Ruitelán to Triacastela

This blog is going to take forever to write. I´m not even doubling up, even though I missed yesterday, because yesterday has to be one in its own...it was enough experience to fill three days.

It was the most challenging day since the Pyrenees, no question.

Up and out of Ruitelán at 7:30...the Buddhist monks who run the albergue (named Pequeña Potala, after a place in Lhasa) woke us up with opera music, which was kinda nice. Also nice was the strict rule that no one get up prior to the music starting at 6am. Nothing ruins your morning like being awake to the sounds of pack zippers and rummaging an hour and a half before you plan to wake up. We had only four people in our room last night (YAY stealing extra pillows!!!)...an East German and a girl from smalltown Georgia who went to study in Switzerland, met the East German, and now lives with him in West Berlin (much to the joy of her parents, she added, ha ha). They were very nice. The monks were strict, and not always very nice (in fact, I spent most of the time wondering what faux pas I had committed to make them be so sharp with me...I felt like the kid in the class that the teacher doesn´t like...wow, some job insight in the middle of Nowhere, España....) but they cooked an awesome meal and ran a tight ship. The kink in the works was that I´d left my laundry on the line last night, not realizing that we were at an altitude that would cool off considerably overnight and leave a dew...so some of it was damp, including my fleece and two pairs of socks. The fleece didn´t bother me much, though, and the socks can hang off my bag, so on we went. PS - Happiness = a cold morning on a terrace with a warm cup of tea in your hands.

The relatively short hop to La Faba was TOUGH. It was a mountain forest path. Good things: shade, cool weather, which is nice when you´re sweating and working hard because you don´t need as much water. Tough part: rocky ascent that seems to go on forever because you can´t see very far ahead of you. But we made it before too long. Christa had had breakfast at the albergue, and had gotten in a rhythm, so by the time I made La Faba, after her and the couple from our room, she was ready to go on. I had to stop for some toast and tea...which upset me at first because I like to walk with Christa, or at least near her, but it turned out well because I got to climb the rest of the way to O Ceb at my own pace.

O Ceb. Not remotely as bad as I thought it would be, and with a gorgeous, clear morning, the views made it all worthwhile. I know I´m getting redundant, talking about breathtaking mountain views and how incredible they are, and I´m going to stop trying to describe them, because you just won´t get it unless you do it yourself. The pictures won´t even come close. Anyway...the climb was steep, but nothing we hadn´t done before. There were a lot of us today...always people you´re passing and who are then passing you while you stop and take pictures or simply breathe in the experience of being on the top ridge of the world. Several women from the albergue last night became motivators for me, and vice versa, despite my bad Spanish and their limited English...it was wonderful just to have the smile for encouragement. At one point, we passed the rock marking the border to Galicia...the last province we´ll walk through to Santiago!!

At the top of O Cebriero, there is a stone wall that offers you a vista of the whole valley and the mountain range falling away behind you. Here´s that word ¨breathtaking¨ again. But it was. The town is beautiful...slate-colored roofs, church, gift shops that I finally decreed myself NOT allowed to enter, because, of course, I want EVERYTHING.... Found Christa in one of the bars and we had eggs and fries and sausage and OJ...ahhhhh, OJ. =) We are finding familiar faces everywhere...Ürigan was there, sitting at the base of a stone pilgrim statue and looking like a shaman, so peaceful and still. We have been leapfrogging a Croatian couple for days and Christa is tight with them, so we ate breakfast with them. The church was small and quaint and beautiful. It was a total tourist town...people selling fruit and charms and EVERYTHING pilgrim and Galician memorabilia. Apparently they´re very into witches...my guidebook says a typical Galician statement is ¨I do not believe in witches, but there are some.¨ Ha ha. It was beautiful. Almost as beautiful...Christa got a text message from Yasmeen: ¨Tell Christine her German boys are coming to meet you.¨ They were on their way!! YAAAY!! But we couldn´t wait...we´d been there an hour and still had Alto de Poio to tackle...had to press on.

Out of O Ceb. Poorly marked ways, like the book said it would be. Atop a higher peak I could see a large wooden cross. My friend John told me the view was incredible (though we weren´t there for sunrise or sunset...impossible unless you do a short day or tackle it at the end, something I would NOT have had the strength for yesterday) and that I was to look for a British 20p coin ¨in the cross.¨ I didn´t understand the direction at first. Christa decided to walk on ahead again, and I watched her disappear up a steep pathway that led away from the cross.

