The journey continues. Catch up on previous stages of the Camino here.
Pre-Camino Travels | Camino Part 1 | Camino Part 2 | Camino Part 3 | Camino Part 4 | Camino Part 5
Day 7: Los Arcos to Logroña
Day 7: Los Arcos - Logroña
27.8km
This was a long day made lighter by the company of Jane. I couldn't find Rosa in the morning and Camilla had left before dawn so I teamed up with Jane, the Australian, who, yep, you guessed it, is a teacher. She left corporate law and started teaching at an International American school in Romania last year. I tried to get her to sing a song...she teaches 2nd grade!!...and the best we got, because of my prodding...was the Kookaberra song that I learned when I was in Australia. We made up some of the words that we couldn't remember:
Kookaberra sits in the old gum tree-ee.
Walking the Camino so happ-i-ly
Laugh, Kookaberra, laugh, Kookaberra
Gay your life must be.
Jane is not so musical. I changed the subject.
Our Lady of the Cherry Tree
One of my favorite Camino moments so far happened when Jane and I saw an Italian family on the path picking cherries from a tree. The couple had two daughters, the youngest one they were pushing in a stroller. We found the older one standing on the shoulders of the father grabbing cherries and they asked us to take a picture. We then copied them and latched onto the next tree that was ripe with the most delicious cherries and wow, did we feast. Jane was ready to go and I was all, like, no way, look at that branch! Wait, here's an even better branch. I can pull the entire tree down and get, like, 20 more cherries. I could have lived next to that tree. If I was living in the right century, I would have seen an apparition of Mary right there and opened an Albergue called Our Lady of the Cherry Tree. No, actually, I would be sainted for my vision of Mary in the cherry tree and my ability to feed the masses on cherries and love alone and an order of nuns would be formed and we'd be called the Franciscan Cherries because that has no inappropriate references to anything at all and has been approved by multiple focus groups.
Ten minutes later, we carried on through the heat.
In one of the towns, a Camino attraction is the 13th century octoganal church where, legend has it, the Knights Templar was active. Where are my illuminati conspiracy theorists when I need them?
Peregrinas in Logroño
At one of the small towns...getting smaller and farther apart...I found Rosa and we carried on the rest of the way. Jane was moving fast and I was, I don't know, digesting cherries, so I stayed back and walked at Rosa's pace. I was very excited to spend time in this town as we had great plans to TAKE OVER Logroño. Peregrinas gone wild! We were in La Rioja, wine country, how could we not?
Of course, we found a private albergue that doesn't lock its doors at 10pm. We wanted to stay out a bit later than usual to take in the late night Spanish atmosphere in the streets eating the pinxos.
Rosa and I tried finding Peregrinos wandering the streets that we recognized to make a crowd on the pinxo street in town. This little happenin' town has one tiny street where everybody gathers at 9pm to eat small plates of amazing things displayed in glass cases. You pay for a drink and a plate together to make a pinxo and everyone naturally spills out into the street and falls into the next bar for another plate of greasy ham. This vegetarian loved it. It was Monday night so Pinxos were still great but Rosa said it was not the usual shoulder-to-shoulder crowds in the street pining for the next small plate of fried awesome sauce as it usually is. It was Rosa's last night on the Camino before returning to Barcelona (many Europeans just do sections of the Camino when they can squeeze it in)... so she wrote down her favorite stops along the Camino on a little piece of paper as we took in the Monday night pinxo atmosphere. Before leaving in the morning, I unloaded a tank top that I didn't need that I thought Rosa would like. I will miss Rosa.
Day 8: Logroña to Nájera
Day 8: Logroña-Nájera
28.9km (According to Camilla's guidebook, we walked 30.1km. It was a lot.)
I had breakfast with Rosa before she caught her train to Barcelona and then I started walking on my own. Starting at a late time without other pilgrims around was a surprising relief. I had been constantly chatting with people for the last several days.
This was a long, hot, shade-less walk through vineyards and gravel paths alongside or crossing expressways. It was beautiful in a brutal sort of way.
There was some strange stone hut at around 22km and I saw Camilla waving from it. She was getting out of the heat for a few minutes She jumped out and joined me on the rest of the blistering hobble over red dirt paths and asphalt roads into Nájera.
The albergue we found at 4pm only takes donations and I fell into an odd dream state in my bunk without bothering to shower. I woke up at 5pm needing to eat everything in sight. We had walked almost 30km two days in a row and it was not Spanish dinner time in town.
So we went to the supermercado and found amazing things like bandaids and chocolate bars and lemon flavored sports drinks and hobbled back to a terrace for pasta. The miles and the heat totally wiped me out. Operation lighten my backpack: I threw away a bottle of makeup and some paper/brochures.
No drawing tonight.
