Santiago

No words. Just smiles today.

4:45 start in the dark

Headlamp walking through the creepy woods

Still dark, but a floodlit church seemed like a good spot for a photo.

At last!

Croatian surprise in the plaza! So happy to meet up with this group again!

 

First glimpse of the cathedral!

 

Yup. Scaffolding.

Camino friend, Nadine

Making it official

Celebrating with churros y chocolate

Pilgrims' Mass - camping out for seats

Church selfies of Camino casualties

Church nap for Nolan

Watching the famous incense burner, botafumeiro, fly. So cool, we watched it twice! 

Outside the cathedral as we left

Celebrating!

Happiness is clean sheets and towels :)

Ahhhh. Indeed it was a Buen Camino.

The Darker Side of the Camino

Dear friends, if you are seeking happiness or wholesomeness or a window into my mystical path, you may want to skip today's entry and wait for tomorrow's grand finale in Santiago where I hope to find all of the above. Today it is a darker side of the Camino that begs to be revealed.

On this day of great anticipation, less than 24 hours before we finally arrive in Santiago de Compostela, I feel that I need to cleanse my soul in hopes that I will engender only good karma on my path to enlightenment tomorrow.

It was one of those days on the trail.  We've been at this for 28 days now - four weeks.  That's 24/7 with each other all of the time.  It was about halfway into today's hike that we had our Disney moment.  I don't mean that magical moment where the whole family is smiling with eyes wide open and matching outfits in the classic picture with Mickey and Minnie.  No, I mean that Disney moment where you are in the "happiest place on earth," and you are having a massive family meltdown. After spending 30 minutes at an outdoor cafe stop watching my boys antagonize each other incessantly, one poked the other in the eye with a piece of straw.  Tears ensued. I told both boys that I did not want to walk with either of them.  I needed them to go in front of me or behind me, but that I was sick of them and needed a break.  It was a very special Camino family moment.  Foster responded by attaching himself to my side and claiming that I couldn't "make him not walk with me." I told him he was ruining "my" Camino on the second to last day.  It is all about me, after all. He insinuated that I was being a drama queen. Whatever.  I decided the only reasonable tactic was to put in my music and to turbo charge my walking pace and leave the offending offspring in the dust. I can only imagine that as I sped by pilgrims left and right, muttering under my breath, they were all wondering what had happened to that "nice Vermont family." A few kilometers later, we regrouped.  There was no mention of the drama, but I think we had all decided to move on and not ruin "my" Camino.

Obviously I need some enlightenment. I am hoping today was the day for purging the negativity, so that tomorrow can be a glorious new beginning.  So, in that vain, it is also time to purge my sarcastic, snarky, shallow pilgrim attitude. For the record, I have worked very hard to preach tolerance, kindness and gratitude for the last four weeks.  I have kept my sarcasm at bay and have tried to walk the talk. However, in the name of a good soul cleansing, it was necessary to compile a list of the darker elements of our Camino adventure.  If I record them here, perhaps I will be freed of their bonds and more open to tomorrow's good karma.  If not, then let them simply serve as a record of the reality. Lest you who know me best think I am drinking the "Camino Koolaid," enjoy the real Jennifer before her transformation.

Lessons Learned on the Camino (and hostile hostel thoughts)

1. If you sound like you are going to hack up a lung, take one for the team and stay in a private hotel room.

2. If you carry a purse on the Camino - expect to be ridiculed - even if it's one of those cute little backpack purses.  You're not fooling anyone.

3. If you have a hairdryer on the Camino, you are not a pilgrim (But I would like to borrow it if you are willing to share. I would also sacrifice a limb for a dollop of your hair conditioner).

4. If you have rented a mule and a man-servant to carry your things while you walk the Camino, do not wear high-heels. You will be judged by hundreds who are suffering from intense blisters and who would give anything for a different pair of practical shoes.

5. If you have intense blisters, do not display them to fellow pilgrims at a restaurant. Although we sympathize with your pain, we do not want to see its source in all of its disgusting detail. Your feet are repulsive.  Every pilgrim's feet are repulsive.  Please do not share.

6. Large groups on the Camino can be annoying to those seeking solitude.  Large groups of teenagers in a hostel can be annoying to those seeking sleep.  However, large groups of teenage boys overdosing on the European equivalent of Axe body spray can be lethal.  I will take trail stench any day over teenage stench. 

7. No matter how good your booty looks, we don't want to see booty shorts on the trail.  Although my teenage son may disagree, we are not all teenage boys.  Thank God (see #6).