I reached the cross...well worth the climb, and when I finally took a good look at it, I understood what John had said. There were coins embedded in the long vertical cracks running up the sides of the wooden cross...some quite high, and I don´t know how people got them in there. It was mounted on a stone base, so the bottom of the cross was about waist high for me. The COINS, though...they were black with tar from the weeping of the wood, I suppose, and the exposed edges of most of them were bent against the surface...God only knows by what. I looked and looked for the 20p coin, which is distinctive because it´s not round; it has about eight sides. No luck. So down I came.

The pathway down from the cross met the pathway out of town very close to the edge of the village, and I just couldn´t resist. I told myself I´d just check the main road and the bar where we´d eaten, and see if the boys had arrived. No one in the bar. I headed out and took one last look...and there they were.

OVERJOYED. Wonderful to see them again, especially Felix. They had a new guy with them, Patrick from Cologne. I didn´t stay long; they were knackered and went for a beer and I hung around for a few minutes and then left...they were doing 40k-plus days and assured us they would see us later.

Wrong road out of town. I went a little ways, and then realized this road did not have the grade I saw Christa disappearing on. I looked up the mountain and could tell that there was a break in the vegetation above me where the right path cut. And here I digress....

I want to describe to you the activity I next undertook, which I hope to make a summer Olympic sport one day. It is called Mountain Fern Swimming. It is most commonly undertaken by lone wayward pilgrims who find themselves on the wrong path and fear the path they are on may take them to their destination, but by a different route, causing them to miss fellows who are waiting for them ahead. It is largely a solo sport. Competitors are allowed long trousers, boots, and a walking stick, and must carry a pack weighing no less than 20lbs. Caveats: The trousers must be thin enough for the plentiful stickerbushes to penetrate. Boots may be thick for footing protection, but must be heavy, and with exposed shoelaces that will snag on every possible unseen branch. The walking stick will aid in the climb, but must be fitted with a bell-shaped piece at the bottom to ensure that it will be difficult to pull out of deep, snarled grasses and roots. The terrain is mainly tall fern and stickerbushes, which are fitted with deceptively inviting yellow flowers, and small clumps of saplings and shrubbery. The common distance is approximately 20m at a steep grade. The difficulties are numerous. One, the pilgrim cannot turn back once the entry is attained, as footing is treacherous and the vegetation impossibly thick. The astute pilgrim will occasionally be able to locate crushed grasses where previous competitors have passed, but these footsteps are only so helpful as they invariably end at clumps of saplings and impassable shrubbery. The higher the competitor ascends, the thicker the ferns, which lends the name ¨fern swimming¨ to the event, which is very like treading water in jello. The breaststroke is not required, but is recommended, as the imaginitive reader will see that all other strokes would be highly inefficient. The winner is determined, of course, by the amount of time the pilgrim takes to complete the ascent, and the directness of the route chosen. Bonus points are awarded for the plentitude of green grass stains covering her trousers from thigh to shin, stickers that penetrate the trousers and embed in the skin, and red rashes from the impact of said stickers, penetrating or not. Points are deducted for lost articles in the vegetation, rips in the trousers, and any moments of stationary route indecision lasting longer than five seconds. The mental challenge of the sport can be intensified by the presence of groups of laughing and/or pointing, non-wayward pilgrims on the upper route. The pilgrim can win back such points by stoicism of mien when s/he finds that 10m beyond the route chosen, there is a broad swath of clear dirt path connecting the two paths, or that 1km ahead, the roads join, the lower route following a flat route while the upper one contains both a steep ascent and descent to the point of juncture, with no possibility for missing waiting companions in between.

Sigh. Thankfully I had no deductions and (I believe) no spectators.

During my fern swimming competition I thought a lot about times in my life when I´d waited for people and tried to stand still for people and tried to go back for people, when what I should have done was get on with my life...and what it had cost me.

Onward. Long periods of indecision in trying to figure out if the pilgrim ahead of me knew where he was going, and whether the road I was on matched the description in the book. No stops for ice cream. I had climbed to the top ridge of the world and was now walking along it, getting a view of Galicia only seen by hawks and pilgrims and people in (spit) CARS. Breathtaking. But Alto de Poio awaited and I was friendless.

