Surprise Arrival In Santiago

Me in front of the cathedral in Santiago, day after arriving.

Santiago Cathedral from Alameda Park. 

Last Thursday evening, around 7 PM Spain time, I arrived in Santiago de Compostela. It was a day ahead of when I´d been planning to get there. I left the town of Arzúa super early (still dark) on Thursday morning, planning to go only as far as Arco--but ended up tramping 40km through rain, mud, and liquid cow dung nearly all the way into the holy city of Santiago.

Early morning, after leaving Arzua. Looks like a promising day, huh?

River-road day I walked into Santiago.

My friends Jeremy and Garth taking shelter from the rain.

Whatever came over me? A fellow Midwestern woman named Carla is the answer. Carla and I had met the night before in Arzúa. We met again in a bar/café somewhere after Arco. I was practically collapsed there, collapsed and soaking wet, after walking with an English friend to Arco, unkowingly passing Arco, and then telling Jeremy, my English friend, and a silent, soldierly Italian man intent on getting to Santiago that I couldn´t go farther. I would take a break at the bar and stop for the night at the next accommodation. Jeremy left me with a hug and a promise to see each other in Santiago and then walked on. I dropped with a thud into a chair inside the bar.

Then Carla came in. Carla from Michigan. Carla who speaks my down-home Midwestern American language. Carla really wanted to get all the way to Santiago that day. If I help you get there, will you help me get there, she asked me? "C´mon, girl! We´re nearly there!" In the whole time I´ve been walking the Camino, no one has spoken to me like that. So straightforward, so encouraging, and so sisterly all at once. So American.

Continuing on, like a true pilgrim.

The sky behind us as Carla and I kept going towards Santiago.

Mixed messages from the sky.



The sun finally coming out ahead of us.



Me, nearly there. (In Monte de Gozo.)

So Carla and I went on. We walked 40km that day, eventually leaving the rain and dark clouds behind us and walking into Santiago with the sun breaking through the clouds ahead of us. We ended up even overpassing my friend Jeremy and his Italian buddy, who I found out the next day only got as far as Monte de Gozo. After getting to Santiago and checking into an albergue, Carla told me something. It was her birthday. "Thanks for getting me here tonight, René," she told me. And here I thought it was her who got me to Santiago. 

Santiago!!!! The Emerald City.

On road walking into Santiago.

My cheerleader Carla and another good Camino friend, Belinda, in Finisterre.

In any case, greetings from the holy city of Santiago de Compostela. Greetings and blessings...and more to come soon.

The Cathedral of Santiago.

Looking out from the Cathedral.

Me with my compostela. Official peregrina.

Carrying On

Today is my 39th birthday. It is also my 26th day on the Camino. I´m in a small village called Rabanal del Camino, about 22km from the city of Astorga. I am about 12 days´walk from Santiago.

Me, 39 years old, on the Camino, while passing through El Ganso.

So clearly I decided to go on with the Camino. And I certainly don´t regret it. Here´s why.

For one, the blisters healed well after I visited a medical center in Sahagún. The day after Sahagún I took a bus to León (OK, so that means I cheated a little--if you had seen my feet though you´d understand why) and had a day of rest there before walking on the next morning. The bus to León saved me about 2 days of walking, much of it along a highway and past suburbs, factories, warehouses, and car dealerships. I haven´t had any blister or other foot problems since.

So happy to have someone to lean on, in León.

Now here are the other reasons, the true ones. The morning I left León I walked to a tiny village called Villar de Mazarife and stayed in a pilgrim´s hostel named after our Lord (Albergue Jésus) with artsy graffiti all over the walls. I walked there with a woman named Karen, a singer-songwriter from Austin, Texas, with daughters a few years younger than me. She´s doing the Camino on her own too, starting in Pamplona. When Karen and I get to Albergue Jésus, she discovers there´s a guitar there, for anyone who wants to give it a play. Karen hasn´t held a guitar or any musical instrument in over 2 weeks and is really missing playing music. She brings the guitar out into the albergue courtyard, where I´ve been playing with a pretty cat and watching the cat stalk bees and butterflies stalk the yard´s clover and where other pilgrims sit in the sun and write in their journals and do their day´s washing, wringing the Camino dust out of their socks. Karen sings some songs by Dylan, John McCutcheon, Old Crow Medicine Show, Emmylou Harris. After the first song I ask her how it feels to be playing a guitar. "It feels great," she says, with the same relief and gratitude you hear from pilgrims when they´ve finally reached a place to sit down after a long day´s walk.

In the yard of Albergue Jésus. Yeah, I know. Weird.

On the wall in Albergue Jésus.

On the lawn at Albergue Jésus.

Karen plays her first European gig, at Albergue Jésus.

Karen´s sitting right next to me now as I type this. Here in Rabanal del Camino, where I´m staying in what has to be the warmest, most welcoming albergue on earth, one run by the Confraternity of St. James in England. The very cheerful and very British hospitaleros at the albergue help me with my laundry washing and set out tea with biscuits for us pilgrims at 4:00. Before arriving at the albergue I received my first Happy Birthday of the day from a fellow pilgrim who I´ve been keeping pace with for about 2 weeks now, an Italian man with a a thin, curly mustache who works as a clown for disabled children back in Milan. His name is Andreas. When he sees me stopped for a moment´s rest in the old, crumbling streets of Rabanal, he calls out Happy Birthday to me. Later at the albergue, a young guy from Belfast who I met in León a few days earlier gives me the gift of a pear he got from a field near Astorga, where he camped the night before (and was pestered most of the night by a horse). He doesn´t necessarily give it to me as a birthday gift, since he doesn´t know it´s my birthday--but I take it as a gift anyway. I take the whole day today as a gift, including the pretty walk across rolling hills and mountains covered with green and gold trees under a blue sky and a sun softened by a gentle but relieving wind.

Someone here, another pilgrim, is waiting for the Internet. I´ll be the gracious pilgrim and sign off now. Ciao for now...

Seen today, on the Camino.

Blister Blues

Lonesome landscape. On the way to Santo Domingo de Calzada.

It had to happen sooner or later.

I´m halfway done with the Camino de Santiago, about 250 miles complete, currently in the small city of Sahagún, not far from León--in a car driver´s terms that is, not so much a walker´s. And I´m doubting whether I want to go on.

I´ve got a bazillion blisters. The October weather in Spain has been hotter than average. I´ve been crossing the dull, dry Meseta and plains for days now. And I no longer see most of the original friends I made in my first week, who stopped earlier on or got days ahead of me. I´ve been walking the past few days entirely alone, from the time I step out of the albergue in the morning to the time I make it to another one farther on down the Camino at day´s end. The magic seems gone. I don´t feel I have the inner resources to conjure any up on my own.

I´ll be making a decision to continue or return to Ireland, and then the U.S., within the next day. Perhaps I can save the second half of the Camino for another time. Or perhaps I just need to let the blisters heal and open myself up more to the newer (and fewer in number) pilgrims passing me by. Perhaps I need to take an extra day and commit more to putting thoughts down on this blog, describing some of the friends I made and the sights I´ve seen--perhaps that will remind me why I´m doing this and give me the encouragement to go on. We´ll see, amigos...

Lonesome travelin'. Soon after entering Castilla y Leon region.

Beginning of the Meseta.

View from Alto Mostelares (after Castrojeriz) of the way ahead.

Morning leaving Villalcazar.

17 km stretch of nothing between Carrion de los Condes and Calzadilla.

100-Mile Celebration

Approaching Logroño.

Yesterday I walked into the city of Logroño on the Camino de Santiago. This means I have walked just over 100 miles since beginning the Camino last Thursday. I will celebrate by getting a real blog post up soon. ;)

How thoughtful and festive! This band of troubadors greeted me upon my 100-mile-mark walk into Logroño. ;)

Don´t mean to be falling behind on this. It´s just I have little alone time other than when I´m walking, and by the time I get done walking at the end of each day I´m often too tired to write. And that´s too bad, since there´s so much to say so far about the Camino. It´s been a wonderful experience these past 100 miles. Will share it soon.

Ciao for now...