Starting at St. Jean Pied de Port (babes in the woods!)

In Galicia and still walking

Here’s what a typical day on the Camino is like:

The day starts amid the somber darkness and rhythmic breathing of an albergue dorm when Maurice’s phone strums soft chords on its harp at 6 am. We selected this gentle melody at the beginning of the Camino to awaken us pleasantly each day but now I hate it. It signals the start of the morning chaos. We begin getting ourselves ready for the day in the dark and by the glow of electronics, trying to be as quiet as possible. Do you know how much noise it makes to wriggle into trousers inside a sleeping bag? And plastic bags! We knew they were noisy and frowned upon in considerate Camino circles but, out of money and ideas and time in our Camino preparations, we had brought some Zip-loc bags, a favorite among many pilgrims and not as noisy as plastic grocery bags but sonant nonetheless. I make my way to the lavatory. Ideally there are separate men’s and women’s facilities but not necessarily; ideally the fixtures are divided into separate compartments so that more than one person can use the bathroom at a time, but some small albergues just have everything in one room. In any case there is probably no toilet paper.

A few of our Zip-loc bags

Back in the bunk room more people awaken and someone boldly turns on the light. Movement increases to hectic as everyone gets dressed, rolls their bedding and packs their backpacks. Maurice and I dig through the pile of Zip-locs for what we need–bags of first aid supplies, tech bits, laundry supplies, toiletries, our actual clothing. I sit on Maurice’s bottom bunk, hunched over because the top bunk is so low, and arrange the toe caps, ointments, Compeed and Omnifix on my feet, then carefully maneuver my socks over it all; this can take fifteen minutes. Maurice does the same. I put on my gray-with-yellow left shoe and my black-with-red right shoe. We take down all the things draped over the bunk rails and the laundry from the line that Maurice has strung somewhere. If it’s not dry, we’ll hang some on our packs, and Maurice gets to carry the bag with the rest of the wet laundry.

Laundry on the pack

By now most everyone else is out of the room–people pack up faster than we do, and they walk in the dark!–and we have more space. Is there breakfast? I like to get a head start on chewing my toasted crusts, as it stresses me to try to shovel down a meal. Maurice says “take your time” which I know means “hurry up, it’s almost daylight;” he has promised to try to stop telling me to hurry up. We brush our teeth, put on our longsleeved shirts, strap on our packs, pick up our poles and I make a final sweep of our area. If I weren’t here to point out what he’s left behind, Maurice would have lost half his stuff by now, most of it more important than the clothesline.

Toast for breakfast–real slices this time rather than just hunks of crust

About 8 am we step out into the gray morning. The sun won’t be up for a while (9 am by the end of our Camino) but it’s light enough to see. Roosters are crowing. Roosters are everywhere and they will be crowing for hours. It’s cold but we’re still wearing shorts. We put on our gloves as our knees fatten by the minute. If I’m really cold I wrap my scarf across the front of me and tuck it into some straps. We pray together to start the day. After a half hour or so we note what good time we are making and how well we are doing; at this rate we’ll be at our goal by…some unrealistic hour.

Scarf draped fashionably for extra warmth

After I’ve been walking for one to two hours I feel like I need a nap. Every day. Maurice just laughs and we keep walking. I wonder if I’ve used up my glucose and am switching into fat burning. Yes, that’s surely it. But we are hungry and start looking for real food. Early in the Camino I would get a hunk of tortilla, a fat omelet filled with potatoes, but I’ve had enough of that. What a find it was when we came across the first bar with eggs and bacon (undercooked though it was). We order it when we can. I say a phrase that I hope will get the bacon cooked properly; I am unsuccessful. The eggs are never served with salt and pepper, so we have to track down the condiments. But eggs aren’t always available, so we might get a big chocolate-filled croissant instead. If Maurice is finished with coffee for the day, and I’ve had a Cola Cao earlier (hot chocolate like Nestle’s Quik), we get coke, full-strength, with our second breakfast. If we are trying to reserve at a private albergue we might need wifi to send an email. I have composed a standard email, in Spanish, in which I start by saying I don’t speak Spanish and end with “we are old and slow and will arrive late.” (I always hope they will answer with yes, no or English, but sometimes I cannot decipher the response.) Every bar we pass has a sign saying “free wifi;” it seems to be a basic part of the package now at all Camino albergues and bars. What “free wifi” really means, however, is, “Here’s a code to use for the wifi, you’re free to see what you can get, and good luck to you, pilgrim.” In most places you can send an email but you probably can’t research the next town and you definitely can’t update your website.

