From: Villafranca de la Bierza, mile 407
A note about process: Keeping the blog on the hike has proved a much bigger challenge than it was on the bike. We hike from 9am to 3pm most days. After securing our place, washing our selves and our one set of hiking clothes, and getting our dinner, there's little time (and often energy) to make notes about the day. Those notes are hand written into stories, which are then tediously entered into a document on my phone, which then has to be edited, then transferred to the blogsite. That seems like it should be straightforward, but it's not. There's another edit, and pictures to edit and add…then the whole process of posting on Facebook, Twitter, Google#, and emailing it…all on a tiny phone by screen with often sketchy WiFi. Yikes.
I will keep posting, even as we are now within 120 miles of Santiago. I assume I will be writing about the hike even as we make our way back to Germany, then onto England. Let's hope I have all this writing done before we return home mid November….
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After our surreal visit to Logroño, there are days and days where we are completely encapsulated by the Camino bubble. We are traveling in the hilly reaches of Rioja, day after day and mile and mile passing through vineyards in one of the world’s wine producing regions. The vines are so heavy withfruit, the farmers pull off the excess, and
The little towns are defined by big grape warehouses, and little café/bars serving the Camino. The people in each sector don't interact. In Navarrate, we briefly step out of the bubble to be one of a few guests at in the enormous 19th century hotel, but mostly caters special events and weddings. It is just far enough out of town that most pilgrims don’t stop and too close to Logroño to draw the car crowd. The desk clerk laments, “ The tourists just drive on instead of stopping like they used to.” The bar and restaurant are closed , so we make our way to cafre recommended by Mei-Jing for it’s amazing tapas.
It is staffed by a vibrant young woman from the south of Nigeria, who Wes offends when he compliments on her English. She says. “You know, don’t you that Nigeria is an English speaking country?” On the way out to the table in the courtyard. I have an attack of clumsiness, drop the tray and splatter food and drinks everywhere. One of the cooks taking a smoke break, rushes over to the mess, saying “No te preocupes!” (Don't worry!) over and over, patting me on the shoulder, refusing my attempts to help clean the mess, and rapidly moving to replace the food and drink...at no additional cost.
Across the courtyard, we spot a well-known Camino fixture, a large, blonde, bearded, burly self-styled holy man. He has a little shrine outside Logroño and is in animated conversation with a woman in a long skirt and head wrap. The cook and the Nigerian counter clerk both know him and occasionally bring him bits of food or drink.
We spend the next day walking through vineyards, before going to Najera, where we spend the night in a lovely, but overpriced hotel, eat dinner on a courtyard by the river, where the Italian waiter has a bit of a racket going with his almost exclusively English-speaking clientele. He sells food and wine from an unpriced menu for what he thinks the market will bear. We paid 2€ more for the same wine that young German couple, but 2€ less than the older British men at the next table. I’m tempted to complain, but don’t want the scene or the hassle. I am sure the waiter depends on that unwillingness.
The tourists pretty much stay on the north side of the river. Occasionally locals and their children venture by the café on their evening walk, but they don't stop. After dinner, we wander the streets, attracted by the doors and caves in the prominent sandstone cliffs. These cliffs have housed saints and the penurious, this year's harvest, and today's outlandish party. Just three caves down from the hermitage of a medieval nun, we pass one in which a young woman in impossibly tight jeans and high heels joins a throng of people dancing to pulsing lights and beat-heavy music.
The next day is beautiful and painful. My wonderful, but 10 year old Salomon hiking boots are giving up the ghost. I ruin shoes at a phenomenal rate because I walk on the outside of my feet. Rare-oh-rare is the shoe that makes it a year under that kind of pressure. But there comes a point when the mechanics of the shoes are destroyed, and they begin to painfully stress my hips and knees.
I have felt the problem growing for several days. I don't know what to do. The bed and fit of these boots is flawless and so rare for square feet like mine. Can I get them repaired? Can I find something that will fit? Do I want to break in new boots on a long distance hike? Ugh. As we walk through valleys and canyons, up steep hills and down sharp drops, each step makes my feet, knees, and hips ache.
We arrive in Santo Domingo de la Calzada, named after the “engineer of the Camino,” (whose statue bears an uncanny resemblance to Wes’ brother Jay). He was largely responsible for improving conditions on the medieval Camino.
We end up staying at the Hospideria de la Camino, which was originally established in the 15th century. The sprawling complex in which we are staying was built in the 19th century and must have housed hundreds of nuns and pilgrims. That night, at dinner, we are served by 3 sweet faced African nuns in modern habits, who both prepare and serve the food. The dining room is mostly empty, save a big group of Austrians, a few frail retirees, one French speaking couple, and us. Despite the attention and kindness of the nuns, there is an air of mournfulness.
We had spotted a zapateria just outside the complex grounds. I ask for my boots to be repaired. The shoe repair man speaks no English, but with gestures, drawing, and a few words, I think we have an agreement. He tells me to come back the next day around noon. That's well after our regular our regular departure time, but if it means walking without pain, fine.
