Camino de Santiago - A day of

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You are woken at 5:30am by hands rustling in bags and bunk beds creaking like old bones. You might lie in bed a little longer, earplugs jammed in firmly, trying to shut out the noise, but before long you are up too. Those first moments before you step out of bed are the only moments of doubt, when you start thinking; “Why am I doing this again?”

But then you are up, putting on the same clothes you had on the day before (or a variation thereof), stuffing your sleeping bag in its bag and trying not rustle too much, there are still a few heavy sleepers snoring beside you. With whispers and hushed zipping you pack up your bag, you are quite efficient at it now. Then you regretfully pull your shoes onto your feet, which almost cry out in protest. A hurried breakfast in a half light kitchen, other pilgrims looking at you blearily, or a banana and muesli bar in your pocket as you stride outside. It’s still dark out there, the sun is more than an hour away. The cold air nips at you and your blisters roar but you strap on your head torch and stride into the dark. Before long your feet are numb, you are flushed warm under your jacket and feeling the satisfying momentum of the morning. All you can see are the stars sparkling upside down above you and a moon so fat and bright you don’t really need your head torch at all. All you think about is the next yellow arrow or conch shell painted on rock/fence/wall, showing you which road you should tread along. At times you talk with other pilgrims, your words coming out in visible white clouds. At times you are quiet, just looking at the shapes around you made otherworldly in the moonlight.

The edges of the sky are starting to show signs of lightening when you stumble across the first town, the lights of the only restaurant warm and comforting in the cold early morning, like a safe house along the road. Some people stop to warm their hands over coffee or Cola Cao and munch down fresh croissants or treats. Some keep going, munching on a banana, keen to cover ground while they have morning momentum. You stop for the sunrise, every time. You have endless photos. One morning the sky is streaked with electric strips of orange and pink. One morning the whole sky glows yellow like butter as the sun slouches over the horizon. One morning the fields are bathed in candy pink with a baby blue stripe around the bottom, the colour of an Easter egg. You pass villages still shut up tight for the night and fields of sunflowers with their heads still bent in sleep. The air seems almost colder now it is light, and you walk quickly and quietly. There is fog on the road ahead and pilgrims seem to disappear into it. Someone spots a deer leap across the road.

As the sky lightens and the air smells sweet with the newly arrived day, conversations start to flow a little more naturally. Whether you find yourself walking behind someone you know or you’ve been walking with them all morning, people are more chatty now that it’s light. With a fat new sun in the sky, everything around you is painted gold. Stone houses, paddocks full of cows and whole villages seem to sparkle at you in an impossible rich colour.

In the golden light of the new day, you say “Buen Camino” to someone you have never seen before and end up talking with them for 8kms. The big hills always seem to come in the morning, a jolting start to the day, but sometimes it’s better to tackle them when you are still energised and the sun isn’t too ferocious. The muscles in the back of your legs are stiff and the layers of clothing are now oppressive, you are sweating uncomfortably underneath them. But then someone starts up a song and you barely notice the hill, you are too busy doing the arm movements to YMCA or trying to remember the verse lyrics to Yellow Submarine. Or someone walks along with you, offering happy words of gentle encouragement or shouting tough love advice to you from the top of the hill, “Come on Aussie, you don’t need to stop, it’s not that hard you wimp.”

You stop alongside the tangled blackberry bushes and eat the tangy fruit for a “pilgrims breakfast”, or you sneak a rich fat grape off a vineyard vine. In little towns or at road-side stalls you stop to fill your bottle at the fountain or buy a piece of fruit. You see someone else you know and greet them like a long-lost friend. You haven’t seen them for a few days, your paths not quite crossing. You chat about where they stayed the night before, about how far they are going today, about how their blisters/knees/ankles are going, about how many days they have left. You walk for a little while together, catching up or just walking in companionable silence. At one point you go off road to a huge fig tree and gleefully pick handfuls of the ripe fruit to eat while walking and share with other pilgrims.

At around 11am you pass through a little town where you know most people will have a break. There is only one restaurant in town and its outside tables are filled with pilgrims feasting on giant bocadillos, guzzling down cold cokes and gingerly removing their shoes to put more bandaids on. Some people are lying in the sun, almost asleep. Everyone has pulled out their Camino guides to calculate how many kilometres are left, if there are hills that have to be crossed today, how many beds there are in the town you are aiming for. Some people take a long time here, building up the energy to move on. Other people gulp down a snack and push on, wanting to keep up momentum.

You walk through a tiny town that look like it’s out of a picture book. You can just see Spanish senoritas with scarfs around their hair walking along the cobbled lanes. In even the most miniscule town there is a church, with enormous bells, intricately carved bas-reliefs and different stories about Santiago passing through there. Copper conch shells inlaid in the footpath or the walls of houses guide you through the little streets of the town. You come across a fountain where you can drink either water or wine. You choose wine. A local woman tells you that after Saturday night the wine tap will be dry because the men will come up here when the pub is closed. You pass a couple breaking enormous almonds out of hard green shells. They offer you a handful and you bite into the soft white nut happily. They wish you a ‘Buen Camino’ as you walk on. Yellow arrows on rocks direct you along a path in between seemingly endless fields with nothing to see except for the waving crops and stacks of hay as big as houses. You find a note left by a friend at the next rest point, telling you which town they are headed to today, it makes you smile. The sunflowers are waking up now, their heads looking out for the sun, the yellow fields stretching as far as the eye can see. A paddock of wilted flowers ready for harvest looks sad. In one small paddock, every sunflower has had a different smiley face drawn into it and you run around them with wonder, feeling a little like you are in a Tim Burton film.

