A Journey of Days: Relearning Life's Lessons on the Camino de Santiago
Published by Guy Thatcher at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 Guy Thatcher
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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To my wife, Carroll, my life companion,
who is always there for me.
Foreword
Dear Reader,
The pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain is a trip of almost 800 kilometres. It has been described as a journey, not only to a physical destination, but to the interior of oneself. Every pilgrim undertakes this journey with his own baggage and objectives--sometimes shared, sometimes kept within.
Join in as Guy Thatcher shares some of his reasons and many of his experiences with us.
I hope that you learn something new about Guy and yourself as he takes you on his journey.
Paul O’Hagan
Acknowledgements
I want to start by acknowledging two people, Carroll Thatcher, my wife, and Meredith Thatcher, my daughter, whose quiet and insistent persuasion, in spite of my repeated intransigence, convinced me to take with me and keep a journal of the events of my journey, without which there would have been no book, no record at all of the weeks of my adventures in northern Spain. I was strongly--and wrongly--opposed, for a long time, to the very idea of keeping a journal. I thought that it would detract from my experience. I was wrong and I appreciate their persistence in this matter--although I didn’t at the time. They also spent many, many hours searching by phone and via the Internet for my lost backpack and forwarding my e-mails to interested friends, and they set up the Weblog from which this book is derived.
Thanks to Ali Black, Marjorie Kort, and to Jim and Sandra Gervais, who shared their previous experience, books, and material on the camino. They gave me an abundance of good and useful advice over dinner and good red wine. To Marilyn Carty, who loaned me one of her treasured books about the camino. To the front desk staff at the Hotel Maissonave in Pamplona, Henrik, Ander, Raquel, Pilar, and Aitor, who tried their best to help solve the missing backpack problem and were helpful in finding replacement items in Pamplona. To José Luis Garcia Cuartero in Madrid, who gave up most of a day to help me deal with the lost baggage at the airport, then treated me to lunch at Atocha station while I waited for my evening train back to Pamplona.
To the people I met on the camino, Martin from Constance, Hannelore from Hamburg, Walter and Roswitha from Cologne, Eva and Richard from Augsburg (who gave me his only fleece), Heinz from Munster, Vicente, Miguel and Vicente, the three compadres from Spain, the Aussies from Brisbane who brightened my days near and in Santiago, Sturla Pilskog and Mari Bjørnstad from Oslo, who are preparing a documentary about the camino, and to Adrie from Holland. To the people with whom I walked, Georg from Bremen, Wayne from south of London, Veronica and Julian, the teachers from Normandy, Tina from Germany, Andreas from Germany, Ferran from Barcelona, Eva Papp from Budapest, and especially to three people: Paula from Bremen, Karsten from Berlin, and Marina from Hamburg, with whom I walked for almost three weeks. They gave me a glimpse into another generation and gave me permission to quote their words in this book.
To Kirsti Antila from Finland, who loaned me her cell phone to call Canada on my wedding anniversary, and Suzie from Montreal, who talked with me and brightened my day while I was recuperating from a walking injury and who suggested that I should write a book--this book.
To the hospitaleras and hospitaleros at all the albergues on the camino, many of whom are unpaid volunteers, for their warm welcome, love and care, dry, clean beds, security, food, advice about the camino, and laundry facilities.
To my dear old friend Fern Charbonneau of Quebec City, for his engaging commentary on my blog while I was travelling. To my book club, who asked that they be allowed to use my draft book as one of the books they discuss.
To my family, to my sister-in-law Maryan O’Hagan for her encouragement and unconditional love over the years, to her son and my nephew Paul O’Hagan for his interest and encouragement, to my English cousin Dr. Roger Sage, of Whipsnade, for his medical advice early on--drink a lot more water-- and for his offer to come and help when I was briefly laid up, to his wife, Jackie, for her review of an early draft of this book and her excellent advice, to my brother Ance Thatcher of Candia, New Hampshire, for his manuscript review and his comment on scythes, and to Jim Holmes of Ottawa and John McGee of Atlanta for their careful reviews of the draft and their perceptive and helpful criticism.
To my daughter-in-law, TJ Sharp, who produced the wonderful artwork for the cover of this book.
To the Confraternity of Saint James, London, www.csj.org.uk, for a wealth of good advice about the camino and for their permission to quote from The Pilgrim’s Guide: A 12th Century Guide for the Pilgrim to St. James of Compostella, and to the Canadian Little Company of Pilgrims, www.santiago.ca, for more good advice closer to home.
To my publisher, Tim Gordon, for his faith in me; to my editor, Jane Karchmar, for her sensitivity and excellent advice; and to my publicist, Alison Roesler, for her enthusiasm and good ideas, without all of whom this would still be just a dream.
And thanks above all to my wife, Carroll, for her constant love, quiet encouragement, and practical advice, without whom the journey itself would probably not have happened, and without whose abundant tolerance this book would certainly not have been written.
Introduction
This is not your typical vacation. It starts normally enough; an international flight, a connecting flight, a train to an old European city, a nice hotel, a few days of wandering around the city. Then one April morning I step out of the hotel, turn left, and start walking by myself for hundreds of kilometres across country I have never seen before, using only a rudimentary map from a guidebook. How bizarre is that? But that is exactly how it happened. This is the story of that journey.
This book is organized into six sections: the Prologue describing the preparation for the journey, four sections representing each one of the major political regions that I walked through: Navarre, La Rioja, Castilla y León, and Galicia and an Epilogue.
