Inge – Rabanal to Mercadoiro and the Iron Cross

Rabanal

Someone told us that in the small church in the village there would be Gregorian chanting. Carrie and I started out in a small church, but after we’d sat there for ten minutes without anyone coming, we figured we must be in the wrong church. Sure enough, here came Barbara to tell us the right spot. The other church was sad and dilapidated.

In most places, they would have closed it for fear the ceiling would fall down. Pamphlets in multiple languages were passed around, but the thirty-minute service was in Latin. The monk sang and the congregation answered. I know it’s all a ritual, but it wasn’t bad, and I loved hearing Cameron with that sing-song.

Four pilgrims said a short prayer, each one in a different language, and that was that. I told Carrie she’d receive extra credit for Latin.

We went to bed fairly early and there was only one snorer. When I went over to the kitchen at six-thirty, the stars were brilliant and plentiful. A lovely sight, as we hardly ever get to see them like that.

Up to the Cross

We started walking at close to eight, and it was almost dawn. We had to wear several layers of clothes, and I wore my wool shawl that I’d gotten in Venice. Crisp and cold, but walking was good. Except my nose was running continuously. We went past old stone houses in tiny villages, stepping back through time and centuries.

The sun came up, huge and brilliant in orange and yellow. As we walked, we saw gorgeous green hills, unspoiled, untouched. So much space, it seemed to go on for hundreds of miles and one could see to the end. Here came the mountain, and up we went. Not as steep as the Pyrenees, but pretty close. The scenery well made up for it, and at times this beauty took my breath away. I tried not to concentrate too hard on the cross and what I would do.

Cameron asked me what I’d do and I told him I’d just let it happen. As I was looking around, I did wonder on what hilltop it would be.

Stony path and much steeper then. A hard way to walk. Cameron would walk behind me, urging me on, giving me some of his energy again. Then some way off, I saw it. A frog had taken up residence in my throat lately, long enough to name it: Timothy. At the cross I saw dots of colors, red, blue, yellow, white, and green. Bicyclists stood at the foot of this cross. I slowed a bit, not wanting to have a whole audience. Cameron had asked what else I would say or ask for.

I said that I would pray for my daughter, so that she would have the courage to create a better life for herself, and thus be able to have the peace that she so craves. I would pray for my grand-daughter, that she would know the difference between a good time and disaster, and that responsibility doesn’t make a person sick. I would pray for my son, so that he could let go of childhood hurts, and be content and successful. I would pray for my grandson Dylan, that he would find his path, in spite of the troubled past. And for Kaleb, that he would keep going and that no matter what he did it would be all right.

I would pray for my niece Fiona, of course, so she wouldn’t be so terrified of getting cancer again, and could enjoy life and do fun things. For my sister, so she could have some time for life as well. A little prayer and blessing for Carrie, and then a prayer for my friends and other people who are important in my life.

I sensed that Cameron was getting emotional too, because he kept cheering me on. I was afraid to turn around for fear of starting to cry. I had to let go of all that regret of not being able to do a do-over. He asked me if I remembered that he’d written in social studies the person he admired most, and I said yes, happily recounting that memory, that this was in fourth grade and most of the other children had chosen to write “Luke Skywalker” or something. Under “My Hero is . . .” he’d written “My Mom”.

And then after that, he said, “Schiab’st a bissl’”, and I said, “Oh, Oma’s here,” and he said, “She’s been here all along.”

We arrived at the bottom of the stone pile. Into my head came the name montagne misère. The cross was tall, into the blue sky. The first third was covered with lots of different stuff that people had attached to it all the way around. T-shirts in all colors, a bicycle helmet, and plastic flowers. Buttons, ribbons, pictures, and cards.

Things left behind at the Cross

I took my rock and my PET scan picture out of my backpack and went up. I fell to my knees and offered this tumor. I remembered the pilgrim I had met the day before, for just a few minutes, not speaking any language in common, but he’d said, insha’Allah, which is Arabic for “as God wills”. And that’s what I was thinking as I lifted the tumor up. Not in English, not anything Catholic, just insha’Allah.

I was not going to demand, but to ask with grace. Then I just started to cry. Covered my face, and got up. I buried the picture between two rocks and left it there. I was still trying to formulate prayers for all the other people in my life. Cameron came at one point and put his arm around me, crying too. Thus we stood.

Carrie and Mom at the Cruz de Ferro

Walking off the hill, there stood Carrie, crying too. And then she went up and left her stone. When she came down and stood there, with tears running down her face, I folded her up in a big hug. We spent a little more time, quiet, solemn, and then went on.

The path away from the cross was really nice — wide and smooth, and I remarked that this could be indicative of our “new beginning”.

I had visualized the tumor just hanging by the kind of thread a spider would make, and as we walked I saw the tumor fall, lying on the camino ground as a dried-up mass.

On we went, through more beautiful, vast, and green countryside. Up a long hill, down the same long hill, and I was sure they’d moved Acebo another ten kilometers. Surely we had walked 16 already? This was the middle of nowhere, and nothing, except hills and a wide expanse of land. Far away, I saw a few rooflines. Finally we made our way to the village.

El Acebo

Another alpine look, with a small road through the town, and typical slate-and-stone houses on both sides of the road. There was the albergue, and we were soooo hungry. Immediately, we got our credentials stamped and ordered lunch. Me: bean soup, and some sort of meat dish. Cameron and Carrie got an odd-looking concoction, a little sack filled with odds and ends — bones and cartilage? A chorizo sausage sitting on the side, potatoes, garbanzo beans, and cabbage.

My dessert was pineapple and syrup right out of the can, with that distinctive tinny taste (do they think it can’t be tasted?). We went upstairs to our dormitory to choose our beds and shower. Only two toilets for 50 people. I was so ready for a nice, hot shower after that long and dusty road. We went to the store, the only one, bought a few groceries for the next day’s journey. Then Carrie lost her little wallet.

Later, at dinner, the waitress was really glad to see Cameron. She was delighted to explain the wine, even brought the chef out to consult. She touched his shoulder, his arm, and smiled, and flirted. Carrie and I were so amused. She didn’t touch us!

We ordered a different dinner. I ate the same soup and a vegetarian plate, with lemon mousse for dessert. Cameron remarked that if he’d had any love handles, he’d have lost them by now. I said, “Me too.” Carrie said, without missing a beat, “All I lost was my wallet.”

She’d even gone back to the store to check again. I told her not to worry. Went to bed, read a bit, and slept most of the night. No snoring.

Got up to use the toilet. No water to flush??? Too tired to deal with it. Went back to sleep. Woke up again when the guy in the next bed left at 5a.m. Took my thyroid pill (lost Lipitor somewhere near St. Jean along with my self-inflating pillow). It’s very difficult to take medication on this trip. But I miss my pillow. Bathroom again, still no water. Wow. They turn it off at night! None for brushing teeth.

I went downstairs to use that bathroom. No water. I went to the clothes sinks, and sure enough that worked to brush my teeth. And had hot water, even though when I washed my clothes the day before it had only cold water. (I left my beloved cup there!) I looked up at the star-lit sky and it was beautiful. So many, and so clear. I wished I would have brought my jacket, I’d have stayed for awhile.

At 7:45 we went down to have coffee before setting out. Nice walk, with pastel skies, and I felt good and capable. Carrie said, “You’re hoofing it this morning!” I said I was like a horse out of the chute. Then came the hills. Up a rocky one, hard, and down steep, long rocks. Stopped after a couple of hours to eat our makeshift breakfast. When we reached Monte-something, we stopped for coffee. Another picturesque place. What a great day, and fabulous weather, still.

The walking was going well, and through pretty little places. Then my toe started up. I changed shoes. After a while, I felt a lot of pressure, and had to take my sandal off, limping into Ponferrada on my sock, with my shoe in hand. We may stay somewhere other than the albergue to sleep in for once, as we have to take the bus once again for a few miles.

Sarria

No idea what day or date it is, but here we are, in the historic section of town and the albergue. No kitchen to speak of, and some people slathered on enough Ben-Gay to gag a maggot. I couldn’t sleep anymore after that. I sneezed several times and got up.

Started at eight, it was still dark, but the countryside was exquisite. Fauna and flora, green meadows with dew and tall trees. The enchanted forest. And around a corner, guess what?

A steep climb.

This one is for Fiona, I said to myself. My niece. We saw a huge, strange-shaped tree, but it’s too dark for a good picture. Up I pant, and finally, the top, and glorious sunrise. I sang, “Oh, what a beautiful morning / Oh, what a beautiful day.” And it truly was. What a magnificent jewel – Galicia.

It’s green and orange. It’s abundant, with so much different foliage. The sky is deep blue, the berries are red, like Colorado, and we are amazed and grateful for our good weather this whole trip.

My toes were down to a mere little whimper, and I really enjoyed this walk today. “It warms my heart,” I said.

“The whole trip warms mine,” Carrie replied.

How special she has become to us, how very special she is, to take this hardship on. But all of us are so glad we are here.

I feel a great sense of well-being. I said so, and Cameron took a picture. 100 kilometers, I read people start to get emotional. I started to be emotional. I find myself in tears at any given moment. But the latest may be due to this wonderful music at the Mercadoiro albergue, played by two Catalans.

We got a great hydro-shower, blasting out of many faucets, and then a free washing machine. Loved this spot, and then had conversation with a few more Germans.

Sarria to Mercadoiro to Ventas de Naron

Part 1:  Food on the Camino

Monday.  We’re in Sarria now.  I have before me a bottle of wine that did not cost extra and has no label.  This makes me very nervous.  This time the “espaghetti bolonaise” came in the form of penne pasta tubes.  I think the Camino Spanish have some confusion about what spaghetti is and how spaghetti is made in Bologna, and I propose a fact-finding mission to Italy be scheduled by a team of qualified Spanish culinary and scientific experts.

