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Published: November 27th 2006
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Today the race begins. I got off to a flying start, leaving Kellie and Ezra behind in their beds. Sure Ezra was sick, but that wasn’t my problem. I was still convinced it was berry-induced. I headed off bright and early, deciding to walk with Louise. We’d walked all of about 50 metres when who did we run into but the Danish boys! They’d stayed in Pampalona the previous night, and had gone to see some bulls running down the street. So Louise, Frederick, August and I headed off along the camino together. It was a beautiful sunny day, and we spent the day talking, laughing and making various Monty Python jokes. These boys were pretty cool for teenagers, and Lou was refreshingly crazy. I still had trouble believing that she was 31! Louise had told me earlier that she thought that Frederick was very mature for 18. She saw great potential in him and told me he could be one of Denmark’s future leaders. I though he seemed cool but that was a pretty impressive compliment!
The scenery was fairly nice, we walked through vineyards and vast barren mountains. At one point the track turned off onto a ‘provisional
Tired Pilgrims
Frederick, August and Louise exhausted after a long walk up a big hill in the heat! detour’ that stretched up a big hill and didn’t look very inviting at all. It felt like we were walking through a desert. And these bloody Danish boys were so fast, I had a lot of trouble keeping up. Their packs were tiny I kept telling myself, I’m not that unfit…
Eventually it became too much for me and the others left me behind. I walked with a Spanish man called Alfonso for about 10 klms. He was an accounts manager at BMW, very successful with a great apartment and of course always the latest BMW sports car in his garage. He was only 28 and doing quite well for himself, his parents were very proud of him. But it didn’t feel right. There was something unsatisfying about material wealth. So he’d decided to take time off work and do the camino. He was searching for something, as we all were on the pilgrimage. We had very interesting discussions about politics, money, religion etc. He told me of a fountain filled with wine that we would probably reach on the camino the next day, people sit by the fountain and drink wine straight from the vineyards, for free. This
sounded very interesting! I made a mental note not to miss it! Alfonso was having troubles with his knee, so after a while I said goodbye to him and kept walking alone. I’d been alone for about 10 minutes when I heard a strange shrieking noise - like a pig in distress - coming from behind me. I turned around and there were my buddies Frederick, August and Louise, laughing and waving. They’d stopped for lunch and given me time to catch up. It was good to see them again.
The four of us walked on together and stopped for lunch, where I met Clarisse, a lady from France who had befriended the others a few nights ago, as well as the funny Irish guy that I’d spoken to briefly in Pampalona, whose name I discovered was Kevin. We sat and chatted with these guys for a while outside a gorgeous church, then kept walking. The next town was supposed to have a refuge in it that was ‘donativo’ which means by donation. That appealed to all of us. But when we got there it was closed! Our only option was to pay 6 euros to stay in the other one. So we did. We had a little rest, it had been a big day, then bought some snacks for dinner and a few bottles of good old vino tinto.
The four of us stayed up drinking with two other Spanish men. Louise told Frederick that he should consider going into politics, because he was probably going to be the future leader of Denmark. He seemed flattered and a little embarrassed. It was pretty funny. From then on, we referred to him as the future leader of Denmark. It was a really fun night. The day had been a perfect day, with great weather, scenery and company. I was really warming up to the three amigos that I’d started traveling with.
Then, once again, curfew time came! We were told by a more polite lady than in Pampalona to return to our beds and go to sleep. But we’d been having such a great night that this wasn’t an option! Trying (unsuccessfully) to be as quiet as we could after drinking a bottle of wine each, we sat in the hostel room concocting a plan. We tried to keep the door ajar with someone’s shoe and snuck out, but we were caught by the lady and sent back into the room. There was a window right next to Frederick’s bed and it was a warm night out, my idea was to sneak out the window, find a nice spot to sit, keep drinking and then climb effortlessly and stealthily back in, with noone being the wiser. But first we’d have to wait for the lady in charge to go to sleep, so we didn’t risk being caught. The plan was, then to wait 20 minutes, then resume our partying. So I thought I’d take a quick nap, no harm in that, only 20 minutes.
20 minutes later, we were all fast asleep.
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