The morning in Arroyo San Bol was frigid, the kind of morning where you deeply regret ever having left the warm cocoon of your bed. Opting for the next best thing, I started packing my bag as quickly as possible so I could start hiking and warm myself up that way. The albergue was small, with only six pilgrims staying the night. It made the morning way easier, because it meant being able to turn on the lights fairly quickly. One of the people in the room, an American man, looked at his phone and exclaimed shockedly that it was only 40 degrees Fahrenheit outside. “That’s like 10°C for you, I think,” he told me. Since I know not to trust my own mental maths, I nodded and accepted this as the truth – up until I walked outside. That was the moment I learned that 40 degrees Fahrenheit is more like five degrees Celsius than ten.
The five kilometres to Hontanas went by quickly and the cold air woke me up even quicker. Nevertheless, the walk was eventful and brought me a whole lot of clarity, mostly about my future. Over just five kilometres, I realised that the year of travel I had envisioned for myself when I started this adventure, was not something I actually wanted, because I would just feel sad all the time about not having my own place. I don’t want to “see” the world, I want to live somewhere where I have unlimited access to nature, somewhere where I can take my tent and backpack and disappear into the woods or the mountains or go look at the stormy sea and the cloudy cliffs, somewhere where I can take cold dips in frosty lakes to my heart’s desire, somewhere where it’s cold and green, where it snows in the winter and the lakes freeze over. And looking for that place means trying out different places, means moving away, means…. well. Means a whole lot of things. (And this is why you should go hike a camino, folks! All of those thoughts, in the span of a mere hour.)
Anyway. My future aside, by the time I reached the city of Hontanas the sun had creeped up above the horizon, the air had warmed up a bit, and I was no longer feeling as tired to the bone as I did twelve hours earlier. I stopped for breakfast at the place where I meant to stay, but I was already doubting that decision again. After all, I felt quite okay, and why wouldn’t I keep walking? A little later, some people I knew showed up and joined me for breakfast. One of them had seen me when I had the food poisoning, and immediately asked how my zero day in Burgos went. I gave a quick explanation of the situation, to which most of the people at the table started questioning my luck in life. Someone said, “The camino provides! It will make up for that by giving you a new rest day.” I answered by mentioning the spa and how I had been thinking about staying here, but also that it was a difficult decision to make because we were all here for walking, weren’t we? Not walking felt… wrong. Like I was taking advantage of something I shouldn’t be taking advantage of. Like I was taking a break and not (emotionally) working. My friend answered by walking up to the counter and asking how much the spa costs. Twenty-five euros, came the response. Fifteen if you stayed the night in albergue. I was still not fully convinced, now planning on maybe waiting until twelve – when the spa would open up – and continue hiking after a little spa break.
But when the rest got ready to leave, my friend walked up to me, gave me fifteen euros and said, “I’m paying for your spa. Enjoy the rest, and I think you should stay here. You deserve it.”
Camino lessons? The camino provides, yes, but so do the pilgrims. If we all would display the same kindness pilgrims give to each other on the camino, the world would be thriving. So like, here’s an idea: what if this year, instead of making New Year’s Resolutions, we’ll just decide to pay it forward instead? Offer kindness to strangers around us, without expecting them to pay it back? There’s a theory about this, I’m pretty sure*. Apparently it’s even been around since the Greek times, and it basically goes like this: when someone offers you kindness, instead of giving the same kindness back to them, you ‘pay it forward’. As in, you offer kindness to someone else, a friend, a family member, a stranger on the street. Anyhow. Lots of rambling going on here, but the bottom line is: pilgrims pay it forward, and I think we all should do that a little bit more.
*Okay so I learned this theory from a movie called Pay It Forward and if there’s anything you can do in your life it’s to not watch this movie because the ending is horrible and still makes me want to cry. But the concept makes sense. So like, watch the movie, but don’t watch the ending! You’ll be way happier that way.
The spa was the most amazing experience of my life, and for sixty blissful minutes I could just float around the warm water and stand under high pressure jets that turned my muscles into mush. I went into the sauna and then took an ice cold shower, and then took another ice cold shower just for the sake of it because that shit gives you a lot of energy. In the afternoon, I wandered around the town a bit and then went back to the hostel to get a late lunch in the form of a pain au chocolat. There was only one other person sitting in the little cafetaria, and when we started talking he introduced himself as Michael from Canada. I exclaimed happily that I was going to move to Canada*, as if I hadn’t just decided that that morning. Michael then proceeded to be the most un-Canadian person I had ever met, since he didn’t know anything about ice hockey (sad). He did listen to my ramblings about ice hockey though, so that’s a pro. (Thank you, Michael!)
*Is this me just telling everyone that reads this thing that I’m planning on moving across an entire ocean? Yes, it is. For any questions regarding my random-ass life choices, please send an email. I will get back to you within 3-5 business days.