Prologue
I am going to Spain to walk 800 kilometres of “el camino de Santiago,” or the road to Santiago, also known as the Way of St. James. I have never been to Spain. I plan to start at St. Jean Pied-de-Port, across Spain’s northern border with France, just on the northern side of the Pyrenees. The camino is a thousand-year-old pilgrim path that runs across the northern part of Spain from east to west, ending at Santiago de Compostela in the northwest corner of Spain. Santiago is where St. James is reputedly buried, and his tomb and shrine has been a major site for Christians. It is not clear to me why I am doing this, except that I feel a compulsion to make this journey. I do not think that I am religious, so this is not a “pilgrimage” for me, although I hope that the journey will have spiritual overtones. I do not, however, expect that this will be Shirley McLean’s camino.
I intended from the start to walk it alone. I would do it either in the spring, mid-April and May, or in the fall, September to mid-October. I figure that I need about five weeks to complete the walk. The choice of dates is based on two major considerations: the weather and the volume of people. For the past thirty-five years, the numbers of people on the camino have been increasing steadily, from a low of six in 1972, to 2,500 in 1986, to 20,000 in 1995, to a high of 100,000 in 2006. Holy Years in Spain see a significant jump in the numbers of pilgrims. In 2004, the most recent Holy Year, the numbers almost doubled to 180,000. The busiest months are July and August, Spain’s typical months for vacation from work or school.
June, July, and August are also the hottest months in northern Spain, so those three months are definitely out. November, December, January, and February are cold, snowy, and unpredictable. That cuts them out of contention. September and October are pleasant months, but I want to visit New Orleans in late October, and I do not want to have to walk the camino to a tight deadline, so that leaves March, April, and May. In March I will be coming back from a couple of months in Arizona, so, by exclusion, I am walking in April and May. Since I have read and been told that the Pyrenees, where I will be starting, will likely be snow-covered and can have blizzards in March and into April, I plan to start by mid-April and finish by the end of May. That ought to give me the best weather and the least volume of people.
The tomb of St. James was “rediscovered” here early in the ninth century (834 AD) and authenticated, if that is the correct term, by Theodomirus, the Bishop of Iria Flavia. This was a stroke of good luck for the local Spanish nobility and clergy, who were having trouble keeping the Moors at bay. The Moors had a magical edge, a piece of the arm of Mohammed, and with it to inspire their troops, won enough of the important battles to discourage the Christian defenders. Once the bones of St. James were discovered, having been lost for eight centuries, the Spanish troops had their own magical relic to inspire them, and the Reconquista began. St. James, that mild-mannered apostle, became known as St. James Matamoros, the Moor slayer. He is often portrayed in Spain wearing Conquistador armour, on horseback on churches and cathedrals, wielding a sword with the heads of dead Moors around the horse’s feet. In this world lit only by fire, the belief in an all-powerful and often vengeful God was almost universal.
It turns out that, like so many other Christian rituals and myths, this journey across northern Spain may well have been a pagan pilgrimage thousands of years before the Way of St. James was initiated. The older Celtic pilgrimage is to a point on the coast just west of Santiago, Finisterre (Land’s End or the Edge of the World), which was seen as a magical place by Celts, who thought that paradise existed beyond the far horizon where the sun set every night. The scallop, for so long an article of the Christian faithful, resembles the setting sun, and was the focus of pre-Christian Celtic rituals of the area. All of this to say that the pre-Christian origin of the camino de Santiago may have been a Celtic end-of-life journey, always westwards towards the setting sun and terminating at the Edge of the World (Finisterre).
St. Francis of Assisi made this pilgrimage to Santiago in 1213–14, as did Charlemagne, earlier, and Pope John Paul 23rd, more recently, so I am walking in good footsteps. Of course, not only the good guys walk the camino. In former times, all kinds of people could be found on the camino. There were genuine pilgrims, traders, thieves, medical people, criminals who had been sentenced to make the pilgrimage, other people who, for a fee, would walk the camino in place of someone else (often a wealthy criminal). It appears that heretics also used the pilgrimage route to reach the western part of Iberia.
Even fictional heroes like Diego de la Vega, better known as Zorro, walked the camino, during the peninsular wars, disguised as a pilgrim, with two beautiful--of course--young women and their dueña (chaperone) as fugitives from the French and their traitorous Spanish allies.
I have moments when I say to myself, “What are you thinking, to commit very publicly to walking 800 kilometres across Spain by yourself?” Carroll reminds me, lovingly, that I am seventy, and young people will see me as old, even if I don’t see myself as old. Other than my failure to reduce my own weight by about twenty pounds--I am just under 190 pounds--I think that I am ready. I have trained hard over the past twenty-four months and have reduced the pack weight as much as possible. It feels very normal and comfortable wearing it. My hiking boots are well worn in.
My preparation included a very careful selection of items to go in the backpack. Weight is a major issue when one has to carry everything one needs. It is normal for people to carry their own gear with them, although one can join a tour group and have one’s gear carried from point to point. That makes it, in my view, into something resembling a hike and not something resembling a pilgrimage. But that is my opinion, not a dictum for others.
I have a blue Osprey Aether 70 (for seventy-litre capacity) backpack, which has a separate zippered section at the bottom for my one-pound three-season sleeping bag. In the top flap of the backpack, I have a Camelback collapsible one-litre plastic container, which allows me to drink water any time I want from a plastic tube extending over my shoulder to a mouthpiece in easy reach. My clothes--two complete sets of shirt, pants, underwear, and socks--have all been chosen for easy washing and drying, which means all synthetic. For rain, I have a red Mountain Hard Wear Typhoon rain jacket and pants, breathable, waterproof, and lightweight. For cold, I have a long-sleeved fleece pullover. For sun: sunglasses, sunscreen, and a Tilley hat with my cloth pilgrim scallop shell sewn on it by Carroll. I had her sew this on at the last minute, since I did not want to display the shell while training. I am saving it for the actual camino.