I wonder how many Spaniards per year name their sons Jamón.  I would not be surprised by any answer but this one:  “fewer than sixty”.  In the United States, I remember reading of two girls who had been named Orangelo and Lemongelo (the “gelo” instead of “Jello”, I assume, to avoid actual trademark infringement).  This is child abuse.

I’ve been to Madrid, Bilbao, Pamplona, and Barcelona, among other Spanish cities.  I know that they do have restaurants.  But the cafe-bar, especially on the Camino, has a distinctive kind of menu.  I wouldn’t claim that a 500-mile walk through the rural United States would yield a greater diversity and creativity in the food, so what I say here applies only to the cafe-bar on the Camino — which is to say, to just about every place you can find to eat for over a month.

The menu del dia along the Camino de Santiago usually comes with a first plate, a second plate, dessert, and your choice of wine or water.  It costs between 8.50 and an occasional high of 12 Euros – usually 9 or 10.  The choice of first plate is invariably one of the following:

The Camino notion of spaghetti Bolognese, which somehow does not involve a tomato, or even, necessarily, spaghetti.

Ensalada mixta, mixed salad, which is lettuce, a few slices of tomato, and a scoop of tuna – even when the menu does not mention tuna, it comes with tuna.  A cucumber, tomato, Caesar, arugula, beet, mushroom, pea, bacon bit, corn, spinach, or any other type of salad is not possible.

Other options are jamón and cheese, jamón and tuna, eggs and bacon, and eggs and jamón.

The second plate offers a choice of fish – cod (bacalao), usually – or grilled chicken.  Sometimes beef, or another type of fish.

Dessert can be flan, yogurt, some kind of cake (tarta), and only occasionally ice cream.

In Sarria, I go to the bar to pay and the proprietress reminds me that dessert was included.  Yogurt or flan.  I shrug and order the flan.  She reaches into a refrigerator and takes out a small white plastic carton of the sort yogurt comes in.  Right in front of me, she peels open the lid and turns the carton upside-down on a coffee saucer, allowing the flan to slide out.  Then she presents me with my dessert.

So far I have seen no to-go coffee in Spain.  Not a single Starbucks, not even in Bilbao, Pamplona, Burgos, or Leon.  The Spanish seem to hold to the charming creed that a person who intends to drink coffee should simply drink coffee, rather than drinking coffee while also doing one to five other things.  A Zenmaster would approve.

At the Bar Morgade, at kilometer 99.5, I had an empanada Gallega, or Galician tuna pie.  It wasn’t bad, but would have been greatly improved by cheese and grilling.  I also ate huevos con bacon, because the Spanish eat fried eggs and omelettes all day long.

Part 2:  Language in Modern Spain

I have collected a half-dozen different Spanish lessons on CD or podcast, and, since my arrival, have faithfully listened to virtually none of it.  (I also imagined that I’d listen to audiobooks on my long, presumably boring walks.  Never once has the urge struck me).  One of the Spanish courses, when I bought it in 1993, had long been used by the Department of State’s Foreign Service officers.  It has quaint phrases like “Deme la pluma,” or “Give me the quill pen”.  But I need something for a modern country, a member of the European Union in the year 2011.  What I could use in modern Spain are phrases like the following:

Do you have Internet?

No, it doesn’t work.

Do you have wi-fi?

This also doesn’t work.

Dear Orange, What do you mean by the slogan “Internet Everywhere”?  Because it doesn’t actually work.  Anywhere.  Ever.  Not for a minute. 

Is there a Thai, Indian, Chinese, German, Mexican, Japanese, or French restaurant in the area?

Dear Vodafone,

Your retail staff in Bilbao doesn’t know how your Internet service works.  Or your cell phones.  Could a shoe salesman have gotten into one of your retail stores?  Your Internet-access interface says I can click to find out my balance.  But it doesn’t work.  It also says I can recharge on the Internet.  But the link doesn’t work.  When I find the right page on my own, the form doesn’t work.  The error messages are alternately incorrect, nonsensical, or unhelpful.  In other words, they don’t work.  No one responds to my help requests.  Does anyone, I wonder, at your company work?

Part 3:  Sarria

The municipal albergue in Sarria was one of the least pleasant we’ve seen.  (The taxi driver had dropped us off there; in the morning we walked past half a dozen visibly nicer albergues).  Each floor’s beds were all bunked around a triangular, all-glass airshaft that enabled anyone trying to sleep to hear the noise and see the light of pilgrims on all the other floors.  There was no Internet.  The kitchen was tiny, and shared space with the washing machines.  There was one outlet, in the hallway by the bathroom.  Competition for it was fierce.

In the albergues, I have seen a number of things I would rather not have seen, usually in the nature of older Europeans without sufficient cladding.  In Sarria, as all the pilgrims on our floor quietly prepared for bed just before lights-out, a fiftyish Spanish couple arrived at their bunks, speaking loudly.  The generously proportioned woman stripped to a shirt and her panties and lay on her stomach, and the man began to vigorously rub a cream of overpowering scent into the backs of her ample legs.

This went on for some time.

Then they hung a towel from the top bunk so as to obscure the bottom bunk, and our uxurious husband climbed in with his creamed-up wife and they yakked late into the night, indifferent to Mom’s attempts to hush them.

Part 4:  Into the Cabbage Groves of Galicia

The Camino ends in the capital of Galicia, Santiago de Compostela (“St. James of the Field of Stars”), and the Camino as a pilgrimage was originally a Galician tradition.  (This was before the kings of Navarra and Castilla and Leon realized how much revenue could be raised from pilgrims, most of them from France.)  The Galicians have placed milestones, so to speak, every half a kilometer on the Way, so that pilgrims can count down the distance to Santiago.  These have been defaced almost beyond legibility by people’s names, messages to one another, and relationship status.  (Almost all are in Spanish).

I had understood Sarria to be a neat 100 kilometers away from Santiago, but the morning found

Camino Kilometerstones -- and more discarded boots

us walking by a restaurant that called itself “Kilometer 111”.  Uh-oh.  Mom’s ailments tell her she can do 16 kilometers a day, but not 19 or 20.  We’ll have to figure out how to make up this difference and still make Santiago in time.

Mom said she’d read that pilgrims walk more slowly in Galicia, perhaps because it’s so beautiful and they don’t want it to end.  The beginning of our walk was not so promising.  The smell of fresh animal dung as we left Sarria was strong enough to be detected in outer space.  We passed a curious Galician custom we would see repeated in every village thereafter:  cemeteries that looked like a blend of mausoleum (tall concrete structures) and morgue (small doors, three high, into which coffins, or ashes, were slid).

Once we got into the country, the day became simply magical.  We were back in the trees,

Galicia

and we wound our way through one small farm after another.  Mist rose from the fields, seemingly without source, for we could see no rivers or ponds nearby.  We crossed quaint stone bridges spanning tiny trickling creeks.  And the smells!  We breathed in not just astringent, bracing cow dung but loam and the leaves of autumn, the sweetly pungent smell of sorghum, woodsmoke, and pig farms capable of being detected from universes parallel to our own.  Cabbage was cultivated in what could only be called cabbage trees – six-foot stalks with the eating end at the very top.

Soon we began to climb, and the landscape became even more storybook.  The small farms

Galician Farmland

spread across gently undulating hills, with ever more hills in the distance, and were bounded by mile upon mile of walls made of carefully stacked stones emptied from the fields themselves.  The houses themselves were made of the same stones, all found in nearby fields.  Mile after mile we could smell the sorghum, and sometimes we could see the plastic tarps that covered it up.  German Shepherds could be seen in most farms, apparently the Galician guard dog of choice.  Roosters crowed nearby.

And then there were the slender, elevated buildings near many of the stone homes in the country, standing on foundations about five feet off the ground, six feet tall, ten feet long, three feet wide.  Were they for hens?  Some were topped by stone crosses and even had

A corncrib that's seen better days

inscriptions:  were they mausoleums?  Or, as a German maintained, for bees?  My guidebook said many houses had next to them something called “corncribs,” which raised more questions than it answered.

“The sky!  The sky!” I could hear Mom saying to herself.  It was yet another perfect day.  “My cells are loving this!” she said.

Mom and Me

Carrie was going to take a picture of Mom and me walking side by side.  I put my hand on her back and began to walk.  “Are you in there?” she said.  “I don’t feel you.”  I understood what she meant, and I visualized light flowing from myself, down my arm, and out my palm into her back.  “Oh!” she said.  “I see a big blue light!  It’s like a . . . what’s the word?  An aureole.”

I don’t know what to make of this.  I can’t say I believe it in the sense that such a belief would matter – belief matters only when and to the extent it affects behavior, as we may see by watching the uninspired conduct of many of the super-religious and god-fearing.  If I really believed what people say about my energy then I suppose I’d spend all my time visualizing myself healing people, starting with Mom.  Which I don’t do, obviously.

At times we walked in a sort of bounded walkway ten feet across, with stone walls three to five feet high on either side of us.  For long stretches the rock walls were covered in ivy,

Path in Galicia, after Sarria

and the stone itself invisible.  The path itself was impassable by car, and we had to pick our way carefully over the uneven stones.  I’ve never seen such byways on any farm, or anywhere.

“Who put all these rocks in our path?” a German woman joked.

“That’s what I’d like to know, too,” Mom responded, also in German.

We did, I thought.  God did.  Does it matter?  They’re still there.

Part 5:  Pilgrims Have Increased by 20% Since This Book’s Publication

I have been asking pilgrims a simple question:  “Why are you on the Camino?”  Quite a few Germans say it’s because they read a best-selling book, first published in 2001, by a well-known German comedian.  This is a disappointing answer.  The book itself, at least as translated into English, seems to me incapable of inspiring one even to finish it, much less to walk 500 miles.  Even Mom complains that it’s boring.

I asked one German, “Is it good in German?  Because in English it’s not funny at all.  It doesn’t have any fresh observations, or information about the locations, which you sort of expect from travel writing.”

“We know the author,” the man told me.  “It’s interesting if you know him.  We can hear his voice.”

Over three million copies sold.  Either the English translation was doing the author a great disservice or his readers were doing all the work.

