two-part meseta through Hornillos and Hontanas is two-days past.  But as with everything on the Camino, it is what it is.

The scenery is like Kansas or eastern Colorado.  Not much of anything but various shades of beige, brown and gold.  And flies.  There always seem to be flies.  Charlotte had a spray I used for my hat, but Charlotte is now a day ahead of me.  So I swat at the flies occasionally, and just breathe with my mouth closed. The sun is shining, and it’s not too hot, with a breeze, so this is a good sign.

In Moratinos, I again see Brian, the Australian with the bum leg, and he is considering staying in this tiny burg.  I know Christel will be here in a hotel, because she reserved it yesterday.  I don’t even get coffee here, because now, since Senora Meseta likes to play with us, there are villages about every 5 km. to make up for the nearly 18 km. yesterday with absolutely no respite.

At San Nichola, I meet a man with a grey ponytail having his lunch.  He looked vaguely familiar from the swimming pool albergue.  As I set my salad at the table next to his, I see by his backpack that his name is Neal (“my” Neil is spelled differently), and I say, “Oh, another Neil – N-e-a-l”  and he replies, “No, I’m the original Neal.”

He is an artist, lives in Peekskill, N.Y., is a year older than Neil, and is clearly an old leftist, just like most of my friends.  We chat, as is the custom on the Camino, and I leave after I’ve finished my salad.  I’m sure this will be another person who will hopscotch through the next few days of the walk, and that will prove to be the case.

Through the rest of the day’s walk, I feel light and breezy,  Now that I am better fueled and more prepared, I walk easily into my destination little city, Sahagun, and head for the Albergue Municipale in the center of town.  I will get a bed and head for an ATM and a Movistar office to recharge my recalcitrant cell phone SIM card, which ran out of gas long before the nice man in Santo Domingo promised it would.  Hmmm.

A sign for the albergue directs me to turn right at the corner, and I see the building up ahead.  . . . . . . . and now I’m on the sidewalk, my knees screaming for the skin that is now attached to the brick pavers that line the streets.  All that rough terrain and not one fall, thanks to my sticks, but here I am in town, down on my knees.  What the hell??

If the wilderness don’t get you, then the sidewalk do!

A wait-person from the bar across the street is running to me, along with three older men.  They pick me (and my full pack) up off the sidewalk and I look down.  Ah, of course . . . I can see the headline now:

Collapsing Section of Sidewalk Downs Woodswoman!

The young waitress kindly scurries me to a chair at the bar and gets me some water and bread (of course).  She is so worried about me, and I try to assure her I am fine.  Soon she darts back into the restaurant and out again with a bottle of disinfectant, a new package of oblong cotton balls and a box of gauze.

In the meantime, two American women, one from Texas and one from California, sitting next to me, begin talking with me (I’ve met them before, perhaps a week ago), and say they have found a pensione around the corner with private rooms for 15 Euro.  Ms. Texas kindly walks me to the place, speaks with the old man who owns it (Spanish only), and before I know it, I have my room, with the bath next door, if not in my room.  Fine with me.  That municipal Albergue was apparently a jinx, wasn’t it?

So I return to the bar and dutifully use some of the medicinal supplies the kind young waitress brought me.  She returns to make sure I’m not bleeding to death, and reassured, gathers the supplies and returns them to somewhere in her establishment.

The rest of the day is spent doing errands . . . an alimentacion for fruit and nuts for tomorrow, an ATM for cash, the Movistar place, where I find out just how wrong that nice man in Santo Domingo was about the benefits of the SIM card he sold me.  Another 50 Euro and perhaps I’m armed with enough credit for the rest of my trip.

I return to my rescue restaurant, call Neil and talk with him until the kitchen opens so I can have dinner, suffer through another “menu del dia” and limp off to my little room, where I crash.

Wednesday, September 25.  It is dark when I leave the little hotel.  The wireless connection didn’t work last night, and that probably guaranteed me an extra hour of sleep so this morning, I depend on the Sahagun street lamps to lead me toward the yellow arrows and perhaps a bar that is open at 6:30 a.m.  Finally, just near the Movistar place from yesterday, I see a light inside one of the storefronts, where a very nice young man gives me, what else, cafe con leche and some fresh squeezed orange juice.  He has no bread yet (WHAT??) but that’s fine with me.  When I’m finished with my coffee and juice, the delivery person brings bread from the panaderia around the corner somewhere, and the young man offers to make me a small sandwich, with jamon and queso.  I ask that he wrap it up and I tuck it in my backpack for later.  I know today will be another one of those nothing-in-between days, so I also make sure I have enough water in my camelback as well as in my small water bottles.