My boots, a critical component, are Lowa light hikers with Birkenstock orthotic insoles. I am on my second pair, since I wore a pair out while training for this walk in the countryside near my home in Kanata and for two months walking the hills in the sere, mountainous country north and east of Mesa, Arizona. I used a pedometer and recorded my step count to encourage myself to walk the distances that I figured would prepare me for the camino, although I never walked more than eighteen kilometres a day in training (a little over three hours), and that seldom. My Leki trekking poles are collapsible, which has two advantages. I can carry them in my baggage and I can change the length depending on whether I am going up (shorter) or down hill (longer). I got most of the gear at either the Mountain Equipment Co-op and the Expedition Shop in Canada or at REI in the United States.
The pack also includes my trusty guidebook, Brierley’s “A Pilgrim’s Guide to the Camino de Santiago,” complete with maps, a rather complete set of utility items, such as a headlamp, a Swisscard--like a Swiss army knife but in credit card shape and size--, compass, whistle, all the usual hiking stuff, and emergency medical items to combat the most likely problems encountered over a period of weeks in a strange country.
15 April, in Ottawa
It is 1435 hours and I am at the Ottawa airport waiting at departure gate 18 for the Air Canada flight to Toronto at 1600, en route to Madrid via Munich. I checked in and got my boarding pass online. When I arrive at the airport, courtesy of my daughter Meredith, I am able to get my checked baggage--my backpack--packed in plastic and checked through to Madrid. I let go of it very reluctantly, since if it doesn’t arrive in Madrid, I will just have to wait for it. I am very ready to go, although I am a little trepidatious about what I have embarked on.
16 April, Ottawa to Madrid
The flight is very pleasant, considering that it is a red-eye. Manage to get my seat changed from row 32 to row 22, but I need not have bothered. We are at the gate at 1000 hours on the dot, and I go through passport control and security and am here in twenty minutes. Didn’t have to take my boots off in Ottawa or here, so that is a pleasant change from air travel in the U.S. these days.
Yesterday evening, I reread The River of Doubt, Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey (a gift from my sister-in-law Maryan O’Hagan), in which he and a small group of companions, in 1913, went down four hundred miles of a tributary--the “River of Doubt”--of the Amazon that had never been gone down by anyone not an indigenous Amazonian before, and for very good reasons. And even the native Amazonians may not have travelled the entire river. The co-leader of the expedition was an authentic Brazilian hero, Colonel, later Marshal, Cândido Mariano de Silva Rondon, who was most famous for his exploration of Mato Grosso and the Western Amazon Basin and for his lifelong support of Brazilian native populations (his mother was indigenous). Rondon and Roosevelt’s team lost three men (one murdered, one drowned, one, the murderer, left in the jungle), starved (Roosevelt lost twenty-five percent of his body weight), and were threatened by caimans, piranha, catfish capable of swallowing a man, biting insects, malaria, snakes, previously undiscovered--and deadly--Indians, not to mention waterfalls, rapids, and really bad logistics. It all makes my carefully planned trip look like a walk in the park.
I am feeling good, not tired, although I only dozed through the night. The blow-up neck support really makes a difference.
It is 1020 and I am sitting in the Munich departure lounge. I am still concerned about my pack arriving in Madrid when I do, but there is nothing I can do to influence that. Spent some time last night listening to my Spanish lessons. They seem very pertinent all of a sudden. The weather here is gorgeous--clear, warm, sunny. I hope that it is a sample of what’s to come. German being spoken all around me--I catch a few words now and again.
Thinking about why I am doing this, I still don’t have a definitive answer. Certainly there is the physical challenge--that much is obvious. The psychological challenge is also pretty clear--spending a lot of time over a period of weeks by oneself is likely to bring up interesting stuff. Beyond that, I can’t say. Is there a spiritual aspect to my evident need to do this? I don’t know, but I expect I’ll find out over the course of the next five weeks.
Now 1205--We are supposed to be airborne, but we are sitting on the tarmac in Munich after our Lufthansa aircraft hits a canteen truck with its left wingtip while being pushed back out of the gate. There are three ground crew at the end of the wing now, on a lift, trying to fix what the captain is calling a “scratch” on the winglet, the vertical fin at the end of the wing. Good thing that I have about five hours in Madrid before the train to Pamplona leaves.
1230--They have removed the left wing winglet and we are going to Madrid without it. The captain, who speaks fluent English, says that it is perfectly safe to fly; it just increases fuel consumption slightly. Since the winglet is only added to reduce drag, that makes perfect sense to me. Of course, I can’t help but think about the L1011--or was it a DC–10?--that crashed about twenty years ago near Paris after the ground crew battered a baggage door shut, only to have it open and tear off in flight--although I am not feeling morbid.
1740--I have arrived in Spain and everything has worked flawlessly, except for one thing. My backpack has not arrived and there is no plan B. The Lost Baggage woman at the airport here in Madrid is very helpful and solicitous. She takes down all the details, gives me a case number and phone number and says that she will call my cell phone or the hotel in Pamplona when they know anything. She figures that it will come in on the 2230 flight from Munich tonight. I sure hope so, because I will have to completely re-equip if it is seriously lost. I even left my detailed guidebook for the trip in the backpack, since I am not going anywhere without it.
Now I am in the Atocha train station in Madrid, waiting for the 1930 train to Pamplona. The train station is simply gorgeous. The old, or original part of the station, is a botanical garden inside--tropical trees and shrubs, hundreds of turtles in a pond.