Part 6:  La Bodeguina in Mercadoiro

Mercadoiro Albergue - Our Favorite So Far

Tuesday.  We reach Mercadoiro.  The La Bodeguina albergue costs a princely 10 Euros (about $13.30), but it has a patio with tables, a large yard with picnic tables, and a superb view, as well as a lounge-like room and free wi-fi.  A single laptop is available for surfing, in exchange for a donation that we see no one pay.  The bathrooms and showers are all new.  The showers even have six hydro-massage heads that can be angled to effect stimuli from the thighs to the chest.

The menu has more variety than we’ve seen, and the entire operation is run by two men, one of whom speaks English, and other of whom is simply very helpful.

However.  The menu showed a picture of an assortment of sliced fruit beautifully arrayed in a bowl.

“Son las frutas fresco?” I asked, hoping that meant, Are the fruits fresh?

“Si,” he said.  But the kitchen was not open, he explained.  Then he shrugged and went into the kitchen.  Amazing!  He was going to get me something to eat anyway.  I was feeling very grateful.

He returned with a bowl of canned peaches in sugary syrup.

There are more flies in Spain than in the rest of the world combined.  This is called a hypothesis.  I now ask graduate students from around the world to prove me wrong.

The downsides of the albergue:  for perhaps 50 people, it had two bathrooms, each containing a toilet sans privacy and two showers.

Part 7:  Mom and Food, Part 27

Mom tried to buy bread this morning, in a small shop, and was told it was reserved.  “All of it?” she asked, incredulous, pointing to the array of bread.  Yes.  All.  Reserved.

Wednesday.  In Ventas de Naron, Mom and I were sitting at an outdoor table, reading.  She wanted to know how to ask what time dinner was.  I told her.  She practiced it a few times before she pulled out her notebook and pen.  “This is an important sentence,” she explained.  She got up to go to the café.

“And if she says seven-thirty, I’m going to slap her.”

High Up in El Acebo, We Are Served a Human Heart

Afternoon in El Acebo

In the end, I did not perform much of a ritual myself at the Cruz de Ferro. It takes time to create a meaningful space, or a meaningful moment in time, and I hadn’t invested that time in the Cruz de Ferro. I spent a few minutes mindfully intending to let go of some of the hurt I’d felt in my marriage and, especially, during the divorce, and the guilt and sadness I felt about my own many mistakes, and the hurt they had caused, especially before and during my marriage. And that was all. I did not want to suck from the mountain all the oxygen that my mother needed to breathe.

At first the terrain leading away from the Cruz de Ferra was easy – a slight downhill slope

El Acebo

on compacted white sand bounded by milled lumber. To our left ran a road whose many patches bespoke a great deal of freezing in the winter. Before long, though, we entered an all-downhill, punishing, rocky single-track trail, some of it straight down. Well before we reached El Acebo, Mom was convinced we’d already gone well beyond 16 kilometers.

But no, tiny El Acebo was a 16.7 kilometer hike. It had been hidden for some time, so when we saw it, earlier than expected, some compensation for the more common false summit, we were happily surprised. It sits high up on a small mountain above the valley below, so small, so isolated, that for the first time on the trip my Vodafone USB got no reception.

The village was a typical Camino village: a single road bounded by a few houses, and a handful of albergues and hotels with restaurants attached. We chose the Meson. Mom was ready to eat.

Carrie ordered the Botilla del Bierzo, which on the menu was translated as “pork with paprika”. According to the menu, it was a specialty of the Bierzo area. I ordered the same.

The very nice waitress set down our plates. On it was boiled cabbage, chickpeas, chorizo, and a beating, pulsating, human heart.

At least that’s exactly what it looked like: a heart covered in paprika. Tentatively I set my

The pulsating human heart in El Acebo

knife upon it and began to saw at it. Grudgingly it parted in two, yielding unrecognizable chunks of white (bone marrow?), shards of pig bone, and something that was like, but not quite, meat.

I turned to Mom, the expert, and said, quietly, so that Carrie would not hear, “Could this be organ meat?”

She peered at it. “I have no idea,” she said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Try it.”

Ha ha. I haven’t fallen for that since my age was counted in the single digits. My German aunt Elfriede, post-mortem benefactress of Mom’s trip here, had once submerged something utterly revolting in some opaque white soup – it may have been tripe – but my boy-sonar had found it effortlessly, and I had refused to touch even the bowl.

“See what it is,” I said to Carrie. “You’ll probably really love it,” I added.

She shook her head. “I’m not touching it.”

Foiled.

Eventually I caught the waitress’ attention. “Perdon,” I said, politely, holding up a single, graceful finger. “Una pregunta.” A question. “What the hell is this?”

Actually, I said, “Que es eso?” What is this?

She pointed to the casing of the heart-thing. “Thees is the tripe,” she said, “and thees” – now pointing at the stuff in the middle, “is from here.” She put her hand on her back. “It is the goats.”

“The goats?”

“Jes,” she said. Her own face a question mark, she watched my face to see if I was satisfied.

I smiled enormously. My smile was like those stars that could easily swallow the sun a million times. “Thank you so much,” I said. She went away.

“What did she say it was?” Carrie said. I turned back to the table, still smiling.

“Stomach lining and guts,” I said. Carrie’s mouth bulged as if she would puke. Neither one of us touched our human hearts again. Mom tried a tiny bit of mine and made a face. “All the meat I’ve eaten here tastes very strongly of the animal. It’s too strong. Very pig-like.”

The web says:

The “botillo” is a meat product made in the Leonese county of El Bierzo, with different parts from the butchering of the pig (above all ribs and tail), chopped up and marinated in salt, paprika, garlic and other natural spices. It is packed in natural skins and, before being eaten, it must go through the smoking and part-curing processes. Its exterior appearance is defined by the shape of the skin, although it normally takes on a globe shape, reddish grey in colour and weighing between approximately 500g and 1,600g per piece. When cut, it shows deep red tones, a firm consistency and an intense aroma. It is eaten cooked and accompanied by vegetables, above all cabbage, potatoes, chickpeas and chorizo pepper. It is a simple, hearty dish with no great secrets in the preparation, but it is one of the stars of El Bierzo’s cuisine.

The waitress was very apologetic when she realized we’d been surprised. I told her it wasn’t her fault, it was the menu (“pork with paprika” it had said, benignly). When I saw her a little later, on break outside the restaurant, she winked at me. Who winks anymore?

In the afternoon, Carrie lost one of her money purses. Luckily she had taken Mom’s advice not to put all her money in the same place, so she lost only about 15 Euros. But she was still upset. At dinner, I asked Mom if she still wanted wine, as she’d mentioned earlier, to celebrate the Day of the Cruz.

“Yes!” Carrie said, a little too enthusiastically. You want wine? we both asked her. “I need it,” she said.

At dinner, the waitress moved to stand right next to me, brushing my side, while I looked at the wine list, and went so far as to lean on my shoulder as I explained that their being out of my preferred desert was nothing short of a disaster. When she had gone, Mom and Carrie started laughing. “What?” I said. “We think she likes you,” Mom said.

Women in the United States never leaned on me or winked at me, so I left what for Spain was an unusually large tip. “She can have that,” I said, “instead of me.” Carrie made a face.

The Cross of Chemo

Chemo and the Cross

A week before I left Newark for Bilbao, I called Mom’s doctor at her request. “I wasn’t able to hear everything he told me about the cancer,” she had said. “Can you call him and talk to him? I don’t want to know what he says right now, though.” A few days after I left a message, he reached me in New Jersey. What follows are my largely unedited, contemporaneous notes of our conversation:

Reminds me she had ovarian cancer ten years ago last January. Treated with surgery and chemotherapy. They have followed her with CAT scans and PET-CT scans. The latter uses a sugar molecule that goes into rapidly dividing cells, such as cancer, and so those cells take up the sugar and create hot spots on the scan. They found three hot spots in May 2010. The pelvic spot went away, he says he has no idea why. [It went away after Mom radically changed her diet.] There were then two others, one higher up in retroperitineum and one in the top of the right lung.

She saw a doctor in Germany who convinced her that she should stop treating them with careful neglect and so we took one out of her lung. It looks like it’s not ovarian cancer, it’s lung cancer. Unfortunately, they save tissue only for five years, and while he wishes they had never thrown out her cancer slides [from when she had ovarian cancer 10 years ago], there is now no way of comparing the two.

Her recent surgery got completely around the one in her lung and it was small enough you wouldn’t do anything else. Now we’re left with the one in the back part of her abdomen, the retroperitineum. It’s in a touchy place to have a radiologist do a biopsy, located between the inferior vena cava and aorta, neither one of which you want to hit with a needle. Any biopsy would have to be done surgically.

If the lung cancer had been ovarian cancer instead, they could have convinced the radiation therapist to use radiation. But it looks like lung cancer, so the radiation oncologist isn’t keen to give radiation to what he doesn’t know. Both cancers will respond to radiation. He recommends she consider surgery, have it removed, then put in meda-clips so radiation therapist knows how far out to radiate, and radiate. Another option would be to cut as much out as possible and then do chemotherapy, because ovarian responds very well to chemo.

In February 2006 the last spot first showed up in a PET, 15mm, size of a dime, and in later scans it was 12, then 20, 19, 18, and in March it was 35mm in Europe (a little bigger than a quarter).

So she’s decided she’s going to do the Camino del Santiago [sic] and come back to get another PET scan, in October or November. See if it’s still the only spot. Options:

1. Surgery and biopsy
a. Consider chemo
b. Consider radiation
2. Radiate without a biopsy. He says it’s a good question to ask (as I did) why it matters defining the cancer, if both respond to radiation. The radiation oncologists say it’s not proven to be cancer and they don’t like to radiate that. Why not? I ask. Because radiation has a lot of side-effects. It would be close to her spine and intestine, could give her chronic problems, adhesions, diarrhea. 5000 rads in traditional radiation. Would CyberKnife (he calls it gamma knife) be a better idea to avoid the radiation? Yes, but it’s very expensive.
3. Do nothing

CA-125 score has gone up and down and so is not reliable as a measure.

