Camino – Day 7
Buenos Dias Los Amigos.
Today’s stage took us from Logrono to Najera.
The only thing about this journal that is the same as the usual missives is the title. Where other days have been fairly routine, especially yesterday when I found it hard to write about anything, today has been the most eventful and hardest day to deal with by far on my Camino. Not because of the actual walk itself, which was definitely challenging, but because of the way the day panned out and the things with which I have had to contend.
Today actually started yesterday, if that makes sense, the moment by a twist of fate Dominique and I were allocated the last two beds in the first dormitory and Alain and Larry were allocated the first two beds in the second dormitory. Unfortunately for my 2 amigos, Cleuso was not only in the same dormitory as them, but also in the bunk right next to them. Alain needed a plan, and the one he came up with should have been flawless. His anti-Cleuso strategy was to get so drunk during the evening that not even the Olympic Champion Snorer could rustle him from slumber. Nice plan, failure to execute cost lives! Larry spent the night punching Cleuso until he gave up and went and slept in the street, I kid you not, and Alain spent the night nursing a Camino sized hangover, wide awake, not helped by the prospect of a 30 km hike the next morning.
So it came to pass that I surveyed my 2 partners in holy deliverance across the breakfast table and decided to forego their company for the first part of the morning in return for a nice walk on my own out of Logrono, followed by a meet in the first town outside. They were grumpy as hell and weren’t likely to feel better hearing my tales of a reasonable nights sleep. In truth I was also keen to have a bit of time to myself – when you are sharing accommodation with 120 people it is extremely difficult to find privacy and for me, heaven was sitting in a toilet cubicle with my Ipod, taking the first 20 minutes of uninterrupted time in 7 days. Oh, how the mighty have fallen I hear the cries from the office. I left the refugio at 8.00 am, half an hour after the last stragglers had departed.
As I left Logrono, I felt good, well, good in all but the fact that the rash of flea bites I had picked up in Estella was spreading alarmingly and had now reached my feet. A mere trifle I thought to myself as I checked all systems, fed power to the pistons and, because I was feeling strong, lit the croissant powered afterburner and hit the streets at a bloody mean lick.
Put me on a hill, either uphill or downhill, and I am not the quickest by any stretch of the imagination. Put me on a flat road, early in the morning with afterburners lit to the max, I am the pilgrim version of Smokey and the Bandit! For the first 4 kms small children stopped to stare at this holy version of Haley’s comet, flickering across their streets in the blink of an eye! When the first hill came I slowed only fractionally and continued to blast away – big mistake! Within 1 km I realised I had overcooked things a little, by 2 km I was screwed!
By the time I reached the first town, expecting to see the others cheering my arrival with more food and words of congratulations, I was cooked! The only problem was that they weren’t there – they had left to go to the next town to wait as I had taken so long in leaving the refugio that morning.
The problem with walking is the same as competing in the Tour de France. When you are a breakaway rider, the Peleton normally catches you because the collective effort normally outstrips the single. The same goes for walking, except in my case somehow I had ended up BEHIND the Peleton and was falling further and further behind. I walked for 20 kms up a hill – I’m serious, a 700 metre incline covered in 20 kms, without even meeting a single person I knew. Added to that the rash, which I had been monitoring with alarm as might an operator of a nuclear reactor seeing the arrow go to red, had spread dramatically up my legs, over my back and under my arms. I could also feel my feet itching like hell and eventually, when I got to another town, I took off my boots to have look. Carnage, sheer carnage!
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Each foot was covered in hundreds of tiny oozing pimples that made me, and I
suspect my readers, want to gag. There was no pharmacy, my limited Spanish told me, so I had to walk on to my final destination. If I could take back one thing I have done on the Camino, it would be not to have taken off those boots. The pain and discomfort once I put them back on will live with me for the rest of my life!
By the time I got to Najera, where the others would no doubt be waiting with the agreed rooms at a B&B we had discussed, I was sobbing with pain. We might have it easy these days as pilgrims, but I refuse to believe that many fellow disciples, new or old, have suffered as I did over those last 10 kms.
The next 2 hours passed in a blur. I collapsed in the refugio, only to be told that the others had gone on to the next place 6 kms away. They had seen Cleuso in the dormitory and had flatly refused to sleep there! My mother, grandmother and several other ladies are reading this so I will not repeat my reaction. I was gutted, furious, depressed, speechless and a lot more all at the same time.