The people here look and dress exactly like they do in North America, but there are three noticeable differences. Very few blacks, very few Asians, and, out of thousands of people, exactly three fat ones. Agribusiness and high-fructose corn syrup have evidently not arrived here yet.
The train leaves at exactly 1930. Well, I AM in Europe, where one expects the trains to run on time. It is a fast, very smooth ride. I am travelling in Turista, a nice car, next to the cafeteria car. The trip from Madrid to Pamplona is 3.5 hours, rural all the way. The last sixty minutes seem extremely long in subjective time. I am very tired and it has been dark for a couple of hours.
I arrive in Pamplona at about 2300 and get a cab to the Hotel Maisonnave. It turns out to be located in the heart of the old city and is a three-star, with exceptionally pleasant and helpful front desk staff. They make a photocopy of my lost luggage report and will follow up with the folks in Madrid for me. Only one of three desk staff speaks English, not like the Europe I’m used to. I go to bed, expecting to have my backpack by tomorrow morning.
17 April, in Pamplona
In the morning, still no sign of baggage, I must come up with a plan B. I am reluctant to buy stuff that I either have to carry or throw away when my baggage arrives. You can see that I am still hopeful that it will arrive. I am heading off to the Pilgrim office to find out what I can do here to re-equip. What I find is an albergue (pronounced al-ber-gay, with the emphasis on the last syllable)--a hostel--closed, of course. It does not open until 1300 hours. I am in the very old part of Pamplona: narrow, winding streets, very medieval in appearance and feel. Of course, this town was established in Roman times.
It feels as if I am suspended in amber. I have to stay available so that my luggage has a place to come to. I am staying here for another night. The hotel has been calling Madrid for me every couple of hours, because they are aware of my problem. I can’t start the camino without my pack or some substitute for it. Later today, after 1630 when the stores re-open (siesta is alive and well here, just as all my books reported), I am going to find a sports clothing store to see what I can find.
In the afternoon I go for a walk, meet two local men, probably in their fifties or sixties, who think that I am lost. They suggest that I try the local wine, vino de Navarre, vino del año (this year’s wine). Find a lovely large square, Plaza de Castillo, with open-air bars around, so I order local wine and it is good. Similar to nouveau Beaujolais. Not much of a surprise, that. I sit and talk to a couple, Elizabeth, English, from Taunton, and Stefan from Germany--married, doing a few days on the camino. He is wearing cords and old boots, one of which is failing. They are planning to do twenty-eight kilometres tomorrow as their last day, but they are worried. If the boot fails en route, in the villages, no repair and no bus equals big problem. They came in yesterday from the north, said that they had met at least forty people on the camino and that it was very muddy and that you really need at least one walking pole. There has been a lot of rain, although it is lovely now, warm and sunny. They tell me that the camino is quite busy, which surprises me, this far away from Santiago and this early in the season. So I guess I do have expectations, after all.
An observation: there are almost no cars in the whole area where I am walking in the city. It is delightful, only a few delivery vehicles. It is a good thing, since most of the roads are extremely narrow and winding, with three- to five-storey buildings up tight on both sides. It is the old city, which is a pedestrian-only area, except for deliveries, which are restricted to a few hours every morning, and for taxis.
I go to the tourist office and get a map that includes the camino route through Pamplona. This will be handy when I finally get underway. Also visit a department store and pick up polyester underwear and a hat, in case my luggage stays lost. This store also has backpacks and poles, so if worst comes to worst, I can re-equip there.
My Spanish is sufficiently good--or bad--to convince people to try their English, so communication is possible, although there is one lady, a pharmacist of a certain age, who simply speaks Spanish to me and repeats herself when I say, “no comprendo.” I am trying to fill a prescription for medication that is in the missing backpack. Other people waiting in line after me are able to tell me what she is saying. So I manage. Like Scarlett in Gone with the Wind, I always rely on the kindness of strangers. Everyone I talk to is exceptionally kind and helpful.
A few notes on pronunciation: V is B, as in vino blanco, pronounced “bino blanco.” Unlike the rest of the Spanish-speaking world, here in Spain “C” is “th,” as in the word for “five,” spelled cinco, pronounced “thinko.” The letter “R” is rolled, even more than in French, when at the beginning of a word or doubled in the body of a word. Using the “C” sound instead of the “th” sound marks one as being from away, although I suspect I will give out more clues than just that one!
At 1900 hours I am back in the square, sitting on a bench and watching the scene unfold before me. This square has shaded arcades around most sides, to help protect against what must be brutal summer sun. They also work pretty well, I discover, for rain. They look just like those surrounding the square in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which of course was built on the Spanish pattern. All the buildings that surround the square are between three and five storeys high, obviously built prior to the invention of elevators. There are lots of people, many small children playing, only a few teens, many smokers, many cell phones, overwhelmingly Caucasian--few African, few Asian, and no fat people at all. There is an occasional police presence, a couple of cops strolling by, but not overt, and the people seem to ignore them, so they are not seen as a threat at all. Some of the stores have security guards, who look much like those at home--police wannabes, except these carry large and conspicuous truncheons on their belts.
At 2000 hours, I decide to eat dinner and go into an elegant restaurant, the Iruña, on one edge of the square. It turns out that Hemingway wrote about this very restaurant in The Sun Also Rises, which he wrote here in 1926. I know this because he is quoted on the menu: “Tomamos cafe en el Iruña, sentados en comodos sillones, mientras desde la fresca sombre de las arcadas contempabamos la gran plaza.” “We take coffee in the Iruña, seated in comfortable chairs, while from the dark shade of the arcades, we contemplate the great plaza.”
