I started day sixteen on sandals because the sweat and socks combined gave me a mean case of hiker’s rash – something that Google helpfully informs me usually happens to women over fifty.
… I’ll just leave that little nugget of information here. Anyway, the rash wasn’t all that painful, except for the fact that it burned when I touched it. In an effort to soothe the violent red patches on my legs, I crammed my shoes into my backpack and switched them out for my sandals. my bag and took out the sandals instead. Now this would probably sound like the quickest way to get blisters, but to be honest they were absolutely amazing.
The stage between Estella and Sansol started in quite an interesting way. A few minutes out of the city, you’ll find what is perhaps the most famous fountain of the camino: the fountain of Irache. Despite its obvious beauty – the fountain is built into a wall and carries several beautiful carvings – its real fame came from its contents and not the exterior. Because, and I’m not kidding, instead of water, it serves wine. Wine that is strongly alcoholic, might I add. I passed by it at 8 in the morning, and I have to say, 8 am is slightly too early to deal with the amount of people gleefully drinking wine. There was a group of bikers that passed by who very happily stuck their faces under the tip and gulped it down. However, the fountain also bears a sign stating that drinking the wine would offer pilgrims protection and health on their way to Santiago. I wouldn’t call myself someone who believes in superstitions, but I also wouldn’t call myself someone who doesn’t believe in superstitions, you get me? So I drank the wine (I had three sips of it), and then had a raging headache for the next few kilometres. It also serves to mention here that there was another sign next to the fountain stating it was illegal for people under eighteen to drink the wine, which a woman very dubiously pointed out to me when she saw me filling my cup.
A little bit after the fountain, there was a choice of roads. Choice one: a shorter road that would lead past more villages. It would also primarily go over pavement or asphalt. Choice two, a slightly longer road that didn’t go past that many villages and mainly consisted of trails. I took the second one without thinking about it. An elderly couple in front of me did the same, and when they noticed I was following them they immediately turned around to check if I was aware of the road I was taking. I stayed with them for a while, but their pace is much lower than mine so five minutes later I’m walking on again. The trail led through a beautiful forest, thick and green, and for a few blissful minutes I felt at peace. And then the guy behind me started whistling. Still used to the silence of the Aragones and now also paying way too much attention to the sound,, it quickly went from slightly annoying to aggravating. I started walking faster, but he kept up. And then I took a little break at a cafe to have breakfast – a coffee with an insane amount of milk and a donut that tasted like it had been waiting to be eaten for over three days -, and he stopped too. Of course, when I started hiking again, so did he. Still whistling. And I, still paying way too much attention to it. The power of the mind and all that*.
*Of course, that’s something I can admit now. When I was hiking, I was fully blaming the whistling-guy for my annoyance, without even considering that I could have also… let him pass by / enjoyed the sound / started a conversation with him / stopped focusing on it / etc…
A few kilometres later, I saw a familiar backpack as Pol was hiking a few metres in front of me. I quickly caught up to him, and we hiked on together, getting past Los Arcos and continuing further up the road towards Sansol, a small town in the absolute middle of nowhere. Our surroundings had grown more dusty with each passing kilometre, and by the time we neared Sansol the world around us was yellow and brown, with just one asphalted road running through a sea of wheat fields. In the far distance, we saw Sansol rise up like some sort of fata morgana. And I say ‘fata morgana’, because for the next three or four kilometres, it felt like the roofs we saw were absolutely not getting any closer. Eventually though, we made it to Sansol, which – by the way – was situated on top of a hill, and got checked in in the small albergue. There were only ten beds, which filled up quickly, and within a few minutes we were surrounded by people speaking in rapid Spanish. Pol dutifully translated everything for me, and explained that we could throw our laundry in the bag in the middle of the room and that the owner of the hostel would do it for us. Now, you have to understand that this is absolutely the highest level of luxury you can find on the camino. Someone doing your laundry for you, for free?! It’s almost like staying in a four-star hotel.
We had capitalised on our energy back in Los Arcos and decided to push through while we were feeling good, which resulted in not having eaten anything. Unfortunately, Sansol didn’t have any source of food. Fortunately, only 800 metres further down the camino, there was another town, which did have some open bars. And so we hiked there, got food, and then hiked back – all the while loudly complaining about having to backtrack. Which, yeah, we could have just as well looked at the positive side of things (food!) but also when you’re hiking 30k a day, having to backtrack 800m does feel quite stupid.
Dinner was spent at the albergue, where we were served salad, pasta carbonara, and yoghurts. It was also spent mainly in Spanish, because out of the ten people at the table only four people spoke English, but only one person didn’t speak Spanish (me)**. I tried to follow some conversations for a while but it was getting later, and I was tired, and trying to keep up with the stream of Spanish quickly gave me a headache so I eventually gave in and went to bed.
**I was also given the advice to ‘not be shy and just speak Spanish’, and while it clearly came from a very good place it also felt a bit ridiculous. On the one hand, I wish it was that easy. On the other, the people around the table let me gleefully absolutely murder their language as I tried to explain that I didn’t need more food, so… win-win?
In the morning, I woke up before my alarm woke me because the room was bustling with waking people at 6 in the morning. My usual alarm was at 6.30, but I was awake anyway so I decided to join the fray and get up and at ‘em. When I started walking it was pitch dark outside. Half an hour later, I lost any and all lead I had on my usual schedule when the sun started to come up. Seriously, it was just so beautiful. It went from a deep orange stripe at the dark blue horizon to lighting up the entire sky, and the trail kept bringing me higher and higher, until finally I was at the top of the hill, and the view was breathtaking.
Here’s what you need to know about the camino. You hike towards Santiago de Compostella in what is almost a straight line, which also means it’s super easy to orient yourself. If the sun is shining and your shadow is not somewhere on your right you’re likely to be on the wrong track.*** It also means that you should pack all the food that you want to keep out of the sun on the right side of your backpack because that one will be in the shade, and that, by the end of your camino, your left arm and hand are likely to be just a tad bit more tanned than your right one. It also means that you’re walking from east to west, and thus always have the sunrise behind you when you’re walking. You get where I’m going with this, aren’t you?
***Addendum from Present-Day-Merel: Yesterday the camino took a bit of a funky turn into the city – making us go partially around it and enter on the southern side instead of at the east. For a short stretch, my shadow was behind me and the sun was no longer at my left and it was horribly disorienting.
I kept turning around every few seconds, stopping to take another picture or simply admire the view. A distant voice in my head was asking to stop, but another, louder voice vetoed that because on the camino you have a very simple goal and that is to keep walking. Except, I realised that morning that that is absolute bullshit, actually. The goal of the camino, the goal of my camino, is to slow down and to breathe. So, right when I went over the hill, I promptly turned around, backtracked (backtracked!!) and plonked down on the side of the road. Of course, it was also at this exact moment that an entire slew of pilgrims passed me by. I love being the centre of attention when it’s my own choice but I don’t like being the centre of attention when the attention is on me due to me being the outlier. And sitting down and looking back while everyone is heading to the other direction is pretty outlying. But. Curiously, I realised that that energy was missing. Sure, it was a bit awkward to return everyone’s ‘buen camino’ wishes and reassure the pilgrims who asked if I was okay, but in that moment it felt like sitting there was exactly what I had to do. One of the last pilgrims happily called out the question, “Have you found your peace yet?”
My immediate response was, “not yet”, which felt true at that moment, although I didn’t add the “soon” that popped up in my mind too. And sure enough, a few minutes later, when I was all alone on that hill and the sky was at its most beautiful, I breathed in deeply and found my peace.
After my sunrise-break, I made a promise to myself that I would put in the effort and talk to at least one person on the camino that day. Up until then, I had been walking around very determinedly with my headphones on just so people wouldn’t talk to me. Very open-minded, I know. Keeping my promise was almost effortless, because when I reached the city of Viana and decided some breakfast was in order, I started looking for a nice place to take a break. The first cafe had too many people, the second one just didn’t pass the vibe,… I walked on a little further until I found a place that looked nice and entered without thinking. They had a panini and coffee deal, so I – once again – didn’t think and just ordered. It was only when I walked back outside to sit down at a table with my food that I realised there were two more cafe’s right next to me, cafes I hadn’t even seen. I decided that it was clear that this place was for me, and that – just like sitting at the side of the road – this cafe was where I had to be at that moment. On the terrace, someone at the table next to me started talking to me. It took me a second to realise that he was actually not a customer but working in the cafe as well.
I’ve mentioned it before in an earlier blog, but I’m not very Christian. Technically, on paper I am 100% catholic but in reality I harbour – or used to harbour – a lot of anger towards the Institute of the Church and would rather ignore its existence. Now you might ask the question why I’m walking a route that literally has Catholicism poured all over it, and the answer shall have to disappoint you because I don’t know either. Anyhow, I did make some sort of promise to myself that I would use the camino to work on acceptance instead of anger. The little cafe where I had my breakfast clearly thought that was a good idea, because as it turned out it was run by devoted Christians whose purpose on the camino was taking care of the pilgrims. There were three of them, and they asked if it was okay if they joined me during my breakfast and if I would want to share a bit of my story with them. These people were so kind and peaceful, and much more accepting, trusting, and open than I would have initially thought. I explained to them why I was walking the camino, and then tacked on a slightly awkward explanation on why I didn’t like the church very much when they asked if I was religious. And through it all, they listened, nodded and told me that for them, the root of it all was love and faith, and not words of hate that people of their belief turned to sometimes. When I made to leave, one of them asked if she could give me a blessing. And I sat there, at a little cafe in Viana, while three people I barely knew prayed for me and wished me a healthy pilgrimage, and the strength and protection to keep going physically and mentally. I thought to myself how special it was, to be offered love and protection when I just laid out very detailedly why I never felt loved by people who believed in the catholic Church.
On my way out of Viana, I met a group of three guys from Denmark and Norway. We got talking, and I stuck with them until the end of our stage that day: Logrono. When we arrived at the albergue, the woman helpfully informed us that if we upgraded from 15 euros to 18, we could get a four-person bedroom instead of sleeping in the dormitory. We needed less than five seconds to decide we were absolutely upgrading to eighteen euros, and that’s how I ended up in a room with guys I had met two hours earlier. I would like to point out here that I am absolutely not surprised by the fact that I went from having to sternly talk myself into talking to at least one other breathing human to sharing a room with three virtual strangers.
In the evening, I took out my notebook to write down a little recap of the day. In bold letters and with a few exclamation marks, I wrote down the quote, “sometimes you just have to be fucking selfish”. It was something one of the guys had told me on the walk, after he explained why he was hiking the camino. “We live in a world with a whole lot of expectations,” he explained. “And no one is ever going to tell you to not live up to those expectations, so sometimes you just have to say fuck it and choose yourself instead of the expactations.”
His words stuck with me, and I thought back to the countless times I’ve had to explain why I wasn’t sticking to my job come September, why I wasn’t trying to stick around and get a permanent contract at my school, and instead would walk across Spain. So here’s a little camino lesson for you: just be fucking selfish from time to time. Do that thing everyone tells you not to do but you secretly have been dreaming of for years. Quit your job if you don’t like it, even if it will disappoint the people around you. Go hike a camino. Be selfish.