Tosantos

4 abril 2010 (abril is Spanish for April)
Today I have come to a small town called Tosantos, which is darling and quite cute and only fits up to 20 pilgrims or so but will make a place for anyone who comes. I walked 26 Km or so today and there are only 8 pilgrims or so here. We will make dinner and pray together and it has been a cute place to be welcomed to. I contemplated staying one town back but really wanted to walk and am happy to be here. It will be cold and a little more solitary as very few people speak English, but I am sitting in the front yard of this little old yellow house that for its 300 years of life has served as a pilgrim’s “hospital” or albergue. There are some caves up the road a bit carved into the mountain façade. I am very happy to be staying here. I just spoke with Lola who has done the camino several times and will be working in an albergue where I pass through in June.
Today the mountains were beautiful, really just rolling hills and I am looking forward to the community dinner and climbing to the bell tower or something like that for prayer afterwards (it turned out that it was the top roof that had been turned into a chapel). The hostal I stayed in last night was quite nice, like a hotel, but I am needing a bit smaller of a community tonight. Also, we can’t get up before 7 AM! Yay! We can start having breakfast around 7:15 AM. I am really going to try and stay in other smaller albergues because they have a little more of the character of the camino… I just enjoyed some chocolate and cake; it was delicious! (That region is famous for it’s hot chocolate and it was dense and rich and hm!) So tomorrow I am just going to stop and reflect/pray and enjoy the way.

Logroño and on

1 April 2010:
Today we are in Logroño and I feel quite under the weather. I have been coughing quite a bit today but the walk was “genial” ( which means fabulous, I have been translating my journal every so often from Spanish, but wanted to include this adjective as it is better in Spanish). Today was pretty. It is quite unpleasant to be so stuffed up and with a cough but I am enjoying…


Sat. April 3, 2010
So the days so far were:

1. St. Jean Pied de Port-Roncesvalles ~25 KM
2. Roncesvalles-Larrasoana 26 KM
3. Larrasoana-Pamplona 16 KM
4. Pamplona-Puente la Reina 22 KM
5. Puente la Reina-Estella 20 KM
6. Estella-Torres del Río 30 KM
7. Torres del Río-Logroño ~20 KM
8. Logroño-Nájera 31 KM
9. Nájera-Santo Domingo del Calzado ~20 KM

Today was a pleasant walk. I am incredibly tired at the moment because the hostel receptionist gave me a glass of wine after a “paseo” (stroll) around town. He is a character of an elderly gentleman. This AM was pleasant. I still have a head cold but think it is getting better. Tomorrow will be Easter and I am going to make “eggs in a basket” and then head out to either Belorados or Tosantos, which offers dinner and breakfast by donation and has a Christian focus. I do feel tired but am quite content.
We had a jaunt around town with some tasty little dessert pastries at the “Sabores de Semana Santa” Feria, or Tastes of Holy Week Fair (Holy Week is our Easter but they have a lot longer holiday, for education two full weeks ☺)
At this day I remember speaking with Ko and talking about how tired I was and how my journal wasn’t very interesting and I was just writing facts. He told me, “Sometimes just the facts have meaning”. I loved that because when you are walking 20 KM a day and sleeping in a big dormitory of 16 to 100 people and healing blisters and stretching out muscle fatigue, the facts do carry meaning. Thanks for the wisdom Donsang, (that is very uncertain spelling, but the Korean word for younger brother).

Sigue caminante

From my journal:
Today is our sixth day, I believe it is Wednesday the 31st, but I am not sure at the moment. I am sitting in the sun on a hay barrel maybe not yet halfway. I feel very tired because of my head cold. It is gorgeous weather though and I enjoyed the first hour and a half or two hours with a French gentleman named Alan, that is probably between Dad and G’papa’s age. He was very knowledgeable, as the elderly seem to be, and wears an adorable beret and walked at a pleasant pace. We talked in English and French as he was an English language teacher and spoke excellent English. He also helped me a bit with my French. He taught me some French colloquialisms, one word for boring “gaver” (pronounced somewhat phonetically from an American accent as “gahv- ay”), which literally means force-fed, such as with foie-gras. We talked about languages and trees and gypsies and Flamenco and housing styles. He had said, “Les langues sont vivants”. I loved that and wanted to quote it. In English, essentially, “Languages are living”. We walked by a fountain of wine in Irache and the sun was shining. In French sunrise is “le levé de soleil” whereas the sunset is “le couché de soleil”. Twilight is something like “crepuscule”. He was an inspirational older man, “une source d’ inspiration” and is doing the camino in stages. It is incredible how exhausted I feel. I wish I had more energy, but today I will just have to take it easy. I think I will just go to Los Arcos and maybe try to make it to Logroño tomorrow. I will see. I want to feel at peace about any pace, but I do want to be able to do more in some of the middle stages, maybe when it is flat.
(I then fell quickly asleep on the hay barrel and later woke up with flees or some sort of bug crawling all over me. I was somewhat horrified, but brushed off what I could...later that day: )
So finally I came about 30 Km today. The place I am staying at is not very welcoming, but there is an ATM if I feel the need to pull money out before reaching Logroño… Today I was walking alone a bit and it was kind of cool, although I am really grossed out by the fleas or lice or whatever it was crawling on me after the haystacks rest. Sitting there was so pleasant for a short bit, but the aftereffects might leave me traumatized of the Camino and the hostels and the like. I still have this stinky head cold/cough, but had nice weather while walking today so it was pleasant. I think I am going to douse myself in tea tree oil, stretch and sleep.