The walls are the same stamped tin as the ceiling tile that we have from the old doomed Daly Building. This place predates the turn of the past century, noisy but with great ambience: one huge room, about sixty by forty feet, a twenty-foot ceiling, ornate columns on a twenty by ten grid, large, ornate chandeliers. Where the walls are not stamped tin, they are enormous mirrors, probably six feet wide by twelve feet high. They feel just right in a room this large.
I order the daily special, the “menu del dia,” for twelve euros: asparagus appetiser and veal cordon bleu as the main course. It comes with water or wine included, so I, of course, order wine. When it arrives, it is a full 750-ml bottle of local wine, Irache Tinto 2005--a full bottle of red wine for a single diner. No wonder there are so few cars around! These guys don’t fool around when it comes to wine with dinner. If red wine is really good for me, I should be in great shape five weeks from now.
When the asparagus (esparragos) arrives, it is five chilled white stalks, attractively presented with sour cream, grated carrots, and corn niblets on the side--delightful. Also a very large crusty roll arrives on the table--no plate or butter, just the roll.
The veal arrives with French fries. It is good, seriously fried, no other vegetables. This is carnivore country. I have read that vegetarians have a difficult time on the camino, and this would seem to reinforce that. I am not one, so it ought not to be a problem for me. Dessert is lemon sorbet--in a tall narrow glass like we use at home for champagne cocktails--and a straw. It’s a thick drink here. Very nice.
The restaurant crowd consists of many ladies of the blue-haired set, a few men of the same age with them, a few couples, a long table obviously reserved and set up in advance, and me. It looks like tea time in the Empress Hotel in Victoria. This is apparently the early bird special time in Spain, which confirms what I have read about people here eating really late. The restaurant at the hotel where I am staying does not even open until 2030 hours.
Sitting here alone, watching the activity at the tables around me, emphasizes for me the enormous importance of relationships in our species. I have no idea what any of them are talking about, but they are doing a thorough job of it. Eavesdropping is easy, understanding is not. Two couples, one a generation younger than the other, are sitting next to me. The younger couple arrives, two-cheek air kiss--very French. The younger couple are showing digital camera images and an actual photo to the older couple. Parents, aunt and uncle, friends, in-laws? I’ll never know.
Pamplona is, of course, the city that Hemingway made famous in The Sun Also Rises, because of the bullfights and because of the Running of the Bulls, an annual festival held from 7 to 14 July each year in honour of St. Fermin, the patron saint of Pamplona and Navarre and of bakers, wine, and wineskins. Each morning, six bulls are released into a narrow corridor of streets, where thousands of mostly drunk or drugged young male tourists run frantically in front of them, fulfilling, at least in their own minds, some kind of manhood ritual. In the afternoon, the bulls are released into the bullrings for their ritualized execution. Officially, one is not allowed to run if one is drunk, but that does not seem to be taken seriously or seriously enforced. Personally, I would not get out in front of a half-dozen half-ton desperately frightened and therefore unpredictable bulls unless I was drunk. You can probably tell that I am underwhelmed by this activity, although it doesn’t matter, because the running of the bulls is going to happen three months from now, and I will be long gone.
18 April, in Pamplona
Carroll has sent me faxes of two prescriptions and I have been able to fill both here in Pamplona, so that concern is eliminated. As of this morning at 1100, there is still no sign of or news about my luggage. The hotel front desk staff continues to be extremely helpful, but to no avail. For some reason, the Lost Luggage people in Madrid had noted that I was staying here until 25 April. I have no idea where they got that from. The hotel guy this morning reminds them that I am leaving for el camino as soon as my backpack arrives, so their date is incorrect.
Of everything that I have planned and packed, I actually have with me only the rain jacket and the boots, along with one set of clothing, which I have on. This is definitely a problem.
19 April 2007, in Pamplona
There is still no sign of my missing backpack after three full days, so I am staying here in Pamplona. I am going to wait one more day, then re-equip, as I need to move on. I find and have put away at a department store here a backpack, sleeping bag, trekking poles, pants, and shirt that I will need to continue my journey. I am still hopeful that the missing backpack will miraculously turn up.
The upside is that I am getting a really good introduction to this part of Spain. As always, I am finding that speaking as much Spanish as I can encourages the person or persons with whom I am speaking to try English, if only to stop my barbarous Spanish.
Yesterday was my jet lag day. I woke up at 1030 and went back to bed at 2000. I did not eat at all because I never got hungry. I spend a restless night but wake up refreshed at 0830. Have breakfast here in the hotel at the restaurant El Txoko, pronounced “Choko.” It’s Basque for “corner.”
The Basque culture is fascinating. It is generally accepted that Basques are a remnant of the Palaeolithic inhabitants of Western Europe, and Basque tribes were mentioned in Roman times by both Strabo and Pliny. It is the only language in Europe that predates the Indo-European invasions. Evidently it is the only culture that the people who are our ancestors (if you are German, English, French, Spanish, etc) were unable to conquer or assimilate, likely because they live in inhospitable country, very hilly and rugged, and, like the Afghan or Kashmiri hill tribes, were just too difficult to conquer.
The Basques are the same folks who wiped out Charlemagne’s rearguard at Roncesvalles. The Song of Roland, written in the 1100s, memorializes this battle. It turns out to have some basis in fact. In 778, Charlemagne was fighting the Moors in Spain when a disturbance on the Rhine forced him to return home. He retreated through the pass at Roncesvalles, and the rearguard force was destroyed by the fierce and fiercely independent Basques of the region. (They deserved it. His army had pillaged Pamplona, which was a Basque city, and the Basques were, nominally, on the same side as Charlemagne’s troops in the war.) Among the slain was Count Hruodland, prefect of the Breton March. Over time, the Frankish name Hruodland became the Roland of the poem.