Gastric problems contine...they come and go, usually at the most inopportune times, but occasionally I get lucky and it happens near a bar. Note: the Spanish? Not so big on making sure there´s always TP in the bathrooms. Lesson learned.

On the way, I found a bronze statue of a pilgrim, about 10ft high, straining into the wind at the Alto de San Roque. Missed Christa here, as I wanted my picture taken with him, but found a biker to do the job.

Alto de Poio is the last strenuous hurdle between us and Santiago (says the book). They weren´t kidding. It was the hardest part of the day. At this point, I figured Christa was a good hour or more ahead of me and I could only pray that she would be there at the top of the ridge. Lots of stops and starts...2pm at this point, hotter than HELL...but I made it to the top. As I finished the ascent, there was nothing but the vegetation around me, the top of the pass, and blue sky...couldn´t see a single thing beyond it, that´s how steep it was.

She was there...sitting outside a café bar with a beer. I nearly cried. We sat and had a beer and a Mars Bar next to a very strange-looking Spanish guy with several piercings and a long, iron-gray goatee it looked like he had dipped halfway into a vat of rust. We chatted, and she wants me to be sure to put in here (along with her hello to everyone) that the course of our conversation included the American National Anthem, and she knows ALL the words...and sang it softly with me on the top of the highest peak on the Galician Camino just to prove it. It was great. =)

So we walked on. I thought we´d stop in Fonfría, just another few k´s ahead of us, but she had a mind to get to Triacastela, which would make today a huge day both in changes in elevation (approximately 700 vertical meters in about 10k) and in distance (books, marker stones, and pedometer disagreed between 31k, 34k, and 23 miles...YOU do the math, I´m too tired.) We passed Fonfría without even stopping, something that would come back to haunt us later.

Onward, and onward, and onward...more panoramas of mountains draped in quilts of browns and greens and yellows...more stone fences, and the Galician pallozas, round stone huts with thatched roofs that go back to the Celts. We started the descent.

What seemed like hours later, we finally caught sight of a village far, far below us, and a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach told me this was Triacastela, and that there were no albergues between Fonfría, now far behind us, and Triacastela, nearly directly below us. But on we went.

It occurred to me yesterday that I´ve been walking with German-speaking people for about 4 weeks and haven´t learned a single word. So I got Christa to start teaching me some things, just to keep our minds off our feet and the heat and the weight of our packs. It worked wonderfully...except for the learning part...as I am visual and German contains sounds I´ve never made before. But I managed a few.

I wish I could adequately describe how long we walked and how exhausting it is and how hard it is to do steep downhills on a day with such steep uphills, but I can´t. About halfway down the mountain, we stopped for a break, and a few minutes later, we found a Californian Christa had walked with earlier, and a German mother and daughter. The daughter was sixteen and DONE...her legs hurt too much to go on...maybe her knee...I don´t know. They put her down in the shade and the mother started trying to hitchhike into town. No one would stop and the girl started to sob, which broke my heart. Christa and I felt like we should leave, because someone might stop for two but not if they thought we were five...but I hated to leave her. We finally told the mom we´d send for a taxi, and headed out. (They made it to town okay, by the way.)

Lots more little medieval villages, HUGE chestnut trees (one over 100 years old and ENORMOUS), and a lot farther walk than we thought.

Into Triacastela...at EIGHT PM. Walking for 12.5 hours. Unbelievable. We couldn´t believe how late it was. At the entrance of the village was a large municipal albergue with a huge field in which there were already several tents set up. We were thinking some of the others in town sounded nice, and were passing the field when a woman came up and told us the albergue was full. That was easy; made our decision...we´d walk to the others.

Second one: Completo. Full.

Third one...Completo.

LAST one...Completo.

Uh oh.

What pisses me off (sidebar) is that the hospitaleros are no longer friendly and helpful. They know all the albergues are full, this happens every day, but they don´t offer us any help, and when we ask for suggestions, they can´t be bothered. They´re here to HELP us, and they DON´T. It´s infuriating.

Beer. Indecision. It´s a good thing she and I have different books; hers gives information about hotels and hostels whereas mine is mainly albergues. She found one in her book for a double room for €30. Fine. Suddenly, I was tackled by something huge. Felix. The boys had arrived...the three with Malek, a German we´d been leapfrogging since the beginning. We told them everything was full; they said they knew and were going for a hotel room. They walked off.

Christa and I looked at each other. Everyone