“Pilgrimage is not just walking and walking through unknown lands to a sanctuary; it is to make you better every day that you walk. The Camino is not a race. Therefore: ‘Don’t run, Walk.'”
Before we went to Spain, I told a friend that I was really looking forward to the Camino. Why? Well, partly because I wanted to know what all the fuss was about. There is a whole genre of books and movies that chronicle people’s transformations on the walk – how the walk enlightens, gives people new insights and so on. In short, how the walk makes people better; the quote above being an example of such genre. I’m not one to subscribe to magical thinking, but like every good agnostic, I’m always open to the possibility of the unknown supernatural
That is not to say that the walk was a bust. I enjoyed each day, spending quality time with Gabriel and Pilar, and having the time to be lost in reflection.
So many chestnuts (castañas) on the road. I managed to fill my backpack’s side pockets with them and roasted them in the oven at the apartment we stayed in Santiago. These nuts will and did explode all over the oven, covering the inside of the oven with their nutty powder. Despite losing a few to the violent explosions, we still managed to get a dozen or so, peeled them and added them to our fruit salad. Soft and sweet. They tasted even better because they’re free vs the 4.50euro per kg we saw in the market.
I woke up this morning to find that I was the last person in the dorm. All the beds were empty. It was barely 7 and everyone had already left, probably eager to finish the damn walk. Well, I suppose if I had been walking for the last 6 weeks I’d be rarin to go as well.
8km into our walk or so, we saw the Irish lady from the albergue, the one who’s been doing the walk in stages (etapes) – finishing one etape and coming back another year for the next. Curious about how she maintained the motivation to come back year after year, I asked her why she’s doing the walk. “I see it as nourishment for the body, mind and soul,” she said. “It’s good to take time off from life and nourish these three things.” And then she added, “More than any other walk, the Camino always seems to pull people back to it,” she said, as if the reason she – and thousand others – always come back and keep walking is partly supernatural, an invisible magnet of sort that pulls people into its sphere. Because the first reason she gave us, albeit rational and easily understood, didn’t fully explain the madness that is the walk.
I felt the cumulative fatigue of the walk and the physical toll of sleeping in hostels and being on the road for a week. Each step felt like a slog, the next one heavier than the one before. After lunch we walked for another hour before we came to a hill outside the city. And there they were: the three spires of the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. This spot must be our personal Monte de Gozo (Mount of Joy), the spot where past pilgrims caught the first sight of their destination after weeks of struggles. Traditionally, pilgrims cry out in rapture upon seeing the symbol of the end of their walk. I had no such desire and it struck me that perhaps these pilgrimages, like other challenges in life, are only transformative when they are so hard – physically and mentally – to the point where you think you can’t go on. Or perhaps we blindly assume that a transformation must have occurred to justify all the sufferings because otherwise, … what’s the point?
The last 3km, I must say, was not the end I had in mind. As soon as we entered the city limits, cars and traffic and noise and people beset us from all directions. I saw another pilgrim who was walking in front of us made a detour to take a coffee and cigarette break at a sidewalk tavern and I wanted to ask, “Why?” Or perhaps it was more of a “How??!” How could he have the patience to delay the end further and resist running to the end of the finish line when it’s so close yet feel so far as the city seemed to conspire to hide the end from sight. Even the painted yellow arrows that had been our constant assurance and companion throughout the walk suddenly disappeared. We had to use our phone map to guide us. I felt, for the first time on this walk, lost.
As we pushed our way into the inner sanctuary of the city, presumably closer and closer to the cathedral, we started seeing more souvenir shops, restaurants offering ‘End of Pilgrimage’ menu and other people with big backpacks like ours. Roads turned into alleys flanked by tall stone buildings from centuries ago and finally, after a few turns, the path opened up into a large plaza with the cathedral on one side and hundreds of people sitting on the stone pavement on the other side. Llegamos. We’re here.
Praza do Obradoiro (Stonemason’s Plaza)
But our journey didn’t end there. To receive our last stamp and a Compostela (certificate of completion), we had to go to the Pilgrim’s Office, which was another experience in itself. The official name of the building is the Office of Pilgrim’s Reception, but everyone drops the word ‘Reception’ from the description because no pilgrims ever feel received or welcomed in this place. Every day during summer months, one thousand plus people finished the Walk and had to come to this office to get their Compostela. When we arrived, there was no sign whatsoever, but luckily another person told us to head down the stairs into he garden, into another building behind the main building to get our queue number. We were 1034, 1035, 1036; they were currently processing number 530. The lady who gave us our tickets said it would take 3-4hours before our turn. I had heard about the long queue but didn’t expect it to be that bad during the low season (i.e. not summer) like now. I looked around the waiting room and saw a few faces I recognized – people we met on the walk, at the albergue – though everyone looked too forlorn to offer a nod of recognition. I caught a glimpse of purgatory in this room.
We finally got our Compostela in the evening. A piece of paper written in Latin.
The Chapter of this Holy Apostolic Metropolitan Cathedral of St. James, custodian of the seal of St. James’ Altar, to all faithful and pilgrims who come from everywhere over the world as an act of devotion, under vow or promise to the Apostle’s Tomb, our Patron and Protector of Spain, witnesses in the sight of all who read this document, that: <name> has visited devoutly this Sacred Church in a religious sense (pietatis causa).
For three Euros you could get a “personalized” version of the certificate that would note your point of departure and the distance, because the template doesn’t mention the walk, the distance, and the struggle you went through. And there it is again, our desire to have the world recognize our individual suffering.
It’s exciting to think that we just covered another 17km today and are left with just 17km to Santiago. Today we saw more farms than usual. Actually, we smelled more than saw. So much so that I can now tell the kind of farm from the smell.
The albergue we’re staying in is up in the mountain with no restaurants or grocery stores nearby, so we had to carry food from the nearest town, Ponte Ulla. When we got to the albergue around 5pm, there were only two other people. But by 7pm, the dorm was full and there was a sense of quiet excitement as everyone realized what tomorrow meant – the end of their journey on El Camino. Some people have been walking for months. The lady from Ireland next to our bunk bed had been doing the Camino in stages, completing one etape one year and coming back another year to do the next etape. It took her altogether five years, which coincided with the completion of her doctorate. A man, Victor, on the other hand, was a Camino expert, having done all the different Camino routes. He said that all the routes are essentially the same. You have to walk a lot, he said.
Damn right, I thought. I must admit that I am getting quite bored by the walk and looking forward to finishing so that I don’t have to wake up at dawn and start walking before the sun is out anymore. I definitely think the drudgery, more than the distance or the physical challenge of walking that far, is the biggest test on El Camino because the landscape gets repetitive after a while and the terrain is mostly flat / moderately hilly, which add to the tedium. Can you keep walking day after day after day even though you are already so sick of walking?
We often romanticize these long, arduous journeys and in the process, fall into the trap of expecting everyone around us to recognize and be sympathetic to our “hardships”, self-inflicted as they might be. We want friendly faces and welcoming arms along the way — for people in the cities we pass through to smile and say “Buen Camino!” as we walk by, for hospitaleros and restauradores to be sweet and kind, to commiserate with us and console us when we are having a tough day, and provide all cure necessary for our hungry stomachs and tired feet.
Compared to pilgrims of yesteryears, who often never made it to Santiago due to illness or robbery, those attempting the Walk these days actually have it easy. There are, in fact, a community of innkeepers and bar/restaurant owners along the routes that ensure that travelers have shelters and food on their way to Santiago. And so far, we had not encountered any situations where we felt unsafe. Also, since many of these businesses are located in small cities and villages, my guess is that the pilgrims make up a big part of their economy. Sometimes, judging by the size of the town, I even wondered if some of the cafés and bars we encountered would survive without the walkers.
The services provided by these places are basic, but sufficient. A bed and shower. A place to eat and drink. Sometimes the beds look clean, other times they don’t. Sometimes they provide blankets, other times there aren’t any. Sometimes the restaurant serves pilgrim’s meal (read: hot food), sometimes bocadillos (sandwiches) and Spanish tortillas (potato and egg frittata) are all they have. But one always find a bed to sleep on and something to fill their stomachs. That’s for sure.
But don’t expect hospitality on the road. Even though these places do cater and advertise to pilgrims, they’re often curt. Like the caretaker in the albergue in Cea who barely said a word as he registered us and made no effort to make us feel welcome. (Interestingly, the message board was filled with kind words from previous peregrinos complimenting his cordiality. Were they being sarcastic?)
Or like the bar owner in Silleda who was combative from the moment we sat down, unwilling to tell us what kind of food she served, offended when we asked for the menu, and plain angry when we asked if we could order a side of fries after the food arrived. “Antes, sí; ahora, NO!” she lashed out. Instead of sharing her reluctance to reignite the stove to fry the potatoes, she assumed we knew better than to order another hot food. You should have ordered it earlier, she continued to yell at us. There was so much hostility in her voice that my instinct was to get up and leave. We didn’t have to suffer the indignity of being scolded by this woman. But I was hungry so I played the stupid tourist card and just smiled, pretending not to understand Spanish and all the vitriol that just came out of her mouth.
Our experience was not unique. When we traded notes with other people we met at the albergue or on the road, they recalled similar experiences on the Camino. “But that’s el parte de Camino,” one guy concluded. That’s part and parcel of the Walk: to endure these not-so-nice and not-so-welcoming people along the way.
Though I was no longer mad, I was still thinking about the angry lady this evening. I’d never find out why she was especially rude to us. Perhaps she was in a bad mood. Perhaps she was annoyed that we switched table or that I took off my shoes and changed into my sandals inside the restaurant. Perhaps the law of demand (tens of thousands of pilgrims each year) and supply (her restaurant being one of the 3 or 4 in town) makes it such that she can be as mean as she wants to the pilgrims and they will still come by the thousands.
Or, perhaps there was no rhyme nor reason for her attitude and that our expectation of hospitality and niceties from the locals is nothing but a form of entitlement, an egoistical wish that the world be gentle to us and that people should understand our suffering when we often don’t realize the suffering of others?