After irritation with the wifi, I would like to sit and rest a few more minutes but Maurice, while not hurrying me, is inquiring if I am finished. Off we go. The day is warming and we peel off layers. There are hills. Of course there are hills. Maurice is certain the medieval pilgrims did not walk up all these mountains when there are perfectly fine paths through the vallleys. I go up faster than Maurice does. “Wait for me somewhere!” he calls out. After a while the trail heads downhill, rocky and steep. Maurice does the downs faster than I do. The stones are so hard on our feet.

“Are you finished yet?” asks Maurice.

Straight up and hard on the feet

When we are on a reasonable path wide enough to walk together, Maurice reads aloud our Oswald Chambers daily devotional; we ponder sinful inclinations and behaviors we had never before considered. Then we pray the pilgrim prayer, an English translation given to me by a volunteer at the church in Estella. We have added a couple phrases to it:

Lord, you who called your servant Abraham out of the town Ur in Chaldea and who watched over him during all his wanderings; you who guided the Jewish people through the desert; we also ask you to watch your present servants, who for love for your name make a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela.
Be for us a companion on our journey,
the guide on our intersections,
the strengthening during fatigue,
the bread during our hunger,
the fortress in danger,
the resource on our itinerary,
the shadow in our heat,
the warmth in our cold,
the light in our darkness,
the consolation during dejection
and the power of our intention,
so that we, under your guidance, safely and unhurt, may reach the end of our journey and, strengthened with gratitude and power, secure and filled with happiness, may join our home, for Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

12th-century Santiago

By now the sun is bright and strong so we stop to put on sunscreen. We always mean to fish it out and put it on when we are already stopped at a bar but we don’t think of it then. We really only have to concentrate on our left side because we are walking west. We keep our water bottles filled at the many fountains along the way that flow with cool water. My shoulders hurt. I remember Sheila’s words and tighten the hipbelt. I hear a slight sound behind us and turn around. A crazed bicigrino (pilgrim on a bicycle) is right there, silently closing the gap, and we don’t know which way to move to get out of his way. If only they used a bell!

Fountain in Burgos

We are thinking about eating again–third breakfast or first lunch. We have a continuing debate between shopping ahead and carrying the groceries with us or waiting until lunchtime and buying something at the moment–theoretically the best choice, I agree, but often there is no place to buy lunch supplies and a tiny bar may only have packaged muffins and potato-laden tortillas. So it is time to look for a grocery store. “Supermercado” announces a crooked hand-lettered sign. We follow it, but why do we think it will actually be a supermarket? Heavy plastic ropes dangle over the doorway to a small dark room crammed with shelves and cases of basics for locals and convenience foods pilgrims might want to buy. Often there is a rack (possibly empty) for fresh bread. Boxes display a meager assortment of produce that you cannot touch. Except for the fly-preventive dangly ropes, these tiendas remind me of the little store in the basement corner house on my way to elementary school where, on the rare occasions we had spending money with us, we could pick out long strips of candy dots, or boxes of Good’n’Plenty, or three-packs of Tastykake butterscotch krimpets (two for a quarter). So the tienda has a homey vibe until we are ready to buy something, for the shopkeeper is engaged in conversation with the neighbor–we know they see each other regularly and are just passing the time of day–and we might as well be invisible. Customer service is not a Spanish strong suit.

Our midday sit-down is the longest of the day, thirty-five minutes at least and maybe more. We lay out our spread and buy a coke to go with it. Maurice takes time to fiddle with the wifi and check the email. I wash my hands with soap because every restroom has soap. Though there are no paper towels, sometimes there is an air dryer from which the heating element has been disconnected.

