Many pilgrims embark on the Camino journey to get a fresh perspective. Generally speaking, any activity which takes you out of your standard routine allows you see where you’re standing in life. So how can walking help you walk further in life? An important ingredient in Camino’s magic is the lack of distraction.
It takes a while to even get to the thinking stage on the Camino. Let’s be honest, you simply don’t think about the meaning of your life when you are in pain, your equipment is falling to pieces or the path is rocky. However, after about two weeks, your body adapts, you fix whatever mistakes you made while packing but rocks… still annoy you. Some parts of the Camino trail are obviously made for tractors not for pilgrims’ feet.
Soon after Logroño our Camino days started to blend together. It was warm enough for shorts and the fluffy clouds were more interesting than the landscape. We were walking with epic music from a speaker and everything was right with the world. And that’s when they appeared and spoiled the comfort. The ghosts of our relationship past. There was nothing else to do but to have a long talk. As a result, Juan promised not to hurt others when he feels hurt.
Honesty and walking at the same time can also be quite tiring, but luckily we always found great places to rest. My favorite one was a concrete ”beach” chair, where you could keep your legs up and eat with a view. Several times we passed giant hay stacks. If they weren’t so massive, some tired pilgrims would be tempted to climb in and take a nap. This wouldn’t be a good idea because of fleas.
Usually pilgrims are already haunted by similar creatures – bed bugs. I have to say that it was not as bad as we expected. I woke up in the middle of the night at Roncesvalles because of a strong itch. Since it was my second Camino night and I was dead tired, I immediately fell back asleep and forgot about it. Two weeks later the itch reappeared. This time I noticed a pattern of three bites next to each other (as I later learned, bed bugs feed three times a night). I had two blankets and it seemed like the bugs were only in one of them. The biting disappeared when I sprayed everything with a chemical that I carried for such an occasion.
For kilometers as far we could see, we were the only two pilgrims on the trail. However, people like to leave traces. Here and there we found paper notes from Russel, the guitarist. Our former roommate from Saint-Jean had made it this far with begging and his guitar! At one point he left a tent on a bench. According to his words, it was too heavy. Did he manage to earn enough money for albergues or did his Camino end here? Who knows. The fact is that we never found any more notes.
There was one person on the Camino who had a very strong urge to leave a sign while he carried a few spray cans with different colors.
He embarked on the Camino to spread the gospels of Jesus and Michael Jackson.
The name of either one of his idols was sprayed in almost every village in big letters. It ruined houses, fences, bus stops and Camino signs. We hated this person all during the Camino. The paint stains were quite fresh, ”Michael Jackson” must have been walking only a few days in front of us. We also had a theory that his real name was actually Jesús. Or that the sprayers were two different persons, one Jesús and one Michael Jackson. Or two personalities, like Dr. Jesús and Mr. Jackson. We kept discussing our theories until, to our surprise, we saw both names written next to each other: “Michael Jackson y Jesus”. We realized that it was the same hand-writing.
The spirit of Jesus was strongly present in churches along the Camino. One of the most spectacular ones was not a cathedral as you would expect. A small village of Navarette has a medium-sized church which looks very ordinary from the outside. Inside you are blinded by an enormous gold altar.
Several villages wouldn’t even exist if it wasn’t for the Camino. Some had a few old people sitting outside and watching the pilgrims. Once we were even offered money by an old guy to buy ourselves some food. He must have remembered the times when pilgrims were poor. The Camino also passes through a rich-looking golf resort in Cirueña. We were left with a post-apocalyptic impression as we walked through this fancy ghost town. No people in the streets, no humans or cats looking out of windows.
Not sure what the apocalypse was in this case: the end of golf season or covid.
Some places like to keep the legends connected to the Camino. Once upon the time, there was a German couple walking to Santiago with their 18-year-old son. They all stopped in an albergue to stay overnight. The daughter of the owner instantly liked the German boy and insisted that she wanted to marry him. When he refused her, she put a silver cup in his bag and accused him of stealing. The boy was hanged, but was brought back to life by santo Domingo. The parents continued to Santiago to tell the magistrate about the miracle. He laughed in their face: “Your son is just as alive as these roosters on my plate.” At that moment, the roosters came alive, flew away and started crowing. The town where the legend “happened” is now called Santo Domingo de la Calzada.
A few kilometers away and a few hundred years later, two pilgrims chose not to eat in an albergue and waited for a dinner in the only open restaurant in Agés. It was 9 pm and they were almost falling asleep. To their disappointment, the menu that they had to wait for contained only croquettes and chicken wings. They immediately came alive and ran away from the table. It was a miracle that the albergue still had a home-made 3-course menu!
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