More recently, there has been another upsurge of Basque nationalism, which includes, unfortunately, murders and kidnappings, performed mostly by the ETA--Euskadi Ta Askatasuna or “Basque Homeland and Freedom,” a Marxist–Leninist group founded in 1959, considered by itself as a paramilitary Basque nationalist group and defined as a terrorist organization by the European Union, the United States, and the United Nations. The violent nationalism is surprising, given that, after Franco’s death and the end of the dictatorship, autonomy was restored for the Basques (as well as for the rest of Spain), and they achieved a level of self-government without precedent in Basque modern history. The Basques manage their own public finances and have their own police force. While I am here, there is a truce, but it is shaky. There are some 500 ETA militants held in prison in Spain and France.
Pamplona is the largest Basque city that I will visit on this journey to Spain. Here in Basque country, the street signs are bilingual (Castilian Spanish and Basque), as are many of the commercial signs on buildings and vehicles. There are sprayed-on slogans on some surfaces, presumably Basque separatist sentiment, but there does not appear to be any sense of danger here. Of course, my radar for that type of situation has never been very good!
Here is a Basque tidbit to mull over: Recent genetic studies have confirmed that about seventy-five percent of the people of the British Isles have bloodlines that can be traced to inhabitants of the Basque areas of Spain and France. So apparently most Britons are actually of Basque descent or are, at the least, related.
Today, I spend from about 0900 until about 1300 trying to get some resolution about the missing baggage. No success. Then I go out, find out where I can get the credencial (the official booklet with many spaces for stamps for pilgrims) and go to visit the cathedral. To my surprise, there is an entry fee of about six dollars for the cathedral. That is a first for me, and one that I decline to pay. I take a couple of pictures of the outside, for which there is no charge.
I visit the Plaza de Toros, the bullring, but do not go inside. It’s about the same shape and size, with about the same seating capacity, just over 19,000, as the Corel Centre in Kanata. Outside it there is a statue of Hemingway, a life-size bust on top of a plinth. They liked the fact that he publicized Pamplona and the bullfights. There is also a loading dock with a ramp leading down to a high door. It is likely the last thing the bulls see before they get the surprise of their young lives. Evidently, they are never exposed to a man on foot while they are being raised. The budding matadors always train with heifers, not bulls. The theory is that if the bulls were accustomed to men on foot, the matadors would not stand a chance. So the men go in fully trained while the bulls go in cold. Seems a little unfair to me, kind of like duck hunting, in which the ducks don’t get to carry weapons.
On a happier note, I visit the Parque de la Tacerona, just down the road from here. It is an old fortification, and now one of the prettiest parks in Pamplona. The moat is now used for deer--very large ones, little shaggy goats, domestic geese, swans, and peacocks. I watch as a peacock displays all his finery for an apparently indifferent peahen. He is magnificent with his feathers all displayed. In the end, of course, he is just an oversized chicken with a super-sized opinion of himself. He reminds me of an actor who has begun to believe his own press releases. A keeper is feeding them all and he has to keep shooing the goats and deer away so that the geese, including one lame one, can get enough to eat.
Then I go to the Ciudadela (literally The Citadel). It was built between 1571 and 1645, ordered by King Felipe II, to a very sophisticated design, in a pentagon, with five bastions with overlapping fields of fire. It reminds me of Fort Henry at Kingston, Ontario, with some important differences. It is larger and was tested under fire, as Fort Henry never was. It eventually failed the test, since the French took the Ciudadela by force in 1808 (during the Peninsular Wars). I walk around the top of the ramparts, which are all covered with wild grasses and some wild flowers. There is one blood-red poppy standing alone. I think about all the men who fought and died here, both Spanish defenders and French attackers, some instantly, many more in agony and at length, and think about the stupidity and futility of war. It seems that we never learn.
After dozing for a while, seated on a bench in the Ciudadela, I walk back to the Plaza de Castillo (this is turning into a favourite haunt; I can see why Hemingway liked it) and have two very small--cup size--local beers while I sit under an awning and watch the world unfold. There is a small, sturdy, swarthy busker playing an accordion and singing what sounds like songs about tragedy and loss. There is also a little girl, about three or four years old, in a blue dress, walking very slowly along this side of the Plaza, shoulders shaking, face contorted and obviously in distress. I think that her parents are lost and she cannot find them. I want to help, but realize that with almost no Spanish, my actions could be easily misinterpreted and I could find myself in a world of trouble. She eventually passes out of sight.
I notice that there are many fewer people than the night before and I wonder what the difference is--and then I notice that many of them are carrying open umbrellas. It is starting to rain, so I leave the square and go home to bed.
Carroll calls to say that she has had a return call from Stephen in Munich baggage and he has told her that my pack was on the manifest from Munich to Madrid. She urges me to go to Madrid and insist on a much more thorough effort to find the baggage. I catch the 1900 train from Pamplona to Madrid.
Just south of Pamplona, which was wrapped in darkness when I came up a few days ago, there are hundreds of windmills on every ridge in both directions, along with arrays of solar panels. These Spaniards are serious about alternative energy, as we Canadians, shamefully, are not. NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) seems to be the rule in Canada. We could be world leaders in alternative energy technology, but we remain hewers of wood and drawers of water. We have for so many generations been a resource-based economy that we, as a country, can’t imagine any alternative. We will pay for our complacency and lack of foresight.