Leaving Sahagun before dawn

It is still dark as I walk out of Sahagun, and on the way, I meet a man coming into town who introduces himself as Larry from Michigan and Florida, and who asks me whether there is a bar open yet.  I direct him to the one I’ve just come from and we go our separate ways.  It is beautiful on the way out of the city, and I snap a photo because I know this is probably the last tree I’ll see all day.   There are two ways to get to the next segment, one that follows the road all the way to El Burgo Ranero through Bercianos and one that veers off to the right through the dirt to Calzadilla de los Hermanillos (or Hermanillos de la Calzada, depending on where you look).  I choose the latter.  There will be days I’ll follow the road, for safety or incline/decline reasons, but there is rarely an up or down on the meseta unless it’s one long dusty road to the next flat plain.  Still . . . I’m getting used to desolation and it is preferable to zoom zoom zoom.

The “opcion” is a bit hard to locate, and when I do turn right off the road, I hope I’m heading anywhere close to the correct direction.  There is one little village place, Calzada de Coto, only a half kilometer from the junction, and though it’s 8:45 by now, this place looks like a ghost town.  I spot Australian Brian sitting on a bench in a small “park”, shaking his head.  No coffee in this town yet.  Strange.  So I walk on through, meet up with the two American women from yesterday in Sahagun, and we take turns in the bushes for awhile.  It’s becoming so easy to just drop my drawers whenever there is an urgent need, like any dog on the street.  Maybe I’ll build an outhouse in my back yard when I get home.

After about three kilometers, I see Neal, “the other Neal”, and we walk and talk for a bit before he moves on.  Then comes Larry, the Michigan/Florida man.  We too walk for awhile and have the kind of conversation Camino walkers seem to create, if they have one at all.  Somehow, you get to scraps of the meat in one life or another without much preliminary stuff.  He hates starting early (but he did), he likes long days (but this will be a quite short one, unless he wants to go about 40km., too long), his wife died recently, he has two kids, and we go on from there, but it’s not listing these items.  It’s an unfolding that I experience often on the Camino, somewhat like a conversation one has on an airplane if one is lucky.  No BS, no agenda, just something that pours out honestly, spontaneously.  You might never see that person again, but you remember.

This conversation could have gone in any number of other directions, just as he or I could have taken another path up the road through the seemingly endless meseta, but it didn’t.  We are here, walking together for awhile, dropped into a bubble and then floating out of it.  He walks faster than I do, so I assume I’ll see him up the road in Hermanillos, since there is nowhere else to go.

Our town today is only 14 km, so by 11:00 I’m at the only bar/restaurant in town.  Larry is already there, having a rum, which he has told me he loves.  This place is also a little hostal (remember, a hos-TAHL is a little sort-of-hotel, not a hostel as we usually think of it) and he is booked into a private room (he prefers these to the shared accommodations – don’t we all – but he has some funds for it). Neal and Brian are sitting at separate tables on the patio , though neither of them is staying here.  Such a small world some days.   The patio fills and empties as people get a glass of something and go to their respective accommodations.  No one who is here will leave today, since the next town from this pathway is 24 km. down the long dry stretch of meseta.

Since the hostal is “completo”,  I walk two blocks to the municipal albergue, which doesn’t open for another ninety minutes.  Back at the hostal/restaurant, the sweet woman who seems to run everything there apologizes for not having a room for me.  I tell her that’s fine.  She pantomimes that if there is a cancellation, she will let me know.  I order some food and a coffee and wait out my ninety minutes in conversation with Larry.  Brian has gone farther up the road to secure the last room in another little private pensione.

When it is 12:30, I head to the muni, and the man there is beaming as he explains the “donativo” status of the bed charge.  He holds up one, two, three, four, five fingers and says, “Uno, dos, tres, quatros, cinco euro . . . good.”  Then he flips up the five fingers of the other hand as well and says, “Mas, very good” as his smile splits his face.  I drop “cinco” in the box. Why not?  If there were a flat charge, it would be at least that, and these people do good work.