I ask about the Stage 4 conclusion. Why is there not more urgency? Because they’ve watched it for five years and it’s not any worse, he says. Some would say when ovarian comes back, you do nothing until it becomes symptomatic. Some think recurrent ovarian is not curable, so one just controls symptoms (he’s not sure he agrees it’s not curable). He has one patient who had ovarian cancer 20, 15, and 12 years ago, each time with surgery and chemo and has not had a fourth recurrence. Everyone else who has had chemo in his practice has not had it go away.

Inge feels normal, and it’s hard to talk people into doing something when they feel okay. More spots, or the existing one in her abdomen, near her spinal column, growing would be ominous signs.

Radiation would be trying to hit a quarter-size spot. Blood vessels tolerate radiation well, but spinal cords don’t. Too much radiation could paralyze a person.

Would he recommend the gamma knife? She hasn’t seen the radiation oncologist in Montrose; doesn’t want to do so if she’s going to try the CyberKnife. He wouldn’t pay $50K to do it if one could do traditional radiation with high likelihood of few side-effects. He says the radiation oncologist in Montrose should give an opinion.

I ask about the nausea that was so bad for Mom the first time she had chemo. There are anti-nausea drugs available that were not on the market ten years ago, and the one she tried at $350 is now generic, and so cheaper. He has also had good results with patients treating nausea with medical marijuana.

He would not give chemo without a tissue analysis or biopsy. The chemo treatment is different for ovarian versus lung.

Is there ever a time when it begins to make sense to do scans more often than every six months? With her history, he says, no. Because things have changed so slowly over many years.

He says all of us, including physicians, in this day and age have to be judicious about how much we spend, else we run into intolerable debt.

When you’re hiking with her, you might suggest, Get that PET scan and then make a decision about doing something.

What are the risks of surgery to remove and biopsy? Inge’s pretty healthy, he says, she could do that pretty safely. Four to six weeks to recover. Risk of adhesions and thus bowel obstructions years later. Any risk of hitting the wrong thing? I ask. Yes, because you’re trying to remove as much of it as you can and doing so between two blood vessels that if nicked could cause bleeding. But surgeons are pretty good at working around it, and even if there is a lot of bleeding, they can clamp it off and close the hole. It’s easy for me to say, he says, I’m not a surgeon, but I’ve heard of that happening and surgeons take care of it. But you could get in there and find that it’s socked in around the blood vessels, get a biopsy, and get out. Put clips on it so that the radiologist knows exactly where it’s located, so you know exactly where you’re directing your radiation beam.

I say thanks as if to get off the phone. But he wants to summarize again. Adds that treatment for lung cancer, once it spreads, is more difficult to deal with than ovarian cancer. So maybe it’s time to do something definitive with this one in her ab-domen (he says it like this – ab-do-men). Any kind of cancer doesn’t typically grow this slowly, as slowly as the one in her lung and in her abdomen. They’re really not changing much, almost unheard-of over five years. Whatever she’s doing, I wouldn’t change it. Of course she’s really gotten religion with her diet and exercise in the last year, but whatever she was doing in the four years before that, that was working too.

Mom Approaches El Cruz de Ferro — the Iron Cross of Letting Go

Rabanal to El Acebo: Little Switzerland

I love the smell of cowshit, at altitude, in the morning. I’m not being glib here. It’s earthy and real, but most of all it reminds me of many of the happiest times in my life, at my uncle’s hotel-restaurant in Braunwald, Switzerland. The mountains between Rabanal and El Acebo, across a narrow valley, were shorter and below treeline, but somewhat reminiscent of Braunwald, one of my favorite places on earth. For nearly the entire day, we would walk high up on the other side of the valley ourselves, for long stretches on the ridge line.

More modern windmills on the ridges of mountains in the distance. Cold. I have on three layers, Icebreaker wool 200 weight and 320 weight, which I ski in, and a light windbreaker. Light wool gloves and a skullcap. Only my toes are cold, in spite of the five-toed wool socks. When you separate toes, as with fingers, you lose heat.

We stopped near the top of a ridge to watch the sunrise, a brilliant orange orb sending its warm light over the cold landscape. Mom was wearing a white scarf over her head. For most of the rest of the day, I would walk behind her, imagining myself supporting her, willing her upward.

We stopped in Foncebaden for Second Breakfast. It’s one of my favorite times of the day, Second Breakfast. Foncebaden itself is crumbling down. Of the few stone homes, about half are abandoned, their roofs stove in, the rocks in their walls straining to fall out like an old man’s teeth. I found out later that the albergue in Foncebadon offered – wait for it – a yoga class in the mornings.

As we walked, I asked Mom if she wanted me to dial up Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” for her on my iPod when we reached the cross.

“No,” she said. “I’m going to be emotional enough. I’ve got all sorts of emotions going on.”

“Such as?”

“Well, first, I’m just grateful I’m here. It still boggles my mind. And I feel hope. I see that tumor just hanging by a thread, and maybe when we reach the cross it’ll just fall off. All the research I’ve done says fresh air is very important in curing cancer. And exercise. We’re getting a lot of that. And no sugar. I should have already starved it by now. But I’m trying not to have expectations. Just drop the analysis and let it be. And then sometimes I get a frog that comes and sits in my throat. He’s there so often that I’ve given him a name.”

Carrie and I waited for the name. Mom was climbing, huffing.

“Well?” I said. “The name?”

“Timothy,” she said. Carrie and I laughed. We kept going up, scanning the horizon for a tall cross, the Cruz de Ferro.

Carrie was now up ahead. Mom went on. “I’m also thinking of all those who’ve passed. I think of Candy, that she has the courage to make a happy life for herself. I pray Brianna will find her way. For Kaleb to continue on his great path, but whatever he does is okay.” She walked some more, still going uphill on the rocky single-track trail. “For you, to have peace and contentment and be able to let go of anything from childhood that may still be with you.”

I sang to her a bit of sing-song that she used to sing to me in the car when I was a boy, when we drove with my grandparents through Germany and Austria on the seemingly endless trip to my uncle’s hotel-restaurant in Switzerland. “We’re almost there, we’re almost there.”

She nodded. “Schiab’st a bissl’, schiab’st a bissl’”. This was my grandmother’s Nieder-Bayerisch for “push a li’l”. “Oma’s here,” she said. “That came right into my head.”

“She’s been here all along.”

“Yes, she has. They’re all lining up now, all of them from the past.”

Scrub oak, yellowing, growing brown. The trees are short as far as the eye can see, a sign of harsh winters. Some pilgrims say they’ve heard it can snow here in summer. An Italian couple walks ahead of us. Heather lines the path, some of it already dying. My toes are still cold. My nose is running, sprinting, hurdling, as I once did not so long ago, and in the far-away past.

The path goes all the way up. It’s all single-track now, and rocky. We are gaining 1000 feet in 5 miles. “I’m going to have a heart-attack before I even get to that stupid cross,” Mom said.

I’m suddenly struck by the thought, What will I leave behind? I hadn’t bothered to think about it. I didn’t even bring a stone, or anything else, from home. I have had some thoughts come into my head. Is there anything remaining from my marriage or divorce? Any regrets, guilt, resentments? Should I let go of the fear of committing myself to writing, and all that implies? I walk on without having decided anything. I had a few more kilometers. Maybe something would come to me.

Suddenly we saw it. About two hundred yards ahead. The cross was made of a 25-foot tall wooden beam with cross-beam and stood atop a 15-foot pile of rocks. I had read that the original pile was created by Pagans. Just as many churches were converted from or built on top of Pagan temples, the Christian symbolism here was built on the rubble of Pagan religion.

More than a dozen brightly-colored pilgrims milled about the rock pile. I could see them

Up ahead, the Cruz de Ferro

posing for pictures. A handful of bikes were parked next to the pile. My heart sank. This was the space we would try to make sacred? But Mom was forging ahead, walking toward the cross as if pulled by a magnet.

Mom: Navarette, Azofra, Santo Domingo, Belorado, Burgos, Leon, El Acebo, Astorga

Catching up on entries . . .

Navarette to Azrofa

It was a 21km hike to Azofra.  It was miserable for me, between this constant runny nose and the blisters on my toes.  (This rhymes).  I tried to ignore it, but snot ran down.  My kidneys started hurting too, and I don’t know whether I can walk 15km tomorrow.  I took a shower, the water was very cool, then I washed my clothes.  I was really freezing, so I lay down.  Julio wanted to know about dinner, so we went to a little but well-stocked store.  I got ingredients to make crepes for breakfast.  Tired of all this white bread.

I’ve been buying red peppers, which are sweet and juicy, my raw vitamins and a wonderful food.  It’s already October, where has the time gone?  Julio, Marie Anne, and Cameron are walking ahead while Carrie and I will take a taxi with backpacks too.

To Santo Domingo

We got here early and the taxi driver knocked at the albergue and asked the couple who answered the door if it was okay to leave our backpacks.  Carrie and I walked around in the chilly morning, trying to find a pharmacy, but it was still too early and everything was closed.  Finally, we found a bar and we stayed there for a bit to warm up.  Then we went to the square by the big cathedral and sat in the sun, drowsy but at least warm.

Close to the albergue’s opening time, we went to a small café and had a pizza.  (That’s all they had).  It was a lovely square with old-town charm.  When we got to the albergue, Cameron was already there.  This is by far the very best albergue.  Still new and clean.  The showers have lovely hot water, and we didn’t have to re-pump it every 25 seconds.  Nice, well-equipped kitchen.  Off we went, Julio, Marie Anne, and I, searching for food.  Then we prepared it.

We all left to wander around town and see more than just bed bunks.  I wasn’t sure if I was ready and well enough to walk 24km the next day, but I was willing to try.