8. Similarly, ladies, at 5:00 in the morning, when the sun has yet to rise, I do not want to be greeted by the sight of you standing in the bathroom in your thong.  I don't care how thong-worthy you think you are. I do not want to see that before I've had my coffee.

9. And, men, just because you stealthily slip into your sleeping bag after the lights are out, don't think that the rest of us want to see your junk on display at 1:00 a.m when you are thrashing about. Pajamas were invented for a reason.  Use them. 

10. I outgrew communal showers in middle school.  Cold, communal showers on the Camino should be outlawed.  Given the choice between privacy and personal hygiene, I may just choose privacy.  If most pilgrims share my view, that makes for a very smelly 130 bed hostal. I will pass and repass most of these pilgrims an average of 77 times during this trek.  Each time I will be required to meet their eyes and wish them a "Buen Camino." If I have been permanently scarred by the vision of them bending over to retrieve a bar of soap in the shower, forcing me to relive that moment over and over again each time I meet them on the trail is cruel and unusual punishment. Charge me an extra Euro, invest in shower curtains, and save me the psychological damage. 

Pray for my soul. Buen Camino.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

Roughing it in Ribadiso

With two more days behind us and just two more left to go, I find myself having one last true Camino pilgrim experience - staying in one of the oldest remaining pilgrim hostels still in existence. The stone dormitories, stone outbuildings with cool showers, and the massive stone fireplace in the common room, all compliment the medieval stone bridge that leads to its door.  It's idyllic and rustic.  We've been seeking peace from the large groups that are traveling this last bit of the Camino, and we have found it here in Ribadiso.  The lack of wifi and hot water pretty much guarantees an absence of teenage groups.  At this point on the journey, many people (like us) are craving creature comforts that have been hard to come by on the trail.  I'm having my own fantasies about sheets, food, and sweet smelling towels.

As I took a cool shower in the stone outbuilding under a pathetic trickle of water (for which I had to push a button every 8 seconds in order to keep it flowing), I tried to remember to be grateful for this experience.  Then, when I got out of the shower and discovered that a swallow in the rafters had pooped on my towel, I decided that grateful is overrated.  It's bad enough that I have been using the same postage stamp-sized, rancid-smelling chamois to dry off with for the last 30 days.  It did not need to be accessorized with bird poo. This pilgrim needs to get to Santiago stat.

The good news is that we've had a couple of relatively easy days on the trail.  Yesterday's walk from Portomarin to Palas de Rei was completely unremarkable except for the "Pizzeria" road sign that greeted us upon our arrival in Palas de Rei.  It was a very official looking municipal-type sign, which we took to mean that they were serious about their pizza in this town.  We were pretty serious about finding that pizza, so, as soon as we had checked into a hostel, we set off to find it.  Apparently the owner of the bar serving toaster-oven frozen pizzas must be related to the mayor of Palas de Rei. Lesson learned. When in Spain, do not expect gourmet pizza. Stick to the paella.

Today's walk from Palas de Rei to Ribadiso was more scenic and more removed from the road.  We walked on forest paths and through small villages along the way. The trail is still a constant stream of pilgrims as we get closer to Santiago.  Today, July 25th, is St. James Day, so there is a large celebration at the cathedral in Santiago.  As we ate lunch in a bar, we watched the royals arriving at the cathedral on TV, and we anticipated our own arrival in a couple of days.  We scanned the crowds on the  television in search of people we had met along the way who were aiming for today's festivities in Santiago.  The glimpses of the cathedral and its surrounding square were a useful reality check.  It turns out that the cathedral is presently completely covered by scaffolding and looks more like an angular Chinese temple than the cathedral that we had anticipated. The kids and I had a good laugh, because this seems to be a theme for us when we visit famous sites.  A few years ago, we sat for hours in the dark and cold waiting for the sun to rise over Angkor Wat.  When it finally peeked over the horizon, and we got our first glimpse of this wonder, it was covered in scaffolding and green netting. We just shook our heads and reminded ourselves that the Eiffel Tower had been scaffolding-free just a month ago when we visited, so we had probably already used up our monument luck for this trip.

So, tonight we find ourselves in this medieval hostel with time to relax, reflect, and play in the frigid water of the river.  In a flashback to a mid-Camino moment, we are down to our last 38 Euros with no bank to be found in this ancient outpost.  There is one restaurant (the one attached to the hostel) with a pilgrim menu for 9.50. Four meals for exactly 38.00.  I think it was meant to be.  Tomorrow we will carry on to what will be our final night on the trail before reaching Santiago. Tonight I'll be trying hard to soak up the last bits of the Camino experience while praying hard that there is no evil swallow above my bunk.