The next morning, after picking up my partially re-heeled boots, and getting new insoles, we run into the same Google staffer on holiday we had seen a few days ago. His name is Kevin; he is ethnically Korean, lives in Los Angeles and speaks fluent Spanish. He has been using this skill to help the many clueless Americans, Brits, and Aussies on the trail.
We had first met him in a small café off the main trail, where he, a fit red-haired German named Tomas, and we had a conversation about the glories of green Spanish olives. As we each told the story about why we are taking this walk, Tomas told about having to leave the company he founded after it was sold to ADP. The new owners told them they were moving operations to Poland to save money. He couldn't stand by while more than 1/3 of the employees he had worked with and developed were let go. So now he is walking the Camino. Kevin, on the other hand, told his bosses he was taking six weeks to walk the Camino. He could come back to work or not. They said fine.
These curious syncretic encounters are part of the Camino bubble. We never know, when we have these intense personal conversations, whether or not wewill see these people again. Because we are all following the same trail, but moving at different speeds and taking different stops, reconnecting with people days or hours apart is not uncommon, yet always surprising and delightful.
After a quick stop at the cathedral, which houses a live rooster and hen in the walls in tribute to a medieval miracle, (don’t ask) we are on our way through a landscape more given to corn and wheat than grape vines. We have a restless night at a truck stop that advertises itself as an artisanal chocolate maker. Its town is mostly falling in on itself and the artisanal chocolate is actually chocolate covered doughnuts, but it will do.
The next morning, a few kilometers away, we find an exquisite and expensive restaurant/hostel such as we had imagined our previous lodging to be, where they make and sell meats and cheeses for 21€ a pound. While we are enjoying our coffee, a German couple next to us argues about where they should spend the next night.
All of a sudden, an older American woman comes in, spots the Germans as someone she knows from the Camino, then rushes over to them and begins sobbing. She has just received news that a dear friend had died back in the US. The slender, red-haired German woman, so recently fussing with her husband, immediately begins comforting the distraught American. Just as we get ready to leave, the American gets an email. Her daughter just had a baby. More tears. A little while later, the two women pass us, still deep in conversation and counsel.
My repaired boots are not working. I try new insoles, old insoles, both insoles, changes of socks to Wes’ increasing irritation and impatience. Nothing is working.
We are beginning our trek into the Montes de Oca, a band of small sandstone mountains cut by rushing streams and littered with hermitages carved into the cliffs. We are looking forward to a stay in the San Anton Abad Hotel, a renovated 12th century pilgrim hospital. When we get there, footsore and beat, we discover that we actually don't have a room and they are sold out. When I show the host our confirmation, she thrusts my phone back at me with an emphatic, “Diez no nueve,”
Another booking error! This time I booked for October instead September. Most peregrinos just walk until they are done walking, then find a place. That's beginning to look like a better idea.
Thankfully, the host connects us to a nearby pension. We arrive just at the same moment two biking peregrinos arrive. Later, at dinner, we find out they are Pieter (the father) and Peter (the son). Dad is big and burly, with a shock of still blonde hair falling across his broad forehead. Son is also tall, but narrow in face and body, and nearly bald though he is in his thirties. They have ridden modified mountain bikes from the northern Netherlands. Dad has been diagnosed with cancer, and they are doing this big grand trip together while they still can.
The next morning, we make our way over the top of the Montes, where the first battle of the Spanish Civil War was fought. At the peak, the dozens of hikers who passed us on the way up are taking a break. I stop to decipher the monument and realize it is the first and only positive view of the Republicans we have seen on this trip.
At our lunch stop, we are shocked to encounter Lauren and Isabella, with whom we walked to the hilltop town of Chiraugui (of late night cover band fame). Lauren is a tri-athlete from Crested Butte, Colorado, her mother, a game sixty something from Chicago. Isabella had some leg problems that stopped them for a few days. Although she didn't say it, the implication was that pace set by Lauren was just too much.
We are excited to get to our next stop. Not only does it mean we are very close to the halfway point of Burgos, but we are anxious to know more about the archeological discoveries in Atapuerca. We hope to stay a day to visit the sites where they have found human fossils dating back 1 million years, and evidence of constant human inhabitation since that time. This 1979 discovery and excavations have completely re-written the early history of Europe.
We were lucky enough to walk up and get a hotel in Atapuerca, where the preponderance of guests were American or Canadian. Unfortunately, one big group of Americans is the kind that makes me cringe. Not only were they extraordinarily loud, without a good thing to say about anyone or anything, I can hear their derisive laughter in our room, four doors down. They mock the service, décor, and food in English, assuming they are not being understood--even though they ordered everything in English and expected to be served in English. The 17 century doors are tricky, and at one point, I heard an abrasive American voice demanding her money back because the doors were hard to open. Wes tried to engage them a conversation about the amazing archaeological area. No interest.
Later, I heard them calling the backpack transport service demanding service that morning they were supposed reserve the previous night. When the phone disconnects, one woman said to the other, “See, I told you they hate Americans who speak English!”
Well, we can't tell why they are on the Camino, but I do know one thing. Life in the Camino bubble is unlike any experience we have ever had. All the concentrated blessings and curses of being human are making their way with us, inch by inch, step by step, paso a paso.
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