I got up at 5a.m. and did my morning toilette.  I ate half a red pepper and had coffee and bread.  We left at 6a.m. and it was still pitch-black, but we saw our yellow arrow.  I thought my boots would be better, but after a few kilometers, my right foot was in agony, and my two small toes hurt like the dickens.  Next chance, I took my boots off and skin was hanging off my little toe.  The other one was raw hamburger.  My H’s were in an uproar, and there was a lot of blood, which created another problem.  By the time we stopped to rest, I was in a lot of pain, and just started crying.  I couldn’t breathe for all the snot!

Cameron came over to rub my back and give me some of his good energy.  I taped up my toes and went to the bathroom and took care of that problem.  They asked if I wanted to take the bus, but I didn’t want to.  I wanted to walk.  I just wanted to slow down, so that I could tend to things and not be run to the next place.  I also took an ibuprofen, and it started to kick in.  I was feeling a little better.  And then click-clacked the rest of the 12km.

Then we were near Burgos, in a private albergue (our first) with a swimming pool and other lovely amenities.  I told Cameron that I was ready to “throw the SOBs away” – meaning the boots.  Nothing feels as good as a good hot shower after 24km in hot weather.  I took the layers of band-aid off my little toe and the skin was hanging loose and pus was seeping out.  I wondered what possible function this toe has, other than making my life miserable.  We all rested before dinner, then went over to the restaurant.  I ordered mixed salad and roasted chicken.

The salad was all right, but the chicken came in a soup plate with fat/oil a half an inch thick in the bottom.  And in this greasy pond were the French fries (which I didn’t eat).  All that on top of those greasy eggs with jamon that I had eaten earlier.  It looks like pancetta but is too salty for me.

I fed it to the many cats that run loose here in Spain.  There was a DVD presentation of the Camino, set to lovely music.  We were delighted when we recognized some of the places we’ve been, and the assorted pain and difficulty associated with them.  This albergue has a kitchen, but no pots.  It’s damn difficult to get a cup of coffee.

The next day, we got on the bus, which was 35 minutes late.  The ride took just 45 minutes or so, but we saved two days of walking.

Burgos

Burgos is absolutely lovely.  The old-town center has many squares with shops, cafes, bars, and restaurants.  Julio bought us some expensive jamon and cheese, presenting them like treasures, and we had a picnic on a park bench by the river.  The huge cathedral had masterly stonemasonry.  We decided to get a ticket and see the inside.  My goodness, all that GOLD!  Richly decorated altars, to whose glory?

The albergue was near, new as well, and huge.  There were seven or eight floors, a large kitchen, showers for each group of four, so that made it nice.  Marie Anne, Carrie, and I walked around trying to find some clothes, but a big problem was that fall fashion is in place, and then the sizes only went up to 44, or a 12 in the U.S.  My toe hurt worse and I was limping.

I took a shower and put on make-up, and waited for everyone to get ready for dinner.  It would be a thank-you to Julio and Marie Anne for their invaluable help.  We will leave tomorrow to take a bus to Leon.

 Leon

October 4.  That was a nice and fine dinner, and good wine too.  We even had dessert, tiramisu for me.  I woke up at 4a.m. and after lying there for a while, I got my book and used my little light under the covers to read.  Later, Julio was awake, and we went downstairs for some automated coffee.  He then got the hospitalero to look at my toe.  He left and came back with betadyne and asked if I had a needle and thread, which I did.  He threaded these through the blisters, and stuff came out.  He also made sure that I understood how vital it was to take care of this at once in the next albergue, in Leon.  I then bought more stuff at the pharmacy.

We went to have breakfast near the cathedral, and it was another gorgeous day.  Julio said it wasn’t quite normal.  Then we went to the bus station to say goodbye, and that wasn’t easy.  I wonder if I’ll ever see them again.

We decided to go to the Museum of Human Evolution.  An impressive building and an amazing past, ancestors and all.  Lunch at a nice square, though it was windy.  Now we’re just killing time and flies in the lovely sun and surroundings.  We met pilgrims from earlier etapas and greeted one another like old friends.  Several said they were following the blog.

The bus trip covered two hours and boring landscape:  hot, land, sand, nothingness.

Leon

We arrived around 7 and took a cab to the albergue, then hurried across the street to have dinner, which was a piece of frozen lasagna, heated on one side, with laboratory cheese, for 10 Euros.  Then I had heartburn.

The hospitalero was one of the nicest and most accommodating of the Camino so far.  Smiling, too!  We had no pillows, so I used my jacket.  Woke up with my toes throbbing, but got up and ready for breakfast:  bread, coffee, jam (and margarine, my other nemesis).  We waited outside for Cameron.  A group of German men sat close by and asked questions about where I came from, where I lived, reasons for the Camino.  I started talking and pretty soon there were a couple more.  They asked who Carrie was, and how she came to be with us.  I told them that at first I had had reservations, and had said I was not bringing another teenager to Europe.

Then I told them the rules I had painted for her.  One, get up at 5:30a.m.  Two, no whining.  Three, no time for hair-fussing.  Four, no make-up (since rescinded a few times, for both of us).  Five, no going off alone.  One of the men said, “Wait, wait!  I want to write this down!”  Sure enough, he got his notebook.  Another man said this was the pastor, and he would use the material for his Sunday sermon.

They asked Carrie what her best and worst experience was so far, and she said without hesitation the Pyrenees.  They asked further if she regretted being here, and she shook her head vigorously no, and assured them that this was the best experience.  We took off, leaving the packs behind, and walked up some small cobblestoned streets.  The only other presence was the street-sweeping machine, cleaning up after the fiesta mess of the night before.  “Oh, gosh,” I groaned.  “Not another fiesta.  Everything will be closed.”  Sure enough.  But then we found a small café and had some form of a Danish (sigh).

The cathedral was just as impressive in architecture as so many others.  We went inside and heard Gregorian chanting.  We sat down and listened, being still and in the moment, while looking at the many gorgeous stained-glass windows in brilliant colors.  Cameron sat beside me, holding “the spot” on my back, then we left and looked through the town.  Lovely houses with lots of flowers and beautiful, colored paint.  We saw some tents, and these were the beginning of a medieval festival.  Many, many different items and so many colors and smells.

Drawback was, walking so much.  My toe hurt something fierce and at one point it was stinging like mad.  I sat on a bench and unwrapped it to see that a thread had cut off the circulation.  I am so sick and tired of pain.  We did have a baked potato while we rested.  Cameron is being frustrated not knowing how to help me.  I thought I needed to go back and take my shoes and socks off, just air out my toes and let them dry.  Later we found a Farmacia and bought Compeet for my toes.  Then we saw an Indian restaurant and decided to come back later for dinner.  A group of people sat outside in the yard of the albergue and we all visited.  Then a young man from Chicago and a woman from Denmark (who speaks at least four languages) joined us at the Indian restaurant.  We sat outside and had a really good meal, although in very small portions.

Lots of people started to move and go to different plazas for another fiesta.  Tables and chairs everywhere, families with their kids and/or dogs all around.  Old, young, visiting, laughing, and enjoying their fiesta.  It’s a nice way to see your neighbor, in a different setting, other than court.  Tomorrow we’ll take the bus just to the outside of Leon and walk the rest.

Astorga

Lovely place here, too, and we LOVE the albergue.  Nice couple greeted us warmly, with smiles.  The woman, Marlene, immediately showed me a well-stocked kitchen.  The room had only two sets of bunk beds, and nice, soft mattresses and pillows.  Clean, too.  There are nooks and crannies, a terrace, and a park nearby.  Great town square and fantastic looking Gaudi house, almost like Hogwarts or some wizard’s home.  I went shopping and immediately made a nice lunch.

Later, Carrie and I went to town and bought curlers and tweezers, and hamburger at a nice carneceria, so I could make German hamburgers.  We ate on the terrace, which had a beautiful view, vast landscape with church towers, houses, poplar trees, and nice, nice weather.

We rested some, and went to see the first (?) chocolate factory, but it was more about memorabilia.  Then I bought new shoes.  The salesman was getting a bit nervous, as he didn’t have any more wide shoes to accommodate my right toes and bunion problems.  I finally found a pair of Salomons with Gore-Tex, slipped in and said “Ahhh!”  Cost:  135 Euros.  But the first 50 meters, and more, the next morning were pure heaven.  I wore them for about five hours, before having to change into sandals.

Someone said there were electrical lines on the Camino.  I envisioned these earthly currents running gently along my spine like some kind of Terra RX.

We hiked 22 kilometers with only a couple of stops.  One was in a lovely bar.  The bathroom had lights, enough paper, soap, and hot water!  All women pilgrims immediately brightened, and we thanked Pilar for these small luxuries.  She told us how important a clean and healthy liver is, and how that fact translates into happy, smiling people.  “All the poison is in the liver,” she told us.  She had a beautiful basket on the bar with fruits and veggies in it.

We came upon some strange but melodious sounds.  A young woman held a saucer-looking instrument that had several round indentations, and she struck and stroked it with her hands, thus making it emit this Tibetan-like melody.  We stayed a few minutes, then went on.

El Acebo

We finally came to the Albergue Pilar, and a profusion of flowers in the courtyard.   Tables and chairs with pilgrims sunning themselves and conversing.  No town to speak of, and the only grocery store had closed, so we had no groceries for the next day’s mountain crossing.  I had a big plate of pasta with oily sauce (tomato?), which promptly gave me heartburn.  We met Barbara from Bavaria again, and Rainer from Cologne.  Later on, there was Hans from Switzerland, who had walked all the way from there.  His Swiss dialect made him so familiar, and reminded me very much of my brother.  I really liked staying at the albergue there.

After a shower, I put curlers in my hair and the grandmother was surprised that there were no stickers to hold them.  I told her I wanted to look nice for my visit to the cross.

Astorga to Rabanal

Astorga to Rabanal del Camino, 22km. 