The arrows are now made of stones and you stop to create your own, or to make words or symbols to make the pilgrims behind you smile. You are pointed along paths that follow highways and your thoughts are almost drowned out by trucks roaring past. Graffiti covers the overpass, proclaiming messages about freedom for Basque country or with slogans meant to inspire tired walkers. The track seems to be endless and every hill you get over reveals miles and miles of the same landscape of rippling golden fields and nothing else. Just when you think you might you crazy at the monotony you see a huge eagle swooping gracefully over the valley.

In the post-break lull, you talk to people less. You just let your mind fall open and absorb all the tiny little details of the rich landscape. Or you start thinking about where your travels have taken you before, what job you are going to take when you get home, how to conjugate the Spanish verb ‘to return’, what the Camino will mean for you when you finish. Your thoughts just float around in the wind and melt into something different. Or you have a thought so clear and simple it’s like a strike in the chest.

The afternoon lumbers on and the kilometres do too, but you feel like you might never stop walking. You put your headphones in and listen to driving music to keep your legs going or a podcast to keep your mind off your feet. An hour goes by without thinking and you know you have covered at least 4 kilometres. You catch up with a familiar friend and you share your epiphanies and have a little cathartic moan about your aches and pains. You sing Disney ballads or musical theatre tunes and find yourself prancing along doing arm gestures and leaps where before you could barely lift your feet. You pass a town, barely a blip on the map, and your walking companion stops for a drink but you have to keep going or you might never start again. You worry about how many beds are in the next tiny town, if they will already be full, if you will have to walk on to the next town in search of a place to sleep. Your feet cry out in protest and no matter how you shift your bag it won’t sit right on your back.

When you see the sign for the town you want to whoop with joy and sometimes you do. You trod through the quiet dusty streets looking at the sweet houses built many hundreds of years ago and imagine what peoples lives were like there. You follow yellow shells drawn on the walls in chalk, looking around sharply for a sign for the albergue. The afternoon is aging and you try not to acknowledge the tense feeling, will there be a bed? Your feet might not tolerate more walking. You start making plans about sleeping in a barn or top-and-tailing with a friend. Then you turn a corner and see some friends sitting at a table in the sun. Their shoes are off, they have glasses of cold beer and they grin widely at you when they see you. Sometimes they cheer and you feel like you are coming home. When you find out there are beds left you want to sing. Your feet breathe a sigh of relief. Another stamp is added to your pilgrim passport, you put your sleeping bag on another bunk bed, and pull off your shoes. There is no better moment in the day.

The hours of the afternoon float by in a dreamy haze. With unshod feet and a pack-free back every step feels easy. A shower cleans off the days dust; you wash your hair and feel like a new person. You eat local salami and soft cheese on a crusty baguette and follow it with cold coke from a glass bottle. Your body embraces the sugars and your stomach rumbles appreciatively at the food. You lie in the sun with other pilgrims in a happy full-bellied daze. You wander slowly around the town, not wanting to walk far, but wanting to explore the little universe you have stumbled upon that day. After a sweet-tasting nap on your rickety bunk you only wander and lie around more. Someone brings out a bag of sunflower seeds (pipas) and you lie in the soft green grass happily cracking them out of their salted shells. You talk a lot, but less seriously. You go around in a circle and everyone sings their respective national anthems, giggling at how funny the other ones sound. You teach each other swear words in different languages. You compare blisters and bites and then postulate for hours over causes and remedies. People wash their clothes by hand in the sink, although some splash out and pay for the washing machine. Everyone is afraid of bed bugs and there are always sleeping bags hanging on the line, washed pre-emptively when bites are found. Lying like a happy lizard on its belly, you write in your diary, catching up from two days ago, trying to remember everything that happened. The supermarket opens at 5 and you all trod along, planning what ingredients are needed for dinner that night, and what snacks you need to keep you going the next day. Sweet treats are bought with sneaky indulgent smiles. Someone buys a tub of Cola Cao chocolate powder for the group and you all nod appreciatively at the decision.

Some people go to the local restaurant and get a ‘pilgrims menu’, a three course meal usually for around 9 euros. It can be delicious, average or disappointing, but usually involves soup and fish. Some people gather together in a hungry, raucous group and throw together a hearty meal that satisfies everyone’s tired bodies. There is a big fresh salad with tuna, using the oil for a dressing. There is an enormous pot of steaming pasta with vegetable sauce. There are crusty bars of bread to mop up all the oils and sauces and make sure that everyone’s bellies are full. Someone produces a bottle of wine that they have splurged on. There aren’t enough glasses for everyone, but you share happily. The dinner is rambunctious and brilliant. Everyone talks over each other, in different languages, joking, translating, laughing. Someone sings an old Hungarian independence song and there are tears in more than a few eyes. Everyone toasts to friends that are missing and to the people that will be leaving. You eat until your belly is almost uncomfortably full and still there is left-over food. Someone pulls tubs of ice-cream out of the freezer and everyone groans, but then picks up a spoon. To avoid doing more dishes everyone just eats directly out of the tubs.

By 9.30pm your eyes are droopy with exhaustion. People make ambitious plans for the next day (5am start, 38 kilometres) that we all know won’t be kept. One by one, people trickle off to bed. The bunk bed squeals and groans as you clamber into it, your aching feet howling at the pressure of the metal ladder rungs. A symphony of snores and other impossible noises has already started. At a particularly loud snort you catch the eye of the person in the bunk across from you and collapse into silent laughter. They pretend to conduct the noises coming from all areas in the enormous dorm and you laugh so hard there are tears. By 10.30pm the lights are turned out, you shuffle down into your sleeping bag, put in your ear plugs and finally close your tired eyes. You fall asleep with a smile on your face.

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