At 2230, I arrive at Atocha station in Madrid and find a hotel nearby. Did I mention that they showed an Adam Sandler movie on the train? He isn’t any better in Spanish. The hotel has a room available and I take the elevator which ought to be--and often is--in a museum, to the fifth floor. The room is Spartan, small, spotlessly clean, and the right price. I call Carroll and tell her where I am, then I go to sleep. At midnight, the hotel phone wakes me. It is my daughter Meredith with a message that she is faxing me some contacts in Madrid that she has gotten from a friend, Linda Beverly in Houston. The contacts here all speak English and will likely be happy to help. Thank you both, Linda and Meredith, for caring enough to create this positive feeling.
20 April, Madrid to Pamplona
The fax that Meredith sent me last night is waiting for me at reception in the morning. I call and get the administrative assistant of José Luis Garcia Cuartero. She puts me through to him at home via the switchboard. He is head of EuroFM and the managing partner of Grupo CADAR, which is a facility management (FM) consulting firm like ours, Carroll Thatcher Planning Group, back in Canada, only much bigger, with architects and engineers on board. He offers to help in any way he could and I tell him my plan: Go to the airport, demand to personally see the lost luggage area and determine what is going on. We will meet later in the day if nothing shows up.
I go to Terminal 1, Arrival Lounge 2, and find the lost luggage booth where I first reported the missing baggage four days ago. The man on duty checks my precious baggage ticket, checks the computer file and says there is no new information. I tell him what I have been told. I check his lost luggage room--not there. Back to the Lost and Found.
After I have spent a lot of time going back and forth, José arrives. He goes immediately into action, like the successful, powerful businessman that he is. Eventually, they admit that no one has the slightest idea where my baggage is. At least I am satisfied that the bag is not physically here at the Madrid Airport and now I can move on.
José drives me back to the train station, graciously waits with me while I get a ticket for Pamplona, and we eat lunch together. Since the menu is in Spanish only, he explains what each item is so that I can make an intelligent and informed choice. Anything “a la Romana” is breaded and deep-fried. This is good to know. Tortillas are potato pancakes here, unlike in North America, where they are made from cornmeal. This is also good to know. I have a small wedge--a “pincho”--of a tortilla. It is not great--and José assures me that they will be better in the villages on the camino. I sure hope so.
He spent his last year of high school on an exchange program in the U.S., then another four years at a college in Iowa. His wife is from Idaho, so that is where they and their three children spend their summer vacations. For a Canadian, it seems strange for Spaniards to spend their vacations in Idaho, but family ties trump everything. Even though I still do not have my baggage, José has been an enormous help. I am satisfied that I am not missing any subtlety about the baggage due to my lack of fluent Spanish.
He has arranged that when the bag is found, they will contact his office and he will ensure that it is sent to wherever I want it to go. So now I am again waiting for the 1930 train and I call ahead to make sure that I have a room at the Hotel Maisonnave. They are so good to me; they assure me that my room is secure.
Here in the train station, they have a people mover, a shallow moving platform that moves people up or down two floors on four angled and moving ramps. It reminds me powerfully of the shooting galleries at carnival midways of my youth. Remember the ducks? If you shot down a predetermined number of them, you won a prize of a large and gaudy stuffed animal, which you then promptly gave to whoever was the love of your life at the moment. Anyway, it looks just like that, except the ducks are people.
As I am sitting here in the Atocha station, a couple and an older gentleman sit down near me in the restaurant. The couple is smartly dressed, but the older man, likely in his eighties, is elegant. He is wearing a three-piece velvet suit, either brown or loden green, I can’t tell. Striped shirt, smart tie, a wooden cane with a dark red wood handle, a gold band separating it from the dark brown cane itself. Did I mention the brass buttons on his suit? I thought that era had vanished, but it is still alive, though elderly. When they get up to leave, I approach them, excuse myself, “Disculpe, señor,” and ask if I might take a photograph of him.
“Of me?” he asks (in Spanish) and I reply “Yes.”
“Why me?” again he asks, and I reply “Because you are so elegant.”
He smiles and sits back and allows his photo to be taken. We introduce ourselves: he is Nicolas, and I am Guy from Canada.
“What part?”
“From Ottawa.”
“Oh, yes, I have friends in Toronto.”
“I was a little boy in Toronto.”
That is all, we say goodbye and then they leave, but I have a permanent reminder of what elegance still looks like.
On the way back north on the three and a half-hour train ride to Pamplona, I sit with Guillem Huguet Serra, a twenty-eight-year-old Spaniard with a doctorate in mathematics, specializing in “attitude mechanics.” He is leaving next week for Darmstadt in Germany, to join the European Space Agency and work on the problems of unmanned resupply of the International Space Station.
When I ask him, he explains how one determines attitude in space. One needs three coordinates to fix oneself in space. The first coordinate is the sun. The second coordinate is the target, in this case, the space station. The third coordinate uses the first two as the x and y axes and heads off at right angles to both of them to form the z axis. Easy enough in concept, as he explains it to me, but a little more challenging, I would think, in execution.
He is brilliant, personable, handsome, and looks and sounds like he has the right stuff. He grew up in Mallorca, mother tongue is Catalan, speaks English, Spanish (Castilian), French, German (all fluently), a little Arabic, a little Chinese. He wants to be the second Spanish astronaut, and he might just do it. The first one worked for the same company and did much the same job as Guillem does now. I am going to watch for his name in the news in the coming years. I find this chance meeting a little bizarre. I am going off to walk for five weeks and he is working on devices that travel in space at 18,000 miles per hour.
Tomorrow it is time to pick up gear and get moving. The first part of the original planned trip, from St. Jean Pied-de-Port in France, is too late to start now--I don’t have enough total days left--so I will start from where I am, which is in Pamplona. I will miss about 100 kilometres, including crossing the French-Spanish border and the high climb and descent over the Pyrenees.