Friday, October 7, 2011.  I thought I’d have a solid night’s sleep, but I didn’t get to sleep until nearly 11, and between Mom’s snoring, Barbara’s (according to Mom), and apparently my own (per Carrie), the morning hours came far too quickly.  Mom got up far earlier than we did, as is her wont, and went to the kitchen to make some German-style potatoes.  She found the kitchen a disaster from the pilgrim revels of the night before (Mom thought “guitar-playing and drumming” would be too charitable, but there was strumming and banging involved).  The kitchen was the classic tragedy of the commons, but, Mom being Mom, she cleaned it.

We were on the road at about 7:40a.m.  It was cool, cool enough for two layers of Icebreaker wool.  Unlike in days past, when, after 30 or 60 minutes I’d take off the top layer, I wore both layers the whole 22 kilometers.  In fact, after my hands stopped functioning in any way but to hold my poles, I added gloves.  And my five-toed socks.  My nose ran the entire way, ran so hard and fast I feared it might reach Santiago without me.

Mom was pleased with the new Salomon trekking shoes she had bought yesterday.  “Oh,” she

Mom's dancing in the shoe store blurs the shot

said.  “I’m going to sleep in these!”  For the first time since we began the Camino, she walked an entire stage in one pair of footwear, and did not resort to her sandals.

Even before we’d left Astorga, we came upon a wonderful aroma of fennel.  It was like walking through a licorice factory.  The blue of the dawning sky was beyond description.  The power lines sizzled and buzzed overhead – something I’ve heard only in Spain.  In Murias de Rechivaldo, we stopped for Second Breakfast at a small but cozy café run by a woman named Pilar.  She addressed me as “senor,” and the bathrooms, to Mom’s delight, had both towels and soap, a rarity on the Road.  (As long as I’m wearing wicking wool, I find towels unnecessary).  These things would earn her a larger tip.

Pilar was playing Tibetan mantras on the stereo.  “For patience,” she said, pronouncing it “pot-ience”.  “And for compassion.”

Senora Pilar

 

“There isn’t enough of that along the Road,” Mom said.  Pilar agreed.  They discussed Pilar’s liver problems, and her efforts to remain positive, and they shared tips on alternative medicine.  Pilar said that good food had changed her life and her health — notably, she no longer ate jamon.  Meanwhile, I talked with a Galician who has lived in Alberta for many years, his Canadian partner, and an Italian woman from Bologna.

The countryside between Astorga and Rabanal is sparsely populated.  As the earth’s population climbs, I hope that people, especially those in China and India, will keep Spain in mind.  The semi-arid terrain reminded me of the land in and around the Great Basin of the western United States:  yellow grasses, light-green shrubs, heather, broom, wild

Stone corral

thyme, desert flowers, and a few types of dominant trees, none of them very tall, such as scrub oak.  In the distance I saw a few copses of aspens.

It should have been no surprise to see a sign, in El Ganso, advertising a Cowboy Museum.  (I couldn’t do it.  Not after the chocolate museum).  The soil was now red, too, reminding me that Colorado got its name from the Spanish – color red, color rado (red is now rojo in Spanish, but their explorers swept through the Colorado territory centuries ago).

We stopped for First Lunch in El Ganso and I took some notes and checked my email.  Mom fed stray cats bread with butter – “Have you noticed they only eat it if it has butter on it?” – and the cats all ended up standing on my feet because she was throwing the crusts between them.

For the first time since before Burgos – that is, since far on the other side of the plains of Castilla and Leon – we saw walls made of stone.  Some were in the fields, too large to have been a house, too small to enclose an entire property.  I decided they must have been corrals for sheep and cows.  The villages, too, were made of stone.  Roofs were made of mined slate or even thatch.  In the distance, hills, the ridgelines of which were covered with modern windmills too large for Don Quixote to tilt at.

We came upon a tree under which a young man in long curly hair had set up a table.  He had been to Santiago and was now making his way back . . . to somewhere.  For a donation, he was offering coffee, chai, hummus, and cake.  Nearby, and much more alluringly, a slender, raven-haired woman played a haunting flying-saucer-like

Spanish woman plays a hang in the middle of nowhere

instrument called a hang.  Invented by a Swiss, it had small dimples spaced around its perimeter, and by tapping the places in between, she caused it to make different notes.  The sound wasn’t too unlike the music played by the alien ship in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”.  Hank, a young Dutchman, tried his hand at it, too.  I bought one of the woman’s CDs, and we moved on.

Hank and I walked for a while.  He told me about a man who was on the Camino with his daughter’s ashes, and who was walking an astonishing 75 kilometers per day.

He told me he himself was on the Camino to prove, as he put it, “that I can finish something.”  Shin splints had resulted in his early departure from the army, and his confidence had suffered.

“You thought something was wrong with you?” I said.  “You worried that it wasn’t just the injury but that you were weak?”

“Something just like that,” he said.  He was now traveling the world for a year, and filming his exploits.  He said he wanted to learn how to meditate, and for about an hour I talked to him about it.  Hank is probably the first person I’ve ever heard say, of English, “I love the language.”

“Why?”

“It’s just so easy and smooth.  Dutch is like German, they both sound so harsh.”

“To my ear,” I said, “Dutch sounds a little like German, but also a little like English, so in the end it sounds like the kind of language I would make up, if I were going to make up a language that sounded like complete nonsense.”

Rabanal Albergue entrada

Rabanal

The albergue in Rabanal was utterly charming.  Stone walls, wooden beams, an outdoor bar and patio, flowers and flowering bushes scattered about.  There’s even a mistletoe tree, about twelve feet tall.  I thought mistletoe grew only at Christmas, and near doorways.  The proprietress didn’t speak a lick of English, or anything other than Spanish, but she was all smiles, as was her mother, who must have been in her eighties.  The daughter, who was in her late fifties, walked through the dorm and would cry Hola!, and Mom and I answered a few times, until we realized that she was playing peek-a-boo with pilgrims sitting outside the windows.

Once I’d dropped my pack I headed to the restroom.  The light switch was not in the same room as the toilet stall.  That should have been my first warning.  Sure enough, after a few minutes of contemplation, I was cast into darkness.  This saves on electricity, but it necessitates the use of more paper.  I need to research how the Spanish are apparently able to do their business so quickly.  Is it all the oil in their diet?

Mom sat down at a table next to Barbara, the Bavarian woman, and Rainer, from

Okay, girls, this is a whole mistletoe tree. You know what to do.

Cologne.  He’d had a hard day of walking, he said, after having had too much of a local spirit.  Rainer said he was on the Camino because he’d had a rough two to three years, and he wanted to stop thinking about all his problems.

“Is it working?” I asked.  He shrugged.

Barbara had beaten cancer four years earlier.  She initially wanted to walk the Camino in order to spend some time by herself, but now, she said, she was feeling dankbarkeit, thankfulness or gratitude, for her life.  While away from her normal life, she realized how good she had it.  She had been married 26 years and she and her husband still felt about one another as they had when they met.  She had wonderful daughters.  She wanted everything, she said, to stay just the same.  There, I thought, was a dangerous thought to attach oneself to.

Atop the iglesias in Rabanal, the little churches, were more storks’ nests.  One of them, inside, was crumbling and rustic — perfect.  We went there for a Vespers mass, blessedly short, and attempted, in Latin, that odd reading/singing-without-a-clear-melody that Catholics are somehow able to do, perhaps right out of the womb.  We read a Psalm about the Lord crushing our enemies, and then we read from Romans about always doing things to please our neighbors.

“You did that really well,” Mom said to me.  “Like you’ve done it before.  But that priest was not going to let you be lead singer, no way.”

As we exited the church, another group of worshippers was waiting outside.  Two women looked at my footwear aghast, as if I’d just walked across the face of the Lord, stopped, backed up, and wiped my feet.  Soon the whole group had turned to watch me walking away, for all I know clutching their rosaries and crossing themselves.  It’s this sort of thing that could make even a sociopath self-conscious.

Across a narrow road from a hotel that had wi-fi, I sat down with my computer in the cold.  Vodafone charges me by the gigabyte, so when I want to upload pictures to Facebook or the blog, I use free wi-fi.  A cat sat across the road from me, near the door of the restaurant.  We exchanged a knowing glance, we two scavengers.

Morning in Rabanal del Camino:  An Ode to My Fellow Pilgrims

It must have gotten into the 30s last night.  Even with a blanket and two layers of clothes, I was cold.  There was very little snoring, at least that I heard.  I call this a miracle, and credit St. James himself.  Mom said Rainer was sawing away because he’d drunk two bottles of wine the night before.  In the morning he was nursing both a café con leche, from the bar and, in his left hand, a Coke.  He said he felt awful and didn’t know why.

“Alcohol?” I said.

“Could be,” he said.

Although we’re no longer at risk of walking in hot weather, at this altitude and with current weather reports, pilgrims continue to insist on going to bed before 10 and getting up before 7a.m. to begin walking.  And thus begins the second movement of each night’s Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark (shout out to Yuka for the 80s reference).  At first, one tentative soul glides around, quiet as can be.  He is soon joined by another pilgrim or two.  There is rustling, but it’s tentative.

But then the broken-window phenomenon sets in.  With each new person, and each new noise, comes more permission for the next person to be louder.  Soon the rustling turns into a manic stuffing, and then a loud zipping, and sotto voce voices turn into whispers fit for artillerymen, and eventually, no matter how many bleary-eyed people are still enclosed in sleeping bags, pilgrims are now calling out to one another, stomping about, slamming

These are externalized costs, in economist-speak.

doors.  It’s truly amazing that these are the same seemingly normal, well-adjusted people we have met the night before.  Then again, once on the trail, some of them will also be unable to bury, or even to lift a rock to cover up, their used toilet paper.

I’m used to a wilderness ethic, at least in America, that says you pack out whatever you bring in.  In true wilderness areas, that even includes your own waste.  That’s what plastic bags are for.  The Camino, by contrast, needs either to educate pilgrims better or to provide trash cans.  Pilgrims disrespect their fellows, the locals, and the environment with their trash.