Day 9: Nájera to Santo Domingo
Day 9: Nájera-Santo Domingo
21.3 km Grañon+6.7km=28.0km
Camilla and I set out early, continuing through beautiful countryside with distant mountains and passing practically every grapevine in the La Rioja region. This was the first day we walked farther than the guidebook suggests making our way to Grañon. We stopped in the suggested town of Santo Domingo for coffee and fruit and to change into dry socks. Then we carried on. The weather was cool and overcast and I could have gone 10km more but the sweet little albergue in the church of Grañon, treasured by pilgrims, was calling our name. I'm glad we pushed on to stay in the attic of the church...at first. This albergue was tucked in the annex of the village church and was the homiest place we had gone to yet. Since it was a parochial albergue, meals are made communally and you pay a donation before you leave. During dinner with about 15 other pilgrims, I got to sit next to the selectively mute French guy. He looked to be about 30 years old, dressed in skater shoes, and sweatpants. To be honest, he may have just robbed the supermercado. I don't know. During the whole meal, he ate with a spoon in his left hand and a pocketknife tightly fisted in his right. We were eating soup. He flicked open the pocket knife for our cooked apple dessert and the friendly Italian on his other side also flinched backwards. He grunted when wanting something passed to him and when I asked "hablas español?" He responded loudly, JUST FRENCH. NO ENGLISH. I then passed him the pitcher of water.
A Frenchman and a Swiss walk into an albergue...
A Swiss woman nervously carried on a conversation with me while this was all happening. She talked about driving across the U.S. when she was younger and understanding how Americans think big because we have room to think in our big country. In Switzerland, she thinks they think about life differently because they are tucked inside tiny pockets of mountains. I have been thinking about this ever since she told me.
Some albergues have traditions like this one, after communally washing the dinner dishes, a timid Canadian hospitalera led our little group through a candle ceremony of sorts in the church's choir loft. A little tiny doorway from the albergue tunneled us through and all of a sudden we were standing inside the medieval church in the dark. We all said things in our own languages in the dark church holding candles. The French guy did not attend, mostly because I think he did not understand what was going on.
The Bed Bug of Destiny
That night, I woke around 1am itching all over. No, chinches, no!!!! I whipped off my sleeping bag and turned on the light on my cell phone trying to see what had bit me. After bites started appearing all over my body in the dark, I climbed down from the sleeping loft and slept upright in a chair. The next morning, after many consultations with fellow peregrinos and judging by the look of my bites, it was probably not bedbugs/chinches. We agreed that I had been bitten voraciously by a spider or a flock of "wood mosquitos" as one of the Italians called them. One of the Spanish hospitaleras and I laughed and discussed my fate. These things just happen sometimes. El Camino es como la vida compactada. You will see everything along the way.
Some language notes: when you are tired, it is even more difficult to explain yourself in a second language. At one point I said, "Tengo pecas de naranjas". This Translates roughly as I have orange freckles or I have freckles from oranges...which, if you have seen my face, is not entirely false but a really funny thing to exclaim to the hospitaleras at breakfast. I meant to say "Tengo picas de narañas." = I have spider bites. Finding a word in another language can sometimes be like looking for a sock in your backpack: it's in there somewhere.
If it sounds like these bites aren't a big deal, you don't entirely understand how Sensitive Sally I am when it comes to my skin. I think I just developed a swollen pinky out of sympathy for the other pinky that was bit last night.
One perk of getting a late start because I was dealing with my insect problem was that I saw local Spanish teenagers arrive at the albergue to clean. They were doing some kind of community service and wanted to experience the peregrino life for a day. It was humbling to pack and literally head for the hills while young people I didn't know scrubbed the toilets I was using.
Day 10: Grañon-Tosantos
Day 10: Grañon-Tosantos
About 22km
I left behind a t-shirt dress in the donation pile as an offering to the insect gods, and in my continuing effort to walk lighter. I was very happy to start my morning walking out of spider town with 2 hours of sleep. I made pace with the smart and friendly Italian, Ettore. Walking through the rolling hills as the sun was coming up made my Italian friend teary-eyed. They say one day on the Camino is a year of knowing someone. I may not have made pace with Ettore had I not been bitten by that insect the night before.
I only got to know him for about 3 months that morning though because he left his water bottle in the last town about 10 minutes earlier and walked back. I continued on past the "big" town of Belorado, population 2,100. I dragged my orange freckled, spider bitten, legs to another parochial albergue in the town of Tosantos, population 60.
I went farther than the guidebook again today so my kilometers are estimated. Today was a test of my physical limits when I had no sleep. It was the first time I had the sensation of wanting to sleep in a field of wheat and could have acted on that desire. I found a shady rock to sit on with my pack about 500 meters from the edge of town fixing my socks, rummaging through my pack, sipping water and thinking I'd never make it.