Fellow pilgrims kept coming up to me, telling me I must go to hospital and all the time I couldn’t believe that I was here on my own – Muchos Bastardos! The refugio owner called a taxi to take me to the hospital – St. James I hope you understand but this IS the year 2005 – and before long a Spanish doctor was standing over me muttering words to the effect of "infectsione, molto bloody infectsione!" Dane, an American girl who came with me, largely because she was starting to show the same symptoms, but nominally for support, went to the pharmacy and the rest is history.
I hobbled back to the refugio, my "donde esta wait taxorio for mehe" obviously not finding the mark. I was given a bunk and sank back to try and forget my day.
Then, suddenly, there it was. That ponderous, laborious, earthshaking, mountain moving crescendo of sound – Cleuso was 2 bunks down and had started a bloody Siesta! My pilgrim charity snapped, I’m sorry Mum but it did! I let forth a string of French invective at a full roar that had the whole 120 bunk dormitory hanging in stunned silence. His wife went white, he woke up, and we had the mother and father of all rows – really I mean a James special! I will say nothing more except that Cleuso left the refugio forthwith and I got my first standing ovation on the Camino. Life wasn’t good, but that sure was!
I am now sitting in the refugio, still not sure where my friends are. The refugio owner advised me to go to a hotel for a couple of days whilst I recovered, but that hardly seems the point of doing the Camino. There are lots of people here who have injuries and none of them can afford the luxury so why should I be able to take the easy route out. I am going to strap up and head out tomorrow for Santo Domingo and, if I make it, I think I will feel as pilgrim as you can get!
Good night my friends and Buen Camino
Sumo.
LARRY
At first when I got to Najera I couldn’t find the yellow arrows or other markers. A little while later the arrows I did find were those leading out of town toward Azofra and I went 2 or 3K out of the way.
After getting back to town I asked a policeman the directions to the alberque. On my way there I saw Dominique coming up a side street and she didn’t have her backpack. She had been to the alberque, dropped her pack at the door and came looking for me. She knew I should have been there because I was ahead of her and she figured I was wandering around, lost somewhere. She was right and I was glad she came looking.
When we got back to the alberque a couple more people had shown up. Dominique’s pack was the first one in front of the door and I put mine next to hers. We went back to where we could watch the bridge where everyone had to come across the river, and waited for Alain and James.
Tired of sitting on the stone wall, Dominique and I went to a sidewalk cafe close to the bridge and had something to eat and drink. A long time passed before Alain showed up and when we took him to the alberque we found Cleuso waiting for the doors to open.
I told Dominique and Alain that I wasn’t staying the night in a dorm with Cleuso. I understand in Spain they don’t look kindly upon you if you pummel someone within an inch of their life for snoring. Since Dominique and I had gotten there so early we had looked at the map to see if we wanted, all 4 of us, to go to the next stopping point, Azofra, another 8K. I had almost bonked on the road that day and knew I had to get some sleep. 3 of the last 4 nights had been less than perfect in the sleep department and the food, mostly bread, pork, sugar and coffee weren’t what I would choose to eat, ever, if I had a choice.
We had called around to see if there were any hotels or pensions with rooms because we knew James was suffering from what we thought was an allergic reaction, and that he might be more comfortable if he could take a long soak in a hot tub and get his feet up for a while. There was some kind of celebration going on; it was Saturday night. Pick a day, any day, and add the name of a saint, there’s more than an abundance available, and you have everything necessary for a celebration in Spain. No rooms were available except in a hotel that was quite a ways back in the direction we’d just come from.
We waited at the cafe for another 1/2 hour or so and then went back to wait at the alberque. I picked my backpack up from the doorway and had it on my lap but Dominique left hers in front of the door. When the doors opened people just kicked her backpack out of the way or walked over it. She was not happy and said so. She was disgusted, put on her pack and started to leave. I wasn’t sleeping in a dorm with Cleuso and had already made my mind up to hit the road. Alain had a cell phone but couldn’t contact James. We later found out his battery had gone dead because he wasn’t able to charge it when we were in Logrono. We made our decision based on facts and feelings and the 3 of us headed toward Azofra.
Chapter 8 A good choice of alberques, no Cleuso and the James’ allergy that wasn’t
I was glad we’d gone on to Azofra, even if it was 33K for the day and long for that early in the Camino. At Azofra we found a new alberque with 2 to a cubicle, clean bathrooms and hot showers, kitchen cooking facilities with utensils and a supermercado only a block away. Dominique took charge and had dinner going before I was able to get a shower and wash my clothes.