The bed arrangement is interesting and unique.  Perhaps at some point a post about variations on an albergue theme will be in order.  For now, I will say that there are four compartments in a long row on “my” side of the albergue.  Each compartment has built in four beds, two down and two up, but they are not metal bunks.  They are more like ship’s berths.  The other side of the building has similar accommodations.  A small albergue by municipal standards (remember in Roncesvalles, my receipt said, “#100”).  Since I am early, I get a “baja”, a lower berth, and relieved, I throw down my pack.  There is a person napping in the other lower berth across from me, and he turns around.  He says, “Just don’t get your Neals confused.”  I assure him I have no intention of doing that!

After getting settled, I go back to the other place for some eggs and a glass of fresh orange juice.  The sweet woman is still apologizing to me, and I tell her, “No problemo”, motioning to the albergue down the street.

When I return to my little Hermanillos home, there is a buzz among the people who have arrived after I did, and several of them seem to have fresh groceries.  One tells me to go outside, down a half block toward the exit end of town, and follow the “Tienda” signs and the white arrows to the left a few blocks.  I notice everyone in this part of Spain  is very careful about the color of directional arrows.  Yellow paint is for the Camino pathway only, blue for god knows what, and the white ones here are attached to the direction for the tienda, the shop.  One woman tells me, “It’s only open until 2:00, and then not again until 6:00 p.m.”  Of course.  Siesta is everywhere.  Her man says, “It’s a very long two blocks, but there it is.” My watch says 1:52.  I hustle.

What I find, long after I expected the town to disappear in a two-block-wide linear stretch, is a tiny store, with a line of people out the door. I wish I had taken a photo of that, but this will have to do.  Just past the long sign is a door, and then a hallway.  Then the little store sitting behind the barred window, probably as big as my home office in Fort Collins.  And a short nearly bald man behind the counter, filling people’s orders, running across the hall to a storage room three times as big as his actual store space, to get more of something.

I watch this for the seven people ahead of me and look at the clock.  2:02.  Will he close?  Apparently not.  He will make sure everyone is helped before he thinks about abandoning us.

If you want yogurt, he brings out the four-pack, like the ones I buy at home.  But I only want one, so he snaps one off the pack and puts the others away.  Olives?  One scoop, two, three?  Want to taste one? Baguette?  No, I can only use 1/4 a baguette.  Out comes a bread knife to cut the half baguette left after the last guy wanted his half, and I get my quarter of a loaf, along with meat, cheese, a tomato, a nectarine, and olives.

Back at the albergue, everyone has spread out their booty.  I remember that I didn’t get mayo, something I’ve longed for on this walk, but it’s now about 2:45, so I do my laundry instead.  I’ll go back later.  And when I do go back later, I see no evidence that the man has closed the store.  There is still a line out the door, with new and returning customers.  As I wait, I eye several long covered boxes of pastry, none of it appealing to me.  The little man motions that I should uncover the last of the boxes and I do.  YUM!  Almond cookies.  I take three.  The little man grins.  Score!

With my almond cookies and mayo, I return to rustle up some cold dinner for myself, but I want more than my sandwich, so I go back to the restaurant to see if they have soup.  Lentil soup is on the menu and I ask the sweet owner if I can have some “para llevar”, to take away.  She says she has nothing for me to carry it in, but “this”, and she holds up a plastic container.  I tell her that’s great, and before I know it (she is really way outside the box with her desire to help me), I have a container of hot lentil soup “to go”.

At the albergue, I eat my makeshift dinner, while the couple who told me about the store earlier that afternoon are really cooking. They introduce themselves as Yves (French-Canadian) and Janice (American) and say they live in Oregon.  He has fairly short snow white hair and hers is blond and very long.  They talk to me and the others at the table about all the backpacking trips they’ve done and how much they enjoy this sort of thing.  Some of us are only doing this for . . . some strange reason, not because we want another place to play turtle, with all of our belongings on our backs.  These two clearly enjoy teir lives, and I will hopscotch with them across this Camino for most of the rest of our journey.

The evening brings the usual.  Check the laundry to see if it is dry on the line.  Organize things for an early start in the morning.  Even though this was an easy walking day, with lots of socializing, the accumulation of twenty-five Camino days takes its toll and it is always tired out by about 8:00.  Brush teeth, take my one night pill, insert night guard into mouth.  Pee. Hit the sack.  Gone.