I was the fourth pilgrim to arrive that day. The French pocketknife guy was there though. Maybe it was my destiny. So was Camilla and the Swiss woman from the albergue the night before. At 5pm, everyday, a local man with the keys to the church built inside a cave in the mountain, arrives to let the pilgrims inside. This particular church was a 12th century hermitage built into the side of the cliffs. It was as amazing at is sounds. After we left the cave, the Swiss woman fled the scene and walked to the next town because the French guy was so intimidating. She later told me, "I don't need those kinds of people in my life."
Santiago the Sage
The communal meal that night was with just 6 pilgrims plus our hospitalero, named, of all things, Santiago. Santiago and I talked at length, sitting outside on the stoop of the 400+ year old house, about many things I didn't know I could communicate in another language. He said that I have been thinking about everything from home as I walk and not living in the present moment. He knew this because of the way my feet looked. He said the Camino is about paying attention to your body and heightening your senses. He also talked about walking the next large stretch of the Camino called La Meseta. He said it is one of the most important parts of the Camino where pilgrims finally make the "Camino interiór," that is, they walk within their mind. La Meseta has long straight paths through flat plains for several days. Many Pilgrims take a bus from the two major cities, Burgos and Leon, on either side of the plains to move onto the next portion and "save time." Santiago says many people don't walk the ugly landscape because they don't want to look at the ugly side of themselves. I have been thinking about this ever since he told me this.
In this albergue, the tradition after dinner is to go up to a little hidden chapel in the house. Santiago passed around notes left behind by previous peregrinos. We were each given a note in our own language and read them out loud. Even the pocketknife French guy read aloud a French note. The notes will be read 20 times (about how many days it takes to get to Santiago from this town.)
The next morning we left our own notes to be read to the pilgrims that come after us.
One last note about Mr. Pocketknife: He started his Camino in Le Puy, France. His Camino will be easily over 1000 miles. He has a story I will probably never know.
Day 11: Tosantos to Agés
Day 11: Tosantos to Agés
About 26.1 km
I left this morning from Tosantos with good ole Camilla the Swede and Gentle Oscar from the North (of Italy) on either side of me. One of my favorite parts of each day is heading out of town and seeing the vista of the town as the sun is rising. Seeing the 12th century hermitage shrink into the hills in the distance was more beautiful than words. As we walked along, I ran into the friendly Italian whose name I could now remember and spell: Ettore. We started singing about the names of towns...or perhaps I started singing and he started laughing. Today was going to be just fine. I discovered that the pack of Italians did not know each other. They were all from different parts of Italy. When Etorre and I arrived in the town of Agés, population 20, including the cats and a dog, we reunited with the Italians and I shared my drawings from the Camino. My Spanish is starting to sound Italian.
Day 12: Agés to Burgos
Day 12: Agés to Burgos
I decided to leave in the morning with Ettore and the rest of the Italians: Gloria, Antonio from Sardinia, Andrea from Milan, and Patrícia from Sicily. This turned out to be a great stroke of luck. I learned to walk the Camino the Italian way. First you take your sweet sweet time to get ready leaving in the in morning. Then you realize that your name is not Jean, it is Gina and you will be called Gina from now on. Then you have an espresso in the albergue to get going. Then you walk for 30 minutes to the next town and have another espresso. Then you get to another small town and find the bar and get another round of espressos for everyone. After 9am, at the next bar, you buy a round of beer and potato chips and enjoy the country air and wave to the other Italian pilgrims walking by and say ciao. Then you begin climbing a hill and start singing. I have never been so happy to haul a huge pack up a hill. My face hurt from smiling and I forgot about my legs. It was probably one of the happiest mornings of my life. I have recordings of the Italians singing. I will play the singing whenever I am feeling blue.
At some point while we were singing, we missed a turn to take the route by the river. So we entered the HUGE city, population 200,000, of Burgos via industrial roads and highways. Ettore and I had to stay with the pack because we were out of euros and hadn't seen an ATM in 3 days. We finally found one on the outskirts of town. Entering Burgos was like walking out of a subway station onto Times Square. Wow! A city! Glass windows! Blinking lights! High-heeled shoes!
We found a small albergue by the cathedral.
If you haven't been to Burgos, here is why you should go...THE CATHEDRAL! It is like 100 churches in one with the most amazing gothic architecture and art. It is more a museum than anything and the church custodians were shooing me and Ettore out the door at closing as I took photos of 11th century wood carvings, 500 year old embroidery, oh, and a random painting by Leonardo Da Vinci. No big deal. If the Camino ended at Burgos, I wouldn't have been disappointed. The jaw dropping interiór dome is worth the 200+ km I have already walked. Two of the Italians are stopping their Camino in Burgos. They have to go back home to work. We ate a great big meal together talking in Italian with Ettore "translating" for me.
It was such a beautiful day.
Tomorrow, we face La Maseta.Continue the journey with me to Camino Part 3. . Pre-Camino Travels | Camino Part 1 | Camino Part 2 | Camino Part 3 | Camino Part 4 | Camino Part 5