Tomorrow, we will finally reach the Cruz de Ferro, the highest point on the Camino and, by tradition, the place where pilgrims leave something behind — where they let go of something.  It is probably the most important part of the Camino for Mom.  “I’m going to leave my cancer there,” she said, a few months ago.  But will she?  And isn’t the hope itself dangerous?

 

León to Astorga, City of Chocolate

León to Astorga

To give Mom’s toe more time to heal, and because walking from León to Santiago would

Gaudí's Palace

have required an aggressive 18 kilometers a day, every day, for 12 days, we took a short bus ride from Burgos to Astorga.  Astorga is a pleasant little town.  Marie Anne had recommended that we be sure to stop here.  There is an embarrassing wealth of cathedrals and churches for such a small town, and a Museum of Chocolate, which Carrie was determined to see.  The old town in which we’re staying sits on a bluff overlooking the surrounding countryside.

Legend has it that both Santiago and St. Paul preached in Astorga.  Both legends seem to me unlikely, but the city did merit a bishopric of its own.  Because it’s at the foot of two very steep climbs, it became a place on the Camino for travelers to rest up before the next ascent.  As a result, there were once more hostels here than anywhere but Burgos.

Astorga was originally a Celtic settlement and in 14 BCE became a Roman stronghold in what was known as Asturica.  Still visible today are the ruins of a sumptuous private home, complete with baths (featuring, as in the baths I’ve seen in Israel, hot, cold, and

Ruins of a Roman Villa

even tepid water), and the town’s walls. Plinius called the city urbs magnifica, “magnificent city”, but most of what the Romans built was destroyed when the Visigoth Teodorico II defeated the Suevi tribe that had settled the area after the fall of Rome. The Moors later destroyed the Visigothic city.  After the campaigns of Alfonso I of Asturias (739-757) against the Moors, the city was abandoned until the 11th century, when it became a major stop on the Camino.  The city was unusually welcoming to its Jewish residents until 1492, when all Jews were either forcibly converted, killed, or expelled from Spain.

Astorga has a fine cathedral, to judge from the outside.  But both times we arrived it was

Astoga Cathedral

closed, so we’ll never know what’s inside.  It might have held the Holy Grail, or a BMW Z8.  We ran into the same problem at the neo-Gothic, fairytale Bishop’s Palace designed by the great and whimsical Antonio Gaudi.

Happily, in Astorga there is a fine little albergue.  The owners or managers are a Spanish couple, and the volunteer hospitalerosare German, this time a couple from a town near Koblenz.  Mom was utterly delighted with the kitchen, which led to a patio with a view for

Mom and a view of and from the Patio at the Astorga Albergue

many miles, and she could not have been happier about immediately going shopping and making lunch – German-style hamburger patties with onions and German potato salad, along with white asparagus, raw red peppers, banana slices, and grapes.

We got a room with a view – and the room holds only four people, the fourth being Barbara, a woman of a certain age from near Munich, whose daughter was once a satisfied exchange student in Iowa.  She has that Bavarian accent that reminds me of my relatives, and childhood, in Bavaria.  Barbara’s crown has broken, so she is off to see a dentist.  Curiously, this happened to another pilgrim just a few days ago.

I’m tired today.  I didn’t get much sleep last night.  At least one man, and maybe two, sounded like nothing so much as a motorcycle starting up.  I am becoming an aficionado of snoring sounds.  It’s like Nabokov, collecting and documenting butterflies, only with more rage.  Truly, hostels need to provide those little anti-snore strips and require that snorers use them.  It should also be made kosher for other pilgrims to wake a snorer without a strip and ask him to get one or to banish himself from the albergue, if not from society entirely.

I am looking forward to a greater probability of a full night’s sleep.  It would depress me beyond measure for Barbara’s crown, say, to get broken again.

Counting another bus trip, we’ll have about 169 kilometers to go, out of the original 800+.  If we budget 11 days (we leave from Lisbon on October 22, but wanted to spend some time in Portugal), then we need to cover 15.4 kilometers per day.  That’s easily doable, if we can avoid injuries and other health issues.  Apparently one must cover the last 100 kilometers to get the special badge of the pilgrim.  Or maybe it’s an embossed certificate from the Pope, along with an accounting of the sins remitted (and how does he know?  But then, Santa Claus knows, so why can’t the Pope know?)  Julio told us that in Santiago, the townsfolk offer to host pilgrims in their own homes, and that there is some kind of ceremony at the cathedral where the pilgrims’ names are called out publicly.

XOCOLATL

One proud native informed us that Astorga was the site of the first manufacture of chocolate in Europe.  (He also said the first shop was in Aachen, Germany).  I wasn’t able to confirm this with Google, and the Museo de Chocolate, for which we had high hopes, was of no help.  The museum appears to have been carved out of the living quarters of someone’s home, and it offers less an education in things chocolate than a collection of old chocolate-making tools.  But its curators’ primary interest seems to have been Spanish-language chocolate advertising in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  Somewhere in the world, a Ph.D. student with an esoteric thesis will be very happy someday.

The Spanish were the first to bring chocolate to the Old World, and like so much else, they got it from the Aztecs.  Montezuma drank the stuff eight times a day, and believed it was the key to good health.  When Hernán Cortés, the conquistador who destroyed Aztec civilization, broke into Montezuma’s palace, in 1591, to rob his treasury of its gold and silver, he was astonished to find only a truck-load of cocoa beans.  Cortés brought Xocolatl! to Spain, where the bitter stuff was made more palatable to European tastes by mixing the ground roasted beans with sugar and vanilla.  When more and more sugar was added, it became edible to Americans.

León, Our Favorite Hospitalero, and a Brilliant Cathedral

In Burgos two nights ago, a man shouted out in his sleep, twice. I see him on the podium in Santiago.

The Santa María de Carbajal Albergue

Carrie in León

In León, the Santa María de Carbajal hostel is a donativo, a donation-based hostel, and it’s connected to a convent. (The nuns appeared to have been warned of my coming, for they were not in evidence). Since the original Convento de San Marcos, founded in 1152, separated men’s and women’s dormitories, the men in León have been separated from the women. This is because, according to a presumably ancient document referred to in my guidebook, “it is a dishonest thing to have women and men in a single dormitory”, and the “quality of people who come to the hospice are not of high caliber.”

Among dozens of men in our all-male dorm the first night in León, only one snored. One. In the co-ed dorms we’ve slept in during the last two weeks, we always had at least a half-dozen. Based on last night’s statistically valid scientific sample, I have provisionally concluded

Leon Street Scene

that snoring is evolutionarily adaptive. Snoring must be something men do only to attract the preferred sex. (The snorer in León’s all-male dorm, it must be concluded, was gay). Further study will be required to discover why the preferred sex is actually attracted by the schnarcher. I leave this to future Nobel laureates.

The hostel did not provide pillows, so, having heard that the windows would be left open at night, I slept in my clothes and kept a few more on hand, and packed everything else – including my camera case and FiveFingers – into a makeshift pillow.

The award for best hospitalero on the Camino will be hard to wrest from the gentle hands of Thomas Schlitt-Krebs, of Heidelberg, Germany. Thomas seemed to be everywhere, at all times, speaking at least English and Spanish in addition to German. (For all I know he spoke French, too). I saw him pouring coffee for people, and even mixing in their milk. He led pilgrims to their bunks. He gave out taxi numbers. He gave advice on what to see and do. We talked about the biophysics of running and walking. And always he had that brilliant smile, and an infectious lovingkindness.

And he went an extra mile for Mom. After we decided to stay an extra night at the

Guys Waiting for a Bus in Leon

albergue, he led Mom past a room not yet filled up and put her in the same room as the night before – which she and Carrie had had to themselves. For this he got grief from a French hospitalera, who insisted on the rules: people must fill up space in the proper order, so Mom should be slotted into the dorm room that still had vacancies. But Thomas was firm, and told Mom that he had told the hospitalera he would take the matter up with the sisters if he had to. “I prayed for you last night,” he told Mom the next morning.

He asked her if the Camino was, for her, a religious pilgrimage. She said it was not. She explained that her father, a Lutheran, had been disowned by his family for marrying my Oma, a Catholic, and that she, Mom, had had some unhappy experiences in her Catholic school. “I have a lot of issues with that church,” she said.

He nodded. “I understand completely. You must believe in something, though, or you wouldn’t be here.”

“Yes,” she said. “I do. I felt the Camino wasn’t even my decision, but that it called me.” She doesn’t put what guides her (I deleted the misleading “what she believes”) into words, and she seems to have arrived at the same place I have, which is that the explanation is far less important than the attitudes and behavior that result.

León

It’s tempting to think León is named for a lion, but in fact it comes from the Roman 7th Le/gi/on, which founded a camp on this site in the year 70 CE, just as the first Jewish War was getting underway in Israel. The Romans wanted to protect the Galician gold mines from the grubby hands of the indigenous population. The Romans worked tirelessly from here for 350 years in their attempt to conquer the barbarians of northwest Spain. It was for naught, of course, because the Roman Empire would fall near the end of that time, and León then saw a succession of Visigothic, Muslim, and Christian rulers.

After we had arrived at the albergue, I found Mom holding court with an audience of four

Mom in Leon

of five German men. One of them, their priest, was taking notes. “Good God, man!” I wanted to cry. “She sees you taking notes, none of us will ever eat or sleep again!” He had run for his notebook when Mom told him of her original rules for Carrie: get up as early as five, no time for fussing with hair or make-up, and no complaining or whining. (Carrie is, so far, the youngest person we have seen on the Camino, and by at least four years. She has complained less than any of us).

The priest asked Carrie what was the most beautiful stage on the Camino and what was the hardest. “The Pyrenees, for both,” she said. Did she regret coming? “No!” She would later tell another person, in response to his question, that the trip was “Wonderful!”

