Sweat, Blisters, and Slugs

On Friday night, we made our way on a bus to the tiny mountain town of Rocesvalles to begin our epic backpacking journey along El Camino Frances, a portion of the famous pilgrimage that begins at the French border and goes West to the edge of Spain in the town of Compostela de Santiago. Before heading on the bus, we spent our day at Pamplona, repacking our bags and leaving behind unnecessary things (we didn´t think we needed our cute skirts, tops or new trendy sandals on our trek) in the storage area of the bus station, making our bags way more manageable for our petite selves to carry.

On the bus to Rocesvalles, there were two types of people on the bus. 1. Older ladies in sandals and flowing linen shirts chatting each other up, and 2. Scruffy, tourist looking folks of all ages with hiking boots, cameras, bandanas and backpacks galore. The first group of people would get dropped off randomly at tiny towns of a handful of houses and maybe one store or hostel, while the rest of us nature seeking folks all entered the town of Rocesvalles with a huge backpack and looks of awe at our new home for the night. As soon as we got off the bus, a man came up to us and said, ¨you need to go up there for a ticket to sleep! hurry!¨and we followed his pointed finger up a hill toward a very beautiful stone hotel. As we stepped into the main office, a middle aged women smiled at us and asked, ¨a room for you two?¨ We looked at each other and asked first, ¨Cuanto cuesta?¨It turned out that it was 60 euros, but as it turned out, we had no other choice in the matter as the two other hostels were ¨completa¨, or totally full. Apparently hiking the Camino was more popular than we thought!

We ended up having a very modern cute room with two comfy beds, a little mini kitchen area, a tv, and a living room all to ourselves! This was such a big luxury compared to our past digs of shared rooms with 6 other stranges, no privacy, shaky IKEA bunk beds, and camp style showers and toilets. We were in heaven. What a perfect way to start our trip!

We walked 20 feet to one of two restuarants in the town and ate a full dinner of pork loin, potatoes, croquetas, stuffed bell peppers, and bread. Everyone else in the resturant was also a pilgrim and came from all over the world- Asia, Sweden, the UK, Russia...it was quite a scene!

The next morning we got up at 7am, which we found out later, was much too late to start the hike. We were excited and ready to go! The hike was a mix of paved paths alongside roads, crossing roads, walking alongside farms and inbetween houses and animal pens, and up and down tiny hills of brush. What we will remember from our first day: IT WAS SO HOT! We´d guess around upper 90s at the high point of the day since we were litterally dripping of lovely sweat after the second hour of walking. The scenery was very pleasant and peaceful, lots of rural fields, rolling grassy hills and an abundant amount of strolling through other tiny tiny towns with not even a store or restaurant in sight.

Now, you ask- we it easy to find your way? Were there other people on the Camino with you? Well, why, not so much and yes! The Camino is marked by little symbols painted in blue with a yellow shell-star logo on it that are often found on rocks, fences or posts along the trail. The most confusing part of finding these symbols was when we came to a town and had to instead look up at the houses to see if there were any spray painted yellow arrows leading us in the right direction. It became a sort of scavenger hunt and finding our way definitely made us pay attention and it was the first time I have been on a hike in which one must engage in this way with ones surroundings in order to be successful (and not get completely lost).

Along the hike, we would pass and others would pass us often. Everyone was going in the same direction (toward Santiago de Compostela) and as you pass someone they would say to you, ¨Buen Camino!¨and thus, we instantly became indoctrinated into this awesome culture of being a pilgrim. Those who were super hard core pilgrims (meaning who were taking the 4 months to hike the whole trail) marked themselves by hanging a seashell on their backpack. I was impressed by how many people were doing the whole pilgrimage and in awe of their motivation since after 2 days, Maddie and I were absolutely pooped.

You might be wondering if we brought food with us on our trip, and yes, we did, but it ended up happening that what we ate for 2 days consecutively on the Camino was 1. Carrots, 2. Corn nuts (or Maiz Frito), and 3. Museli (a kind of granola mix with dried fruit bits in it). These kept us going, but we thrived on our precious apples that we had brought along as well. We owe our snacks and survival on the trip to El Corte Ingles, which is this huge corporate department store chain that´s everywhere in Spain and to our mutual love of singing. Together on the trail Maddie and I recreated singing time at The San Francisco School, watching Disney movies, Hairspray, Motown oldies, Lady GaGa, and even our own songs about our hike (including lyrics about sheep, bulls and slugs).

Speaking of..that first day ended up being a 20km (10mile), 6 hour hike to the next town, Zubiri. In Zubiri we had reservations at another hotel which ended up being a little cheaper, but we found the service at the counter of the restuarant not so great as the workers often ignored us or took forever to ask us what we wanted. They didn´t even ask us to pay for our room up front and since Maddie and I woke up at 4:30am the next morning, we could have gotten away with a free night in a hotel! Anyways, we had a yummy dinner in the hotel resturant, took much needed showers, cared for our blisters, and conked out at around 9pm. At daybreak we were up heading toward the start of the path as we had learned from the first day that any way to avoid the burning heat was well worth it not getting an extra few hours of sleep for. We were off and it was fabulous walking in the semi dark, shade and wet path of the Camino as we hiked along side a river for a few hours. During our hike we ran into tons of pitch black slugs all gooing it up on the dirt (it was hard not to step on them there were so many), a ginormous herd of sheep in a great big glistening meadow, a baby bright red fox that hopped away from us down the path, many butterflies (some even brigh blue!), and then there was the rundown shack that looked really cool. Maddie and I slowly peeked our heads in the doorway only to see about 30 adult bulls looking us straight in the eye! I stupidly thought, Oh! perfect time for a photo!, and we proceeded to stand there and stare at the bulls. Bad idea. They one by one started to move about and stand up and Maddie and I instantly booked it down the path and didn´t stop moving for a good 30 minutes after that. We knew about bullfights and the running of the bulls and didn´t want to even imagine what these bulls were capable of.

The second day, to say the least, was a lot more difficult that the first day. It wasn´t that the hike was physically harder, there were actually less hills and the cool weather really helped, but it was the fact that our feet were torn up with blisters and our collar bones, hips and backs were getting bruised from our backpacks- I guess we needed more training before we set out on this hike, only 2 days and we´re dying, kind of embarressing compared to these other hard core folks doing 4 months...

We finally made it to the city on Pamplona, exhausted as hell and looking like hell, we plodded into the city looking for the train station to collect our things. We treated ourselves with a huge cold drink and a snack at the station and a quick rinse off in the bathrooms. We then stationed ourselves at the local cafe taking turns napping as we waited for our bus to Barcelona. Our plan was to take the bus to Barcelona and then take another bus right away to Port de la Salva, our next stop in our trip, but this didn´t quite work out. Maddie writes more on our late night and one night adventure in Barcelona...

Amor, Danise