During our dinner the evening before, Michael, Melissa and I decided on meeting down in the courtyard of the albergue at 6.30. Now, the evening before I had also been excited about the prospect of getting to sleep in a womens-only albergue, since this meant the chance of having heavy snorers was going down. Alas, the universe said, “no such luck,” and gifted our room with someone who snored really loud, someone whose snoring kind of sounded like a cow, and someone who straight-up screamed in her sleep sometimes. I have amazing earplugs, but even these couldn’t block out the noise of the snores sometimes. When I woke up the following morning at six in the morning, I was so sleepy that I promptly slapped on my watch to make the buzzing stop, and accidentally turned my alarm off instead of snoozing it. Luckily, I woke up again fifteen minutes later through some random stroke of luck. Realising that I had only fifteen more minutes to get ready was enough to make me hop out of bed. Doubly lucky for me though, because neither of my companions were ready at 6.30. And also, this was the camino, and I feel like time is a foreign concept on the camino anyway.
The three of us felt comfortable with not really having a plan of where we were headed too, although we did decide that 30 kilometres was somewhat the aim, and getting in more of them was always a possibility if we felt up for it.
The first obstacle we had to tackle was the eighteen-something kilometres to the next town. It didn’t have any facilities except for a food truck roughly in the middle of it. It was, quite obviously, also our first stop of the day. After getting some breakfast, we happily walked on. The lack of facilities started to become a bit of a bother when we were nearing the end, mostly because I had reached the point where I really wanted a toilet. I don’t mind squatting down in the bushes, but for that you need to have bushes, and on the meseta anything that doesn’t have the word ‘wheat’ in it is an unknown concept. As the tallest of the bunch, I was the first one to see rooftops pop up in the distance. The camino sure puts things in perspective, because I’m quite sure I’ve never been that happy to see a rooftop. We stopped for a second breakfast and a bathroom break – in which I opened my phone to see one of my favourite bands had announced a European tour (yay!!) and promptly called my dad to ask if he wanted to join me to the concert*.
*Unsurprisingly, he didn’t even have to think before saying yes.
The thirty kilometres I hiked that day were the fastest 30k I’ve ever experienced. We chatted the entire day, jumping from deep topics to random philosophical questions and back. Melissa had sent her broken backpack ahead to the 30km mark, planning on carrying it for the last kilometres if we continued on. When we reached the albergue however, we easily decided to just stay. We felt good enough to continue, but also all realised that we might not feel the same way four kilometres in. Plus, the albergue looked quite nice, with a little fountain in the middle of the garden. While we waited to get checked in, another girl joined us. We got checked in by the cheerful volunteers, and then one of them showed us around. The garden and bathrooms got a quick explanation, and then she moved on to the fountain, where she proceeded to tell us very seriously that we were not allowed to drink from the water. In all honesty, this made a lot of sense, because usually when a place like that had a fountain it was designed for people’s feet. When we expressed that sentiment, however, we were answered with a long-suffering sigh and the words, “you don’t want to know how many times we had to tell people not to drink from it”*.
She showed us to our room then, which she described as the ‘paradise room’. She wasn’t really wrong either, because the room had peaceful blue walls and SINGLE BEDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!. Yes, the exclamation marks and capital letters are absolutely necessary. I need to get it across how amazing it is to be able to sleep in a bed that is not a bunk bed. Most of the albergues have a rule about young people taking the top bunks – which I completely understand and support because it makes a lot of sense, but also, having to crawl in and out of a top bunk after having hiked an entire day is not a vibe. After having settled in a bit, we decided to go make use of the little pool. Over the course of the afternoon, our little trio had grown into a group of five people, having been joined by Jaco from the Netherlands and Alina from Germany, and soon we were all gathered around the cold water. Because neither of us seemed to have any impulse control, Michael and I ended up in the water not that much later, because why say no to a cold dip?
*Funny story: about a week later I crossed paths with someone I had hiked with on the camino aragones, who told me about this really nice albergue he had stayed at, with Italian people and a nice little fountain in the garden, and how he had… drank from the water.
The albergue’s owners were Italian, so it went without saying that we had Italian dinner in the evening. I had approximately four plates of pasta carbonara – I was serious last time when I said that the amount of food I eat on the camino is absolutely ridiculous. The crown of the evening was an amazingly beautiful sunset, for which we all but ran outside and up to a little balcony. There was a bottle of wine involved and a broken chair, and all in all it was easily one of the happiest moments. The next morning, our little group of three had officially grown to five, and we hiked on as such. Michael, who was hiking the camino in stages, was going to leave in the evening, so it was also our last day with him on the trail. Now you might think, “didn’t you only know him for three days?”, and the answer would be that you’re absolutely correct. The camino works in mysterious ways though, and those three days felt way longer to me.
For the people who start their hike in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, this stage of the meseta is an important one, because right before you reach Sahagun, you also reach the halfway point of the camino frances. We were excited, of course, because it was a pretty cool feeling to reach such a milestone, but an even higher amount of excitement, perhaps, was brought forth by the fact that none of us were hiking solo for once. And that meant, simply put, we could take pictures. What followed were a good fifteen minutes of posing for individual pictures, and then group pictures, and then several failed attempts at getting a group picture in which we all jumped at the same time. The first tries reached only various levels of success, mostly because we kept our backpacks on and I still had my hiking poles in my hand and I’m quite sure I must have poked at least one person with them while jumping. Potentially two.
