Puente La Reina - don't follow people

Can we be other than what we are? Can we three assorted pilgrims come to terms with our different desires?

Maybe this is part of what I need to be learning. That I can continue to grow. We are in Puente La Reina. I have showered and washed my socks. My body is clean and my mind floating. This afternoon after we arrived at the albergue I went back to the town (we walked up a hill on the far side of town to get here, which was a bit of a fractious walk) to fetch blister cream for Jessica. One of the other walkers recommended something, and I went to find a pharmacy to purchase some for her. She has blisters. And they're hurting her.

I also went up to see the ruined castle, up top of the town. When I climbed all the way up there, it was kinda just a pile of rocks. NOT the noble edifice I had in mind... So much of life is like that, it seems.

When we were in the Toronto airport, we were traversing the international terminal to approach our gate for Munich. A little Asian lady was the gatekeeper of the far recesses of the wing we needed. As we walked up, she was scolding some passengers who were late for their flight to Lima. She bundled them into one of those beeping golf cart vehicles and they were whisked away. We were wondering if we were going to get yelled at. I'd already had a full body scan in the nice new machine and an intimate cuddle with a lady wearing blue latex gloves. We got to the gatekeeper, and she looked at our boarding passes. She said, "Go that way. Don't follow people." We were giggling, and commented that it might be good advice in general, for life, and there have been a few times since, when we've been trying to find something, and been tempted to just go along with the herd of other back-pack toting pilgrims, and one or other of us has said, "Don't follow people."

I have the guidebook. I keep it in my little bag, so it's always at hand. Tina says the guidebook lies. It tells us kilometres, and we don't believe it. We walk and walk, and then we come to a landmark, I look in the book, and the map says we've walked half a kilometre. Today there was a long stretch without shade, through farmland and vineyards, and I have a couple of little blisters. My feet are swollen.

I am a pelegrino - a pilgrim. We are walking. For the last year or so, people have been asking me what I was going to do this spring, since I went to Everest last spring. And I've been saying, "I'm going to walk across Spain." And now I'm doing it. We are obviously pilgrims. We've got the backpacks, and I've got a crest that says "Canadian Company of Pilgrims". As people pass us, locals and non-Camino tourists, they say, "Buen Camino."

My head is pretty quiet, today. It sang me some songs, but other than that no worries. We walked 30k today, starting out of Pamplona, which is a pretty university city, and up the Alto de Perdon, a big hill with wind turbines up top. Stopped at a little village for lunch. My feet are tired, tonight, and we're staying in an albergue (a hostel) in the basement of quite a nice hotel. Apparently they serve breakfast. Everyone in the albergues gets up pretty early, and they have a time you have to be gone by, which so far has been 8am. A little early for us jet-lagged folk, but it's nice to get going before it gets hot.

Pamplona

Long trip. We (Tina, Jessica, me) flew to Toronto and were there for a few hours, Munich for a very little while, Madrid for the night (I woke up in the middle of the night disoriented and wanting food). We lost a lot of hours that we won't get back until we return, in three weeks. Madrid was a bit of a shock, hot and grumpy and disorganized, somewhere I've never been except as a stopover. Although the hotel I had booked us into advertised a free shuttle from the airport, it never came and we ended up in a cab after waiting an hour. Tired and jetlagged, I just wanted my bed, but it made me anxious about the transfer to Pamplona - I hadn't looked up how one gets from the airport to the town and realized I should have done that.

This afternoon we flew to Pamplona, to start the walk across Spain that I mentioned earlier here. We're starting the Camino Santiago, the Way of St. James, although I'm pretty sure we won't manage the whole 600k in the time we have. Inquiries at the nice clean airport in Pamplona established that a taxi to the hostel would be eight Euros. A nice minivan was waiting for us outside, and the driver was jovial. My worries were for naught. We pulled up at the hostel and checked in, got our assigned bunk beds and went out to look for food.

This, however, proved to be a problem. I hadn't anticipated that my companions would not like the menu selections listed on the walls of the bars in the surrounding area, and the fact that dinner was not going to be served much before seven o'clock. Tina declared, "I'm going to starve, here." Eventually we found a bar that served sandwiches, and I got the largest sandwich I've ever seen, a baguette with ham and cheese. Ate half, tucked the other half away for later. Back at the hostel, the beds were soft but I had some trouble getting to sleep. After all the sitting on planes, one of my feet kept falling asleep. Jessica, in the bunk below, was kept awake by my thrashing. At 3AM I was starving again, and got up. I grabbed my leftover sandwich, climbed three flights of stairs in almost pitch darkness, and sat in the high-ceilinged kitchen and ate ravenously. Sitting there, I thought, this is it. We're walking from here. After that I slept.

One gentleman whom we met just before we went to bed turned out to be a champion snorer. The other strange thing was that the bathrooms were unisex, and the lights were on a motion-sensor timer - while I was in the shower the lights went out, plunging me into darkness, and I had to wrap a towel around me and go out to wave at the light switch. So at one point I was headed for the bathroom to brush my teeth, and walked in just in time to see a naked man step out of the shower, wave at the sensor, and go back in. So this is the Camino...