100 Kilometers to Go!

It has been a two day rat race toward the finish line, and I find that I have to force myself to slow down and walk at a reasonable pace when I find myself getting caught up in the rush.  We left Triacastela yesterday morning at a ridiculously late hour.  We knew we had the shortest walk of our entire trip ahead of us, so we took our time getting on the road and didn't begin walking until 8:30.  Since most people were on the road well before we rolled out of the hostel, the pilgrim traffic was light for the first few hours. We walked along some gorgeous natural track that took us back up above the clouds for a while, and we enjoyed our time in the sunshine in the heavens - feeling like we were flying above it all and wondering whether the people in the valleys even knew that the sun was shining.  We were surrounded by green countryside, farms, stone walls, and farm animals of every shape and size as well as their herding dogs and shepherds.

  

We eventually descended through the mist and discovered that the sun wasn't shining down below.  It was a creepy, damp cloud forest that greeted us. By the time we stopped for breakfast at a tiny trail side barn/cafe the sun was trying hard to shine through the clouds, creating a humid warmish/coolish wet roadside break.  

From breakfast, we had a quick two hour downhill trot into the city of Sarria.  The trail followed the road for the last few miles, and the sun shone hard.  I walked for a while with a marathon runner from Slovakia who had spent a total of ten days planning his trip to walk a portion of the Camino -  he just hopped on a plane and showed up.  I thought about our two year dream and just laughed. There are so many different stories on the Way. 

Once we made it to the old quarter of Sarria, we were greeted by the usual 10,000 step climb up to the main street which seemed to climb back into the clouds.  We were fortunate to find a bed quickly in an inexpensive hostel despite our late start.  We went to a local restaurant for a meal of macaroni, eggs, and cabbage soup (Foster!) and then managed to find a "real" supermarket, so we could supplement our diet with junk food, and all Vermont pilgrims were quite content to settle in for the afternoon. 

This morning began a bit earlier.  The hostel was noisy, so it was easy to get up and out before 7:00 and get the first hill climbs under our belts before we even realized that we were walking.  The descent from Sarria was steep and cruel, and then we started climbing again.  The scenery was everything that I imagine Ireland would be - small hamlets with farms, stone walls, and many more animals than people.

It was beautiful, and I'm pretty sure the Pied Piper was leading the way.  All of the the obedient pilgrims just followed one another up and over hills and through the countryside.  I'm not sure that I had to look for a trail marker all day.  We paused for a breakfast break a couple of hours into our morning with dozens of other walkers.  When we took off again, it felt like the beginning of a marathon - bobbing and weaving until we found a group moving at just the right pace.  Eventually we settled in again and soon passed the coveted 100 km post - marking 100 km to the Cathedral in Santiago de Compostela.  We paused for a photo and then quickly rejoined the race so as not to lose our place in line.  It's hard to even remember the solitude of the earlier stages of the Camino.

Our goal for the day was to reach the town of Portomarin and the Belesar Reservoir that it overlooks.  As soon as we saw the reservoir, we got excited.  It has been nearly a month since we have glimpsed anything resembling a lake.  The closest we got was a dammed river a week ago.  Most rivers have been nothing more than a dry trickle.  Lakes have been non-existent.  So, it felt a little odd to cross a huge bridge overlooking kayaks and sailboats as we entered town.  We climbed the requisite steps to give ourselves one last cardiovascular workout before settling on an expensive, but clean-looking hostel.  It feels like a hospital ward with 130 beds in one room, partitioned into groups of 40 with curtains in between. I am guessing we will have snoring stories to tell tomorrow.

Once we got settled, a dip in the reservoir was a necessity.  Brianna and Nolan were game. It was cool and refreshing without being bone-chilling.  A large group of Italian girls swam and squealed nearby.  We splashed and floated, oblivious to anything being amiss, until Brianna spotted the water snake.  Apparently the Italian squealing was about the snakes (a drawback of not speaking enough languages).  We did our own squealing, and Brianna and I decided we'd had enough swimming.  Nolan?  Well, he's Nolan.  Whatever.  Why waste a perfectly good reservoir just because there are slimy serpents sharing it with you?  He continued to jump off the rocks and swim around until we forced him to leave. 

That will probably be the last of the cooling dips we find on the way to Santiago.  With four days to go, we have our eyes on the prize - a Sunday finish in Santiago with clean beds, warm food, and good friends waiting.