After our little Instagram-picture session, we continued on towards Sahagun, and more meseta afterwards. Said meseta eventually lost its charm somewhere along that day, mostly because the road was endlessly similar and so. Freaking. Windy. We were aiming to reach El Burgo Ranero that evening – a town whose name can be loosely translated as ‘Frog town’ and will from here on out be called Frogville. Frogville had a municipal albergue, the kind where you can’t make any bookings, and usually those are quite a safe bet to get a bed. This time, however, they were dealing with some people and the only beds they could offer us were the ones in the room with people who had something that could be food poisoning but could just as well be a stomach bug. There was another albergue just down the road, so we decided to check that one out first. Google helpfully informed us that two months ago they had seemingly struggled with bed bugs, but since two months had passed since then, we decided to go for it – with eyes wide open, though. Now, a little more information here is required: the distance between Frogville and the next albergue was approximately twelve kilometres. None of us felt particularly interested in hiking that, so a lot of hope was riding on the albergue having space. From the start, the owners were… unfriendly, to say the least. Us not having a reservation was heavily frowned upon, but eventually we managed to get checked in. However, as soon as we had been shown to the room, Jaco found a Google review* from the day before, mentioning that the place had bed bugs for sure.
*I feel the need here to formally apologise to my younger brother, whose need to always check the google reviews of every place used to drive me crazy – something I verbally expressed many many times. So, uh, sorry, broer x. I take it all back, all hail the google reviews!
What followed can only be described as controlled panic. Melissa could speak Spanish, so she returned to the owners to ask if we could get our money back. Alina started looking for new places. I… panicked. But like, in a controlled way. We immediately brought all our backpacks back outside, and then went back into the room to inform a group of Australians that we had roomed with the day before as well about the situation. They, too, panicked a little bit and started packing their stuff. Not even ten minutes later, we were given our money back together with an… order? Frustrated question? To keep our mouths shut. It felt a lot like hush money. Which, obviously, came too late because at that point the Australians were also trying to get a hold of a cab to make it to the next town and escape from the bed bugs. Alina had managed to find a hotel down the street that still had rooms, so we decided to check that one out first. Somewhere in between getting checked in and finding out there were bed bugs we had adopted a sixth person, Katie, into the group, so we all made our way over to the hotel together. Melissa once again got tasked with the Spanish communication, and after some back and forth translation she told us the rooms would be around twenty euro a person if we shared. Our chorus of immediate ‘yes’-es was translated into a resounding ‘si’, and five minutes later we were blessed with beds (that were instantly checked for traces of bed bugs).
With the insects from hell safely removed from our lives, we focused on the next task: getting food. Frogville didn’t have a lot to offer, but we found a little grocery store that was manned by a woman whose phone notification was her sister’s boisterous laugh (which, honestly, that’s amazing) and with little figurines of frogs in the window. After some snacks, we said our goodbyes to Michael and walked back to our hotel. On the way, a big white cab drove back us, the Australians inside of it. The entire situation felt a bit like our lives were taken over by a Monty Python director.
We had dinner at a nice restaurant a few streets away, where the cheerful owner told us that we had to come back for breakfast in the morning. In general, I never really had breakfast at the start of my day. I preferred doing some kilometres first before getting breakfast, but then the man ran out after us when we left and gave each of us a small pin in the form of a yellow arrow. So, obviously, our first stop in the morning was breakfast. By the time we started the actual walking part of our day, it was later than usual. The sun had already started its journey across the horizon, creating a soft pink banner in the sky in front of us. Much to our delight, the moon was a giant – like, giant – orb right above the horizon. Talk about beautiful.
This was the third day in a row where I walked together with other people, and while I enjoyed the company and the conversations, I also started to feel that I’d need some time alone soon. After a while I did exactly that, popping in my earbuds and slowing down a little so I could walk on my own. It was a nice change of pace, being on my own without being alone.
At some point, we passed by a small town, where – out of seemingly nowhere – the man from the restaurant in Frogville suddenly walked out of a shop to wave at us. I needed a moment to remember that cars existed, and that – and maybe this was a more painful realisation – what we had covered on foot that day was probably easily done in fifteen minutes by car.
The albergue we stayed in that evening had the interior of a spacious cabin and the fluffiest cat I have ever seen in my life. I also wrote down the mysterious keyword “showers” in my notebook in the section of that day, although I do not remember anything at all that made the showers special except for the fact that the floor was so slippery that I nearly broke my ankle.* What I do remember though is playing a board game with an American guy – the man whose dinner I had all but crashed back in Fromista – and realising that I would have been the absolute worst housewife if I had been born a few decades earlier. This realisation came after me, Jaco and Katie were doing our laundry by hand (because it’s cheaper and also, there were no laundry machines anyway), and were helpfully told by an older woman that back in the day, mothers did the laundry of the household once a week, by hand. At this point, I can confidently say that the strongest muscles in my body aren’t my legs but are in fact those in my arms, from constantly wringing out my wet clothes to increase the chances of them drying quickly. Imagine doing that every week, for yourself and your kids and your partner. I will gladly accept the label of being the lazy generation if it means having access to laundry machines, thank you very much.
*Addendum from present-day Merel: this is, in fact, incorrect information and I would like to offer my heartfelt apologies for insulting what were actually the best showers on all of the camino. The showers in this albergue were rain showers. Next to them being the best showers of the way, I also took my longest shower.
Additionally, I can tell you that the ankle-breaking situation took place the day after, in Leon, where the showers had insane pressure, the temperature had a mid-life crisis, and the floor was some sort of slippery-slide.