2 things were my top priorities at every stop. Showering helped relieve some of the days ordeal and washing clothes early meant they’d be dry when they went in the backpack the next morning. That day I added another priority. After almost bonking on the road to Najera, I vowed to have something stashed away in my pack to eat if at all possible.
A shower and washing my clothes have been pretty much one operation for me for years. When I was doing heavy athletics and working out 2 or 3 times a day I would have had to have 3 sets of clothes. But if I jumped into the shower, clothes and all, I could wash the sweat off while washing it out of my clothes. It didn’t take too long for shorts and a tanktop to dry in Hawaii, if you made them one of the top priorities and got them in the sun while it was still hot. It had become a habit and it continued to work for me.
The largest majority of the people had stopped at Najera and this gave us the chance to do what I’d advocated after the first day: try to get out of step with the majority. I figured if we did a long day we would be somewhere along the trail with the majority either in front or behind. It seemed that the Camino was like the freeway, large groups clustered together with lots of open space in between. That proved to be a fact and once we got that into our program we found the accommodations much more pleasing, until we came to a large town at which time we had to start the process all over again.
After the first day and newness was replaced by reality, most people were walking 15 to 20K and if we staggered our distances between 25 and 35K we remained out of sync with the majority until we came to a large city. Usually, we could figure out when we needed to make the first big walk to be able to break away from the group. If we did a long day without knowing where most of the others were, we took the chance of ending up, late in the day, where everyone else was and little choices left as far as beds and food were concerned. Soon, long miles became the norm, the alberques were closer together allowing us to go some extra distance if necessary and our pace was faster than most allowing us to get to our destination ahead of the pack, if there was one.
That night after dinner, it was early to bed, 20:45 to be exact. The lack of sleep and poor quality, food availability had taken their toll on my stamina. A great dinner after a hot shower and knowing that it would be possible to get a good nights sleep did wonders for my morale. If everything had stayed the same as the nights at Estella and Logrono I probably would have gone somewhere else until the date came for me to fly back to the US. Fortunately, one of the other big problems for me, the food, would improve as we went further west and when we were able to do our own cooking all was right with the world; after a good self foot and leg massage.
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Alain made contact with James the next morning and we waited in Azofra for him to catch up. When he did we got some good and bad news.
James gone to the doctor in Najera to see if he could get something to alleviate some of the pain he was experiencing from what had been thought to be an allergy. The doctor told him the rash was caused by insect bites, bites he’d gotten in Estella. Besides the noise, slamming doors, crowded conditions, lights, snoring and other discomforts there were also bed bugs. Later in the Camino we met and talked to about a dozen others who had had the same bed bug experience. Estella, at least the alberque where we stayed, would be a good place to walk on by.
James was mad that we’d left him in Najera and had gone on to Azofra. I told him it had been primarily my decision because I was not willing to sleep in the same room, or area for that matter, as Cleuso. I told him we’d tried to find a room in a hotel or pension but that none were available. We’d told some others who we’d seen for a day or 2 and who knew James, where we were going and that we had tried to contact him by cell phone. He cooled down and related the following to us.
When he got to Najera he was done in. It was late afternoon before he got to Najera and he was tired, in part from the distance and in part from the insect bites depleting his system. He’d had to see a doctor and to get an antihistamine from the farmacia (pharmacy). He got a bed, spread out his sleeping bag and promptly dozed off. Within minutes he was awakened by Clueso’s snoring. James lost it, jumped out of his bunk and lit into Cleuso. He found enough French, his words, to tongue lash Cleuso until someone came along and told James that Cleuso had gotten the message. James cooled down and when Cleuso left the dorm there was a round of applause for James. Everyone had been disturbed and uptight about the snoring but no one had done anything about it, except those of us who decided to put some distance between us and him. That night Cleuso slept in the kitchen, apologized to James and quit the Camino the next day or the day after. When James told us the story I thought about asking him why he just didn’t get some ear plugs but decided not to. James trained as an opera singer, has a tremendous voice and projects well, awake and asleep. I wake people up at night if they snore loudly, James and I would have the ear plug discussion until he flew from Santiago and I continued on to Fisterra.
From Azofra we had no real definite destination in mind. Santo Domingo de la Calzada was only 16K for 3 of us but 22K for James and with the affects of the insect bites, it could be a long day for him. Granon was another 6K from Santo Dominingo. Different maps and books showed different distances, some would say 30K some might say the same destination would be as high as 35K. In those instances I used what was in my notes, especially when the figure I had was middle of the road.