The German priest said that, for him, León was more beautiful than Burgos. It is a charming city. Its many pedestrian streets are a riot of color: shops, café-bars, painted two-story buildings and their shutters, pots of flowers in windows. We ran into a Mercado Medieval,

Leon Mercado Medieval

a sort of street fair with a medieval theme, and perhaps a hundred different hawkers of crafts and food dressed in medieval garb. Burros gave children a ride around a park. Eight birds of prey sat on display, and a local Boreal Lynx prowled, or tried to, on its ten-foot leash.

The cathedral in León, copied at 2/3 scale from the Rheims Cathedral in France, is a more pure example of 13th century Gothic than the one in Burgos, whose 15th-century Flemish-Gothic additions complicate matters. León’s is also less elaborate, arguably less gaudy. The interior is more understated. But what distinguishes Leon’s cathedral are the exorbitant number of its stained-glass windows.

Leon Cathedral

We walked in to the transporting sounds of a single man (a monk? on tape or live?) singing Gregorian chants. We sat down and listened while craning our necks to look at the windows far above. My guidebook, The Pilgrimage Road to Santiago, suggests pilgrims savor the cathedral slowly, and to

rest for an hour on the benches in front of the cathedral’s west façade and watch the afternoon sun play on the sculptured portals and the spires of the towers. When the sun strikes full on the rose window, go inside and stand for a few moments in the middle of the nave[,] breathing in the colors of the light. Watch them change intensity as they glide across the floor while the sun drops. Think of how these soaring towers of stone, this vast open internal space, and these dancing colors must have blown the mind of your average medieval pilgrim.

Was it because there was so much less gold in León’s cathedral that I didn’t think about blood as much as I had in the Burgos cathedral? Here was a space that felt more inhabited by the sacred.

A sign said pictures were not allowed, but I risked eternal damnation, or at least a longer

Leon Cathedral Retablo

stint in purgatory, and got some good shots that are now on Facebook.

From the outside, the stained-glass windows looked uniformly daubed in something like soot and dirt: they were entirely an opaque tan color, and not at all representative of what we found within. I wondered how much more brilliant the light inside the cathedral would be if the windows outside were clean. An excerpt from a novel written in 1605 provides a clue:

I went inside, but I was sure that I hadn’t, and that I was still in the plaza, as the cathedral is so glassed and transparent . . . You can drink from this church as from a glass cup.

León also boasts an 11th-century collegiate Church of San Isidoro, which one guidebook says may have the best in situ paintings in Spain, if not all of Europe.  Next door is the Pantheon of the Kings of León, named, I believe, after the rock band from Tennessee.

Thomas took me aside at breakfast this morning. Interestingly, Krebs, the latter part of his hyphenated surname, is German for “cancer”. “When there is a sickness in the family,” he said, “everyone is affected. Everyone has it, in a way. I know this. So there may be times when you need to say, ‘Mom, I must go my own way for a bit, I must be for myself now.’”

We thanked him profusely when we left. “Well,” he said modestly, “special circumstances call for special measures.”

Pilgrims

With Julio and Marie Anne gone, we found ourselves meeting and talking to more people than before. A French student and a wily Basque offered me some wine. (The Basque had earlier played Elvis’ “I Can’t Help Falling in Love With You” from his cell phone while readying himself for the shower. I started to sing it, he joined in, and we were fast friends thereafter). I gave my map to a departing older Irishman who told us jokes about Ireland’s weather, like its “four winters per year”.

So as to have a meal that involved neither jamón nor queso, we went, with a Danish medical student and an actor from Chicago, to an Indian restaurant. The waiter was also the cook, so we were there for a long time. The actor said he’d heard of an American doctor’s advice to a patient not to take anti-depressants but to go on the Camino instead. He himself took this advice, and said his depression of the last eighteen months has disappeared during his long walks. We talked to a beautiful young Scottish woman, an art student, who was at a loss to explain why she spoke with an English accent or to provide a convincing rationale for not being twenty years older. There were four Seattleites.

And last night, about thirty of us pilgrims followed a nun, sixtyish and diminutive, to the sisters’ modest little chapel, which boasted a brilliant-gold retablo that would have dominated any church in the U.S.  Before we entered, she said something to the effect that we were not tourists, but seekers of God. She led us through a singing of some verse, in Spanish. “Muy bueno,” she said. And then she paused for a beat, and added, “Mas o menos”. More or less. We all burst out laughing. Then we entered the church, and there they were, arrayed in the choir, a baker’s dozen of nuns, and after that I understood nothing. Except her loud claps at an unfortunate young woman whose cell phone rang four or five times.

Catching Up: Logroño and Navarette

Logroño

Checking into the municipal albergue is now old hat. The one in Logroño was staffed with more unfriendly, unsmiling volunteers who speak a rapid Spanish that none of us can follow. What it boils down to is, we need to show our credentials and show our passport, then take a shower and come back to pay. We received throw-away sheets and pillowcases, which is what some albergues do now. We had arrived so quickly that we didn’t know what to do with ourselves. The 9 kilometers were so easy, but I was still tired. We tried to find a notary for Cameron and a grocery store.

This albergue has a nice big kitchen, but the two stoves have been removed and only a slow microwave exists. We bought veggies and salad (tomatoes, cucumbers, cheese, and chorizo, and bread, of course). I haven’t eaten so many carbs in a long time. But there’s absolutely no choice. I wonder if the veggies are sprayed. I am so far off my diet, I don’t even see it anymore. My energy level is down, and I would even consider eating meat just to get something of substance into my stomach. I bought two large, lovely red peppers to eat on the way in case there were only the uncovered mayo tuna tapas.

The guys took off to do business, and Marie Anne and I went to a café in the square. We were people-watching while we had our café con leche and mousse. It’s a lovely afternoon and people are busy going to and fro. Most of them are very nicely dressed. The more mature women as well. Their hair is coiffed, clothes match, nice shoes. We don’t see many overweight people. There was a beautiful cathedral with an ornate façade.

After washing our clothes and arranging the service to take Quasimodo to the next village in the morning (who has been replaced by a fat-baby daypack). We had another salad for dinner, and I went to bed to read for a while. There are three dormitories and probably 36 people in each. There were only two toilets and two showers for women, and as many for men. Toilet paper is a rarity, and one had better bring one’s own or be caught with one’s pants down. I hear people speak Spanish and laugh, some in broken English, and finally lights are out, and all is quiet . . . until midnight.

The snoring concert begins, and it’s awful. I went to the bathroom and then tried to go back to sleep. The Irish guy who was up a little while ago, tending to his injured foot, is now talking in his sleep. At two o’clock I’m still awake, and all four snorers are snoring at the same time. Nothing helps. I even contemplated dragging my mattress into the kitchen.

Even though I had only 13 or so kilometers to hike the next day, it’s a lot when you’re tired.

The flax (which I call “my dirt”) started to work, so I was up again. Finally, I took ibuprofen, and slept one-and-a-half hours before the plastic rustling began. I tried to go to the bathroom first, so I could take care of my dental issues. I snuck back to my bunk and retrieved coffee. There was not a pot to heat water.

A young Spanish man pantomimed that I should place a glass of water into the microwave. “Ahh,” I said. “Good idea.”

And then I decided to take my flax in the mornings, because I believe it will work much better, and won’t give me so many colon issues.

Logroño to Navarette

Marie Anne, Carrie, and I left Logroño while it was still cool so we could arrive before the hot noon sun caught us. Cameron and Julio were once again dealing with the notary. We made decent progress, and only stopped several kilometers out of town. The landscape changed back to being hilly, with lots of vineyards. We stopped at a bar, luckily open, and had our morning café con leche. I had to take of two blisters on my right foot. It was a beautiful spot by a pond, surrounded by green hills.

Then we started again and the Camino ran along the highway, divided by a chain-link fence. Every link had a hand-made cross in it, some made of wood, others of plastic bottles. I fashioned one from yellow flowers and placed it there as well. I remembered my visit to Oklahoma City, where people had done the same thing. I tried to explain that the bombing had hit the sangre de couer of the people of Oklahoma City, and she understood.

I was thinking as we were walking about the ancient pilgrims, and their hardships. How they were often robbed, and if they didn’t have enough, they might be beaten and thrown into the river. So in spite of all my issues, they were much worse off.

I was also having a food obsession: where to get it, what I would do with it, if they didn’t have what I wanted, what we’d do instead. Once that problem was taken care of, then came the bathroom obsession. Where to put it all, when there was not even a tree.

Everywhere the harvesting of grapes had begun. The weather was still perfect, and I’m sure they’re very happy to have such a great year.

Navarette

We arrived in Navarette early, and the albergue was still closed. We waited at a nearby café, where other pilgrims sat, and got sleep in the warm noon sun. Soon, we saw Cameron and Julio. Both made the 13 kilometer trek in 2 hours – a serious butt-kicking. “Cheesus Crise!” Julio said as he sat down. “Jour son is trying to keel me.”

We heard some music that sounded like from an ancient time. We hurried to check in, but there was no hurrying the process. And so we got another lesson in patience.

I had had two blisters between my toes, so the going was a bit tough. When we reached the square, situated right by the church, under some very old trees that shaded a stage, we saw children in elaborate, very starched white dresses with colorful flowers on them. They danced some old folk dances while throwing shy glances at their beaming parents. We were starving, but found out that everything was closed due to the fiesta to come. I would have thought that a priest or two would care for these hungry pilgrims. What are pilgrims to do on days like this? I had read about locals coming with water or food to greet the pilgrims. Well, I don’t know how long ago this was, but we sure haven’t seen anyone, except hungry feral cats. We did find a restaurant open and ate a fairly decent meal, but it cost 50 Euros. As Julio says, “the fleecing of the peregrinos”.

Carrie is catching a cold, and I hoped wasn’t getting worse. I can feel my throat tickle, and I groaned inwardly about yet another malady. We showered and changed, washed clothes, and arranged Quasimodo’s ride to the next town, since I really can’t carry mine with all these issues.

We wanted to visit the church, but due to the fiesta, it was closed. This is a smaller town, and rural, so I would imagine they would take their fiesta pretty seriously. During the fiesta, I had two bowls of the best soup ever!