I want to get back on track for what I came here to do--although I have really enjoyed Pamplona. Perhaps I could just stay here for five weeks and send fake messages about the trip. It is tempting.
21 April, in Pamplona
It’s 0930, it’s sunny, and I am sitting on a concrete bench in the plaza of the Palacio de Congreso y Auditorio de Navarre waiting for El Corte Ingles (a large, multi-storey department store) to open. I have already been to the archbishop’s palace to collect my credencial, but the palace is closed. No clue as to when it will open. I was told that the Corte Ingles would open at 0900, but evidently not. Since everything is closed tomorrow (Sunday), I have to get what I need today, even if I don’t leave today. When I look at my planned schedule, I see that I am fine, even if I leave tomorrow. I think that I will have lots of opportunity to practice patience on the camino, not one of my strong suits--yet. The weather is lovely and I would like to take advantage of it while it lasts.
This morning I pick up replacement gear at El Corte Ingles (it opens at 1000). I am well and pleasantly served by Iñaki, who speaks sufficient English so that, mixed with my rudimentary Spanish, we can communicate successfully about my needs and their stock. He is Basque, hence the name. I pick up my credencial at the archbishop’s palace, check out of the Hotel Maissonave with my new backpack on, step down onto the narrow street, turn left, and head out. I am on my way by 1230. It’s very late in the day to start, but I want to be gone.
What do I have? A new small backpack, new sleeping bag, new collapsible poles, one new complete change of clothing, a new second pair of socks, a new hat for sun, a rain jacket, new water bottle, camera, iPod, cellular phone, new sandals, one pair of reading glasses--don’t lose them or break them--and, thanks to good planning and luck, my well worn-in boots. I wore them on the trip because they took up too much space in the backpack and I carried the rain jacket as a utility jacket. I search for but cannot find Footglide, so I have acquired instead a small plastic jar of Vaseline for my feet.
Section 1
Navarre--Pamplona to Viana
Navarre is one of Spain’s seventeen autonomous communities, based on the constitution of 1978. These communities have wide legislative and executive autonomy, with their own parliaments and regional governments. Unlike Canada, the U.S., or Europe, where provincial or state powers are the same, the distribution of powers is different for every autonomous community. The objective of the 1978 constitution, following Franco’s death, was to appease separatist forces and disarm the extreme right, so a highly decentralized state was established. Navarre is one of the two autonomous communities that I will be walking through that consists of exactly one province. The other is La Rioja. It is at the same time one of fifty provinces. Tricky, isn’t it?
Navarre is small, at about 10,000 square kilometres compared to Castilla y León, but twice the size of its neighbour, La Rioja. In the northeast of Spain, Navarre is bordered by France to the north, Aragón to the east, La Rioja to the south, and the Basque country to the west. I will be walking southwest until I get into La Rioja. Pamplona is the capital of Navarre, and the greater Pamplona region holds about half of the population of the entire community. There are many Basque in Navarre, especially in the north.
Navarre, in the western Pyrenees, is mountainous and green in the north and has rolling hills with long vistas and valleys in the south. The south is dry and dusty, but I won’t be going there. The people in Navarre are very proud of their wine, although it is not as famous as that of La Rioja, south and west of here.
21 April, Pamplona to Puente la Reina
I walk twenty-three kilometres (a kilometre is about two-thirds of a mile) between 1230 and 1900 hours today. First hour, out of Pamplona, past the Ciudadela and the Universite de Navarre and out of urban. The trail is extremely well marked. I take pictures of typical marking, some formal, some just yellow arrows painted on every available surface. A friend told me before I left Canada that I could walk the camino without a map, and she is probably right. Then I start up the ridge, the Alto de Perdón, south of Pamplona. The word “Alto” should have given it away, as should the vertical profile map. This is the toughest climb I’ve ever done--worse than the Appalachian trail that I was on with TJ and Relma, my very fit daughter-in-law and her equally fit mother. The vistas are breathtaking, but it just goes on and on and up and up. At one point the camino skirts around a section of land, perhaps fifty metres across, that has recently slipped and has left an ugly scar on the landscape. I can see where the old path was in the slipped earth. Hope no one was on it when it slipped. It would have been an interesting experience.
And it is sunny, very hot, no shade, and not a breath of wind. I drink copious amounts of water--there are fuentes (fountains) along the way--and I still can’t piss a drop. I take baby steps on the way up and have to stop frequently to keep my heart rate from getting too high (more than three beats per second is okay for young guys, but not for me). I pass two Dutch women sitting at rest under a small, lone tree and think that they are going to have trouble getting over the Alto at all today. One has stripped off to her bra to cool down and puts her blouse on hurriedly as I approach. They are horrified when I say that I think it is four hours to Puente la Reina (which is exactly what it turns out to be).
As I continue the exhausting climb, I pass a memorial to a Belgian pilgrim, incongruously named Koko, just the one name, who died here in 1996. I think I know why. Finally, I arrive at the summit at 1630 hours, a vertical climb of about 1,000 feet. What a glorious relief! At the summit, there is a larger-than-life-sized 2-D sculpture in metal of a medieval party of pilgrims. Of course, I am also taking pictures of the vistas and of the trail itself. In most places it is wide enough for a wagon or motor vehicle and is used by local farmers. In other places it is one person wide.
A man from Pamplona at the summit tells me it will take an hour to get to today’s destination and points to a village in the far distance. He tells me that it is Puente la Reina. It isn’t. This experience is one of the few that I have with someone sounding sincere and well-meaning and giving me bad information.
However, this may be a very old, entrenched habit in Navarre. Aimery Picaud travelled the camino sometime before 1140–1150, when he wrote his Pilgrim’s Guide. He had a lot to say about the Navarrese, none of it good: