On a Slow Boat

These are the noises one hears in an albergue at night. Someone snoring, loudly, like a deep rumbling train. The ruffles of paper bedsheet as someone tosses and turns in their bed. The sound of sandals shuffling across the hallway as another wakes up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Someone rummaging their bag and spraying themselves furiously with (I assumed) insect repellent. Someone sighing with so much despair, as they realize a good night’s sleep will be impossible with all these noises going on. If this is a symphony, it would be an avant garde interpretation of a nighttime scene. No rhythm nor melody; just pure dissonance of random human rackets. Ah.. the joy of being in a hostel.

In the morning, everyone woke up around the same time. An inevitable chain reaction as there was no way to disturb your neighbor with your morning routine of getting dressed, packing up etc. While we were cooking breakfast, one of the German guys was giving direction to the only other woman in the dorm, warning her about the first 4km of the walk from the albergue. It would be on asphalt, by the highway, he said. Unpleasant. Perhaps she ought to consider taking a cab to the next town; that’s what he and his friends had planned to do. It was the same advice he had given Pilar last night. He has a guide book with detailed description and instruction for each section of the walk so he can anticipate everything in advance and apparently “skip” the unpleasant section.

He (and his guidebook) was mostly right. The path followed a small road next to the highway – the one that connects Ourense to Santiago de Compostela – a stark reminder that the distance we covered in the last three days could have easily been accomplished in less than an hour by car. But that’s the lesson, isn’t it? El Camino is not about getting to Santiago. It’s about the walking itself.

Was the route unpleasant to walk on, like the man had warned us? Not really. I thought it was fine. We weren’t always next to the highway and we got to walk on an abandoned highway, next to a cow farm, pig farm and goat farm and an abandoned polyester factory. Before long, we were back on small roads by the countryside surrounded by farm lands. Besides, as Pilar nicely put it, “Sometimes it’s good to be surprised.” What fun would life be if we already know all the plots ahead of time.

When you give yourself to places, they give you yourself back; the more one comes to know them, the more one seeds them with the invisible crop of memories and associations that will be waiting for you when you come back, while new places offer up new thoughts, new possibilities. Exploring the world is one of the best ways of exploring the mind,and walking travels both terrains.

Rebecca Solnit, “Wanderlust: A History of Walking”

Slowly but surely we started getting into the rhythm and developing some sort of a routine. The morning breakfast routine. The “packing up and making sure we have all of our stuff with us” routine. Even on the road we naturally have this routine where we’d walk 100-200m apart from each other, walking in silence for a little while, then regrouping after an hour or so to check in, and resting every 5km.

I like the solitude as we walk alone, together. There’s not a lot of places where one can walk undisturbed for hours without having to pay too much attention to road safety. You can on El Camino. It’s so conducive for walking meditation that I often lost track of time, distance and speed. The trails themselves were new and familiar. The landscape similar to walks we’ve done in other places; I recognized the trees, wildflowers and plants and the overgrown blackberry bushes offering their fruits to us. I’m writing two long pieces in my head – one about insights that one tend to develop from these long walks, and another on race and identity. They’re more like bits of scattered snippets of paragraphs at the moment, but it’s interesting how new insights often develop when you’re walking even as I wonder if one could come up with original thoughts by walking on a well-trodden path like the one we’re on.

It was raining the whole morning. The misty drizzles made it look like we’re walking through clouds, wet clouds. At least it’s not cold or pouring rain. We walked in between farm lands and cattle fields. Some sections were covered in cow/horse/goat poop; the soles of our shoes were caked with the smelly brown stuff.

The whole time I was simply amazed by how fit Pilar is. This is not one of those “she’s fit for her age” kind of compliments. She’s fit, period. There are people my age who would not be able to do this walk. They would be huffing and puffing and complaining the whole time. She, on the other hand, plowed through uphill sections with no problem. Never looking out of breath. Maybe tired at times, but I have yet hear her complain.

After 11km or so, we arrived at Dozón, another small town by the highway. At least here they have a gas station with a store next to it, a grocery store, two restaurants and an albergue that serves food. Things are looking up!

The second day is often the hardest. Your body goes into shock upon realizing that it’s being asked to perform an encore of yesterday’s physical feat. That’s why I was thankful that (1) the hostel mandates that everyone leave by 8am — it kicked my butt into gear and forced me to move even though I felt incredibly lethargic — and (2) we had a short day ahead of us.

We left the albergue (hostel) right before 8, before sunrise, and got to the monastery in Oseira by 10:45. The walk took us up the hill with gorgeous vista of the gentle valleys below. The hills were scattered with large granite boulders of all sizes and shapes. We figured all the granite rocks that made up the stone houses and stone walls that criss-crossed the meadow must have come from these hills.

From the picture I’d seen of the monastery, I knew it was pretty large. But I hadn’t expected a palace. The massive stone walls rose up to the sky and appeared suddenly to our left. Three storied castle-like buildings with massive bell towers and intricately carved stone facades and tall walls surrounding the whole complex.

We took the opportunity to tour the site and learned about the history of the order (Cisterciens), how they started the monastery in the 12th century, and how the different parts of the monastery were built, rebuilt, added, and renovated throughout the ages. At some point the site was abandoned for almost 100 years and revived by the French who then returned it to the Cisterciens monks in 1929. It had been a horse stable, a jail, an orphanage, a corn farm, a champagnerie. And now only 11 monks live there, in that big giant complex by themselves!! They made herbal liqueur and cookies (for sale at the gift shop) and supplemented their income with the entrance fee for the tour and the albergue.

Not many people choose to stop at this monastery, because it lengthens the route. Or if they do choose to visit, many prefer to walk another 10km the same day & stay in Dozón. I really wanted to experience staying at the monastery and luckily Gabriel and Pilar didn’t mind my idea. So we got to stay at this dormitory at the edge of the monastery where we were the only guests. The place was not heated so it was somewhat cold in the evening. There was a bathroom with two shower stalls and two toilets and I just couldn’t imagine how it’d work if the whole dormitory was filled with 48 people. Imagine the lines for the bathroom!!

I kept expecting people to welcome us effusively at the hostel, like we’re the poor tired pilgrims in need of tender, loving care. Not because what we’re doing is so hard but because I had thought people would assume we have been walking for hundreds of miles already (since we’re in the last “stage” of the full Camino). But so far people are pretty non-chalant and aloof, some downright gruff, like the man at the albergue in Cea. He barely said a word to us, grunting when he asked for our credentials (pilgrim passport). Same with the monastery. I had expected a monk in full robe to greet us. Nope. Just a guy – who does live at the monastery – who took care of payment, registration and stamping of our pilgrim passports. So bureaucratic. Maybe with thousands of people coming through each year eventually everyone just got tired of the pilgrims passing through. We’re just like those swarms of grasshoppers that took over Las Vegas this summer – a temporary annoyance.

Especially in a town this tiny. We joked that the town’s population was probably around twenty, that is if you also count the cats and dogs. There’s only one restaurant/bar in town owned by an elderly couple and their daughter, who was the de facto server+bartender, the one who had to deal with customers. There wasn’t much at the restaurant. Bread, chorizo, cheese, eggs, salad and snacks. We kept coming back for various things and asked inane questions, made her sell us some eggs even though she said she didn’t like doing it because she’s not a grocery store; at some point I was a little scared she’d ban us from the place. And what would we do then? There was no other place in town for us to get food and drinks and snacks!

First day. When we left the hostel, it was still dark outside. We walked under the fluorescent orange street lights past the panaderia, past the men perched on the bar counters sipping their morning coffee, past the children waiting for the school bus at the bus stop, past all the stores and gas stations to the edge of town into smaller and smaller roads until the sound of traffic became more and more distant.

We followed the Camino waymarkers (the image of a shell) and yellow arrows prominently spray painted on all types of surfaces. We pointed and named all the fruits and flowers and vegetables and trees we recognized. (“Mira!”) We petted cats, dogs and a mushroom cap. We walked on stone roads, gravel roads, dirt roads, an old stone bridge and through old growth forests. We admired old stone houses and walls made of giant stone blocks covered in lichens.

We found a music sheet stapled to a pole outside a church and chanted Panis Angelicus. We said hello to a man outside his farm. As we walked past the edge of the from, we looked back and saw him beat his shepherd dog with a stick because the dog refused to go back inside the yard – the loud dull thwacks of wood on flesh still reverberating in my chest until now. The dog didn’t yelp nor run, and eventually followed the man’s order. (Should I have said something?) We learned that the people in Galicia speak galego, which sounds more Portuguese than Spanish.

We saw house-like structures outside people’s houses with stone frames, brick/wood walls and brick roofs and later learned they’re used to store corn for the winter. We stepped on acorns, pine leaves, chestnuts, eucalyptus bark and rotten apples. We picked and ate figs, apples, peaches, blueberries, and raspberries that were growing on the side of the road for snacks. I’d like to think the people who live on this road had deliberately planted these fruit trees for the benefits of the pilgrims. We saw a yard with lots of cats and kittens and the lady offered for us to take one of the kittens.

We walked 23km today and made it to an albergue in Cea, an old stone house that’s been retrofitted with modern furnishings (insulation, glass windows). Our legs are tired. I’m hoping they’re not too sore tomorrow.