(The video was from before journaling. )

Pics are from throughout that day, I really took it easy and enjoyed journaling and photos. The fountain really is a wine fountain, it wasn't running at 8 AM though when we walked by. The others are shots from along the way. Often I would run into another pilgrim along the way and we would often take photos of each other. Thanks to all the pilgrims!

El Camino sigue...(The walk continues..)

Here are some more photos before my journaling continued. In between with the cold and the machine-routine. The longest worm I can remember seeing with my hiking boots surrounding it (foot pic), a shell of the camino on a church before the Alto del Perdón; Alisa and I at Puente la Reina; Ko, the Korean, putting spicy Korean paste on his olives. It was delicious, but I like olives just plain as well. Some fun memories from the way.

Day 2-3, El Camino de Santiago

28th March (Larrasoana-Pamplona)
We have had lovely weather so far; my face has a sunburn I think. We have been walking pretty intensely; I think for me I need to slow down because I feel like it is going too fast. I don’t think that is what is going on in my life, sometimes I just rush in the moment. Tomorrow will be a day of more walking. I would like to get to Puente las Reinas, as it is recommended but I will read the guide book and then make a decision.
I have met some really lovely people; Frances from Wales, Alissa from Cali and I have been sharing a lot of the walk. We have bumped into Mark, from Australia and Ko from Korea and Luca from Italy for the last few days. Well, I guess today was only our third day, but it feels a little unusual now. I do have a few blisters and have mostly treated them with Compeed, some of which a friend gave me, as well as posh ear plugs and lending me his book for a farewell Camino gift.

29th March, (Pamplona-Puente la Reina)
Today was another day of lovely weather. We hiked the Alto de Perdon which was gorgeous and did not seem hard in comparison to the last few days. Day 4 feels like it should be Day 3 or Day 7, but it was very pleasant. I definitely need more sleep to help get rid of the head cold I have gotten. Ko, the Korean, is really funny and let me taste his Korean spicy paste. We ate it on olives because he didn’t like the way the olives tasted. I shared with everyone that my mother sews quilts for prostitutes and just like her we can sleep when we are dead.

This AM I set off on my own. Mostly everyone caught up mostly. Luca the Italian gave me a lecture about my pace and how I walk reflects how I live and how my pace is fast and shows that I am focused on my destination and not the journey. I didn’t appreciate his wisdom very much, I felt like it wasn’t the golden feather from the bird of truth, but I really wanted some independence. This trip was for me to go and explore and be an inner journey. I do want to meet new people and learn the a sundry and many things we can from others, but I really enjoyed a bit of solitarity today and was just enjoying my pace and seeing the gorgeous countryside. I felt a need to be independent of the needs of others. I do really miss my family and would love to chat with Mom or Dad. I do appreciate the comradery in the hostal/albergue at night but also want to run at my own air a bit. I think that is a “spaniardism”.

I am starting to not feel so well, each day a little more so, but hopefully tomorrow that will improve. I have several oranges and loads of carrots, as well as some figs. The second day seemed mostly easy, but we were fighting off soreness. The third day was the shortest so far; my feet are probably my biggest discomfort factor and I am just incredibly tired. If I am up for it, I might go an extra 10 KM tomorrow, but it depends on if I am feeling better. I have enjoyed some comradery and walking and am incredibly impressed with our bodies capabilities.
The town we are in, Puente la Reina, is adorable and charming and very Spanish. I want to wander around these cute small places.
~~I am happy to be doing this and am going to listen to myself and enjoy and take photos whenever I want.

Le Chemin de Saint Jacques de Compostelle

I have typed out a lot of my journal I kept along the walk. It is somewhat entertaining to me to read back through it as it reminds me of how exhausted and all the different things I went through. The journaling really had a lack of structure, but it is realistic of how I felt and what I was capable of writing after packing 20+KM a day. Although after the first few days I definitely progressed on my writing ability ;)

27th March 2010:
So yesterday I traversed over the Pyrenees by foot from St. Jean Pied de Port. I really enjoyed the bus ride in the rain through the darling Basque French countryside. When we were on the bus several people got off on different stops, but the only travelers who stayed on were myself, several other girls and a middle-aged man with his mother, who I later saw making the hike as well.

Retrojournaling:
So the first day there was loads of wind and sun and a steep mountain traverse. I had met some girls off the bus and then we had had dinner together, Alissa, Frances, Amanda, the photographer from Vancouver, and myself. The first walking day we had shared most of the walk and made it in under 8 hours, despite the wind and our packs. It was gorgeous but I do remember being focused on the goal of just continuing while listening to my body. We had been told it would be the hardest day and more or less it has been. It wasn’t as pleasant because of the wind, but it was incredible. We met some other people on the way Sasha, the Hungarian with excellent English, and Mark, Ko, and others. We went to a shared dinner and pilgrim’s mass with more of the pilgrims. At mass the priest’s blessed us in our many different languages and then we went back to the hostel. There was a choir of snorers, being in one large dormitory with something like 100 bunk beds. I had some weird dreams and there were some rude women speaking loudly because they couldn’t sleep, but I have slept better since.