España Part 2: El Camino

So now that you know a little history about el camino, I’ll explain a bit more about our journey. We started out from a little town called Sarria, which is about 120 km from Santiago. After a 12 hour bus trip from San Sebastian we arrived in Sarria. One of the coolest things about the pilgrim's route is that it is marked with yellow arrows leading the way. So immediately after walking out of the bus station we saw our first yellow arrow leading us to the trail. At this point both Jill and I started getting excited (both of us daydreaming, perhaps, of our sun burnt and road-weary selves and our heroic yet humble pilgrimage, dramatically arriving in Santiago to the cheers and encouragement of the simple townsfolk…completely full of shit, of course...) So as the sun was setting we headed to our first refuge, almost getting lost within our first 15 minutes of the pilgrimage (even with the arrows…typical), only to find that it was full. We proceeded to ask at every refuge and pensión in town only to find that they, too, were full. Finally, at the last place in town, we convinced a sweet (and possibly senile) old lady to let us stay on the floor in her living room. She made us swear not to tell anyone in town where we were staying and told us to come back after dark so nobody would see us enter the pensión. Apparently, many of the places that house pilgrims get subsidies from the government, so that they can offer cheap accommodation to pilgrims. In turn, the people who run the pensiones must declare all the rooms/number of pilgrims. As we found out, many places have “secret” or undeclared rooms so that they can make a little extra money on the side. Anyway, we got to stay in one of the secret rooms, but once inside we weren’t allowed to turn on the lights or open the window…as I said before, the little old lady was a little crazy (she also made us hide our backpacks inside the pantry in the kitchen…in case of a middle-of-the-night raid, perhaps?)

The next morning we officially started our pilgrimage. I, being the procrastinator that I am, had done a last minute packing job before I left Japan, so any supplies and equipment that I had were all bought at the 100 yen store the day before I left. Using only the small, detachable travel backpack part of my larger backpack and wearing my worn out old running shoes, I was taking the minimalist approach. Jill, on the other hand, had spent weeks (if not months) making multiple trips to REI and doing research on the internet about packing lists, etc. So of course Jill had prepared everything down to the last, minute detail, and was carrying a large, brand new, state of the art backpack filled with the latest “moisture wicking” clothing technology and wearing top of the line hiking shoes; quite the contrast to my approach! While I openly mocked Jill for being fooled by the marketing ploys and hi-tech descriptions, I was secretly envious of much of the gear and kicking myself for my lack of preparation. Anyway, I was determined to prove that I could fare just as well with no gear…minimalist vs. western excess, the ultimate challenge!

So how does the challenge end, you may be asking yourselves? Well, in the end, the pilgrimage kicked both of our asses, gear or no gear. After day 1 of the journey, having walked about 22 or 23 km, we arrived in Portomarín with swollen and blistered feet, aching backs, and sufficiently humbled. Touché, el camino, touché…

Jill, draining the blood from her feet...Pilgrim climbing the stairs to Portomarín