Refreshed, we are back on the road again. We estimate how much longer it will be until we get to the town where we have planned to stop. In the villages we marvel at the ancient buildings and the lanes that have curved around them for centuries; sadly too much adobe is disintegrating, too many stone walls tumbling and roofs collapsing behind the ubiquitous “for sale” signs. On the long straight meseta paths the only sound is the gravel crunching under our feet. We have developed definite preferences about our underfoot terrain; from best to worst it is something like this:
1. Packed earth covered with grass, dead or alive
2. Packed earth
3. Crushed stone
4. Small light gravel
5. New asphalt
6. Old asphalt
7. Concrete
8. Heavy gravel
9. Rocks and boulders
10. They expect us to walk on this?
Most paths are a combination of the various types. Since they can change at any time, we have to keep an eye on where we’re walking.

Path 2-3

Path 9

Path 10

Off the chart!

By about 2 pm I am done. This is fine if we’ve reached our albergue at 1:30 but some days we still have more hours of walking ahead. This pilgrimage is more intense than I had expected. It sounds silly but I hadn’t expected so much walking. We seem to be in such a rush, with little time to smell the grapes, sip the cafe con leche and Cola Cao, hear the cowbells or watch the river flow by. I’m tired and hurting. It’s time to put on our walking music.

At last we reach our albergue. We sign in, pay for our bed, get a sello in our credencial and drag ourselves to our bunk. Maurice gets the bottom and I get the top. We like sharing one up-and-down set because all of it is ours and we don’t have to worry about getting in someone’s else’s way or taking up their space on the posts or rails. As we untie our shoelaces a cloud of dust poufs into the air. We are Pigpen. I get out my blue-flowered sheet and tuck the elastic under all four corners, checking for signs of bedbugs as I do; I certainly have no intention of sleeping on whatever covering the albergue considers fit for its mattresses.

We go for showers one at a time so the other can keep an eye on our belongings; Maurice has decided such precautions are probably unnecessary but some things I really don’t want to lose and you never know. We get the laundry hung in the sun as soon as possible for maximum drying time. We have a second lunch. I take a brief nap then write for a while. Maurice has a beer, chatting with pilgrims we’ve met along the way and making new friends. If he’s inspired Maurice does some drawing. He has completed over twenty ink and watercolor sketches already.

Corner of a plaza in Leon

Laundry in the sun, but is there wifi?

Dinner in the albergue or nearby is later than we’d like but usually before eight. If we’re walking somewhere else we’ve dressed up by wearing socks with our sandals or flip flops. The standard pilgrim menu, for 10€ or less, is two substantial courses plus bread, dessert and wine or water. A first course option is often ensalada mixta with tuna; the second course offers a choice of several hunks of meat with French fries. Even the dainty-looking women eat whatever is placed before them. In the smaller towns the server usually plunks a whole bottle of wine on our table (more bottles for larger tables) and refills it on request. They never serve water at dinner unless you ask for it instead of wine. Sometimes I remember to bring my own bottle of water. By the end of our Camino I ask for “agua del grifo” (water from the faucet) in addition to the wine but there is always only one glass (a continuing irritant to me).

Lunch on the road or pilgrim menu at dinner–everything comes with French fries (at this bar I specifically said I didn’t want any)

First course in Orisson (note only one glass for water and wine)

When we get back to our room it is bedtime. Maurice is usually able to plug in our electronics by his bed. I climb up to my bunk once and am there for the duration. I’ve given up trying to modestly change into a different top for sleeping. Once the lights go out at ten I slip out of my skirt but I just keep on the clean shirt I’ve put on after my shower and will wear the next day. Sometimes I write on my ipad for a little while; I’m not the only one whose bed has an electronic glow. I snap my waist pouch strap around a bed rail against the wall and carefully arrange my other valuables (glasses, water bottle, thyroid pills, tissues, toiletry bag, foot care items) so I can find them in the dark. The room is full of gentle breathing when I close my ipad and wrap my sleeping bag around my shoulders. Maurice thumps my bunk from below if he thinks I am snoring (only a most ladylike sound if it’s me, and, anyway, it’s not). The tan and achey day melds into all the others and I sink quickly into sweet and restorative sleep.

Church in Boadilla del Camino