Catalans and Canadians

Camino buddies in Lorca. Aileen from Ireland, Nancy from San Fran, and Marie-Belle from Canada.

There's a sentiment you hear over and over again while walking the Camino de Santiago. "It's the people that make the Camino." Meaning that after all the walking is done, it's the friends you've made that you'll remember and cherish the most. And it's true. The Camino will take you through some amazing landscapes and into some beautiful churches and castles, and physically speaking it will test your fitness and probably prove you are much stronger than you thought you were. But what stays with you and makes the Camino special is the people you meet. In the spirit of that sentiment this post and the next few to come are dedicated to some of the people I met on the way, the people who "made my Camino."

More Camino buddies. The Catalans in Orisson (with a Basque and Santo Domingoan too).

I'll start with some folks I met my first day, at the albergue in Orisson in the French Pyrenees--specifically a group of Catalan men and a group of Canadian women.

The Catalans arrived on the scene at Orisson in matching pink T-shirts that made the claim they were all gay. Over dinner we got the real scoop from the group's George-Clooney-lookalike leader, Eduard, the only one of them who spoke English. Turned out none of them were gay--just married with children and trying to ease the worries of their wives back home. All friends since boyhood, the men came from a town near Barcelona and had originally planned on going up to Germany together and hitting the beer halls in Munich for Oktoberfest. Their wives had (wisely) nixed the idea, however, so they went with their second choice: the Camino de Santiago. Quite the other end of the spectrum. Or maybe not. As Eduard said, "In Munich we'd drink beer, on the Camino we'll drink wine." A fair exchange for sure.

They were hoping to get as far as Nájera this time around (and they did) and go on to finish the Camino a couple weeks at a time over the next few years. Only one of their group--Jaime, the sole bachelor--was planning to do the whole walk to Santiago now.

The Catalans in Burguete, after Roncesvalles, aiming for Zubiri.

The Catalan guys were a blast. I kept up with them only the first 3 or 4 days of the Camino and missed them sorely afterwards. And no, it wasn't just because several of them took turns getting their picture taken hugging and kissing me at the dinner in Orisson.

Eduard and me in Orisson. He wanted to help make my friends back home jealous when I posted my Camino pics.

And David. David really wanted to help make my friends jealous.

They brought an energy to those first days of the Camino that made me feel like a kid on a school outing or a girl allowed in the boys' treehouse. Among their hijinks were playing dead on the Camino road and videotaping other pilgrims' reactions, drinking wine out of their bota bags at 10 AM and squirting vino into the mouths of anyone brave enough to open wide, staying up and joking around past curfew in the albergues and getting shushed by the more serious peregrinos, telling me the roadside elderberries I'd just eaten and passed around to other pilgrims were poisonous, buying shots of pacharán (at 9 PM one day, at 9 AM the next) for me and other pilgrims, and posting videos of themselves on YouTube walking pantless through a vineyard.

The Catalans keeping me up at the Roncesvalles albergue.

Jaime enjoying his 10 AM squirt of wine.

Setting up a prank?

That's not to say the Catalans approached the Camino with total irreverence. Because in fact the fellas went to pilgrim masses and blessings along the Way. And after I reached Santiago, Eduard sent me an email of congratulations and told me Jaime had made it there too and "cried like a child." Eduard himself proved to be--in the words of another pilgrim--a dote, serving as a translator for us English speakers, loaning out Compeed and bandages for those of us with blisters, explaining aspects of Spanish culture to us foreign pilgrims, and graciously asking questions and listening to others speak about their own cultures back home.

And speaking of foreign cultures (sort of), since I've come home I've gotten quite a lot of people asking me if I met many other Americans on the Camino. And I answer no, there aren't a lot of Americans who do the Camino--instead there are Canadians. I don't think a day passed on the Camino when I didn't run into some. It got to be such that whenever I heard someone on the Camino with an accent like mine, instead of assuming them to be American (like I did on my first day of walking), I assumed they were...well, not. After a few days I was able to detect the tell-tale signs of Canadian-ness--signs like saying "eh?" at the end of every other sentence (and here I thought that was a myth!), wearing Canadian flags on their backpacks and caps, and passing out miniature Canadian flag pins to everyone they meet along the Way. The presence of so many Canadians (and so few Americans) on the Camino was a bit of a humbling experience for me, a reminder that my fellow countrymen and I do share the North American continent with others. Americans often forget that (sometimes I think willfully).

In Santiago with Matt from Germany and Bruce and Patty from Canada. I met Bruce and Patty in Orisson and again in Calzadilla. Seeing them again in Calzadilla (when my blisters were at their worst) buoyed my spirits and encouraged me to go on with the Camino.



The Canadian Snail Club. Marsha, Marie-Belle, Linda, and Jane in Trinidade de Arre, enjoying a morning cafe con leche, taking their time.

In Orisson, along with meeting the Catalan gang, I met a group of great Canadian ladies who dubbed themselves "The Snail Club"--because they took their time walking the Camino and didn't gobble up the kilometers with their feet like some much-less-wiser walkers do. Two of the Canadian snail ladies proved to be especially good company on the road: Marie-Belle and Marsha. One of the first memories I have of Marie-Belle and Marsha is that they liked to sing as they walked, everything from Simon & Garfunkel tunes to old-timey classics like "The Red River Valley." I think they may have been the calmest and most easygoing walkers I met on the Camino--maybe because they had so much walking and hiking experience and so many skills to help them along the Way. Marsha especially could identify nearly every plant, flower, fruit, nut, and tree we passed--a crucial skill for us pilgrims who liked to rob, er, I mean forage from the fields around us during the particularly long stretches of the road. She could also expertly wield a needle and thread to drain blisters and helped a young Israeli pilgrim named Noam organize and officiate Shabbat and other Jewish celebrations on the Camino (which the rest of all us were all invited to celebrate too).

Marsha lights the candles for Shabbat, in Roncesvalles.

I had to say goodbye to Marsha in Estella, as she and Marie-Belle were going off the Camino and traveling on to visit some friends elsewhere in Spain before returning to Canada. But Marie-Belle walked on with me a few more kilometers from Estella to Irache, village of the most amazing and glorious miracle of them all on the Camino--that's right, the free wine fountain. Marie-Belle and my friend Aileen from Ireland had sense--they brought a thermos or empty bottle with them to fill with wine from the vino spout (the water spout beside it went woefully ignored by us). Me? I had to resort to getting my free wine the hard way.

Marie-Belle at the wine fountain in Irache, doing it the easy way.

Me at the wine fountain in Irache, doing it the hard way.

After filling up our thermoses, bottles, and, um, mouths with wine (and fending off a cranky German tour director and non-peregrino who apparently didn't like to see 3 women having so much fun at the fountain), Marie-Belle, Aileen, and I retired under a beautiful tree to munch on chocolate and crack open some foraged almonds and walnuts. Then I had to say goodbye to the both of them and go on with my journey alone for awhile. I left them sad but peacefully so, feeling grateful that my first leg of the Camino had been shared with a couple groups of such fun people, from Catalonia, Canada, Cork, and beyond.

Catalans...



...and Canadians. Buen Camino, friends!