After a while, Michael hiked on while I went back to take a little nap in my bunk bed. A lower bunk, I should add, that was big enough for me to sit up in without breaking my neck. Small luxuries of the camino. The next morning, I got my first experience of walking under the stars at full brightness. It was dark and cold outside, but the stars fully made up for that. It didn’t take long to get out of Hontanas, and then I was surrounded by nothing but darkness and stars. It also didn’t take long for me to turn off my headlamp so I would get an unlimited view of the universe overhead. Of course, this also meant I missed the arrows when they inevitably led towards a trail. It honestly took me way long to notice, but a quick look at the map told me the road was going parallel with the trail, and they would get back together in a kilometre or two. When the sun rose, it was beautiful and soft, a pink glow that wrapped itself all around the horizon. I stopped for breakfast to warm up, and then continued hiking deeper into the meseta. I had heard a lot about the meseta, mostly about how horrible it was and all the reasons why one should skip it, but to be honest… Up until then, the meseta had been one of the most beautiful environments I had walked through so far – maybe because of its unusualness. The start of the meseta is not very plain yet, and consists of a lot of hills and ups and downs – which adds to its charm.*
*Some foreshadowing here: the charm didn’t last.
At a certain point, the road went up over quite a big hill, one that had to be tackled in the open sun and led many pilgrims to stop by the side of the road and take off some layers. I was doing the same, when I suddenly heard someone yell a few paces in front of me, “Pas op of ik smijt u van de berg, hé!”* Ah, the beautiful Flemish language. The evening before, I had heard from some people that, apparently, there was an entire group of sixth-year pupils from Belgium hiking the camino (like, the full 800 kilometres)**, and it seemed like I had caught up with them.
*Translation: “Watch out or I’ll throw you off the hill.”
And indeed, at the top of the hill I found a group of Belgian teenagers, who were seemingly just as elated as I was to have found someone who spoke the same language. One of the pupils looked at me and asked, point-blank, “Do you go to JNM*? You look like you’re going to JNM.”
I did, indeed, go to JNM for the bigger part of my teenage years. I’m not sure what it says about me that you can clearly see what hobbies I had as a teen. I walked on with one of the teachers for a while, before eventually leaving the school group behind and continuing on. I had, for the second night in a row, sent a message ahead to ask if I could have a bed, because my plan was to hike 35k, and I didn’t want to be stranded without a bed if I had done that many kilometres.
*JNM is a youth movement for nature and environment. It’s like scouts but with more mud and a lot of insects.
The next day, there was a stretch of seventeen kilometres without towns or albergues. This started after kilometre eighteen, and when I started hiking I felt sleepy and delirious enough to at least think about going all the way instead of quitting at eighteen. I skipped the first two breakfast options on account of not being very hungry yet, and then damned those decisions all the way to hell and back when, at kilometre eight, I still hadn’t found any places to eat. And by then I was hungry. So when I eventually saw a town, I even went as far as backtracking just a few hundred metres to get to an albergue that was serving breakfast. I had breakfast with some of the people who’s dinner I had crashed, and then we hiked on together. One of the guys kept pointing out all the things he disliked about the camino, to the point where I started wondering why he even bothered. Keep in mind this man had hiked the camino several times, and kept doing it, despite loudly complaining about a lot of things. He then proceeded to tell me I was cheating because I was using hiking poles. (Yeah, I’m just gonna leave that here.) On the other hand, it was the same guy who asked, “why?” in the most genuine tone ever when I mentioned wanting to do the 37k, which then made me think about that for quite a while. Indeed, why? Why would I want to push towards 37k, with no options of stopping if it got too much? What would I gain from that, except for potentially a whole lot of blisters and an injury or two?
Not that much later, I saw some people I had met way back in Santo Domingo, and started walking with them instead. They were two young guys from Denmark, and one of them had run into so much trouble with blisters and toenails, that they were no longer able to do more than 20k a day. I slowed down my pace to walk with them, and by the time we reached Carrion de los Condes, I had long let go of my idea to hike the full 37. Instead, I went to get checked in at an albergue that was known for not having bunk beds (you will understand this particular kind of luxury when you hike a camino), and female-only rooms. Which, in hiker terms, means less chances of heavy snoring. Yay! I was one of the first people to enter the room, and I happily snatched up a bed in the corner. A young woman entered not that long after me, and when we started talking she mentioned that she, too, had been planning on doing the 37 up until her hip belt broke and she had to carry her backpack full on her shoulders. She introduced herself as Melissa, and after a shower and some rest I asked if she wanted to go get lunch. Michael, the Canadian man I had met in Hontanas, had arrived in Carrion as well, and the three of us ventured outside to do some groceries and get lunch. Lunch turned into… well, whatever the equivalent of a brunch in the afternoon is, but in true pilgrim fashion I was hungry again a mere three hours later, so we met up again to get dinner. Seriously, I eat twice as much as I eat at home, and still I need to tie my pants around my waist with my hip belt/sweater half of the time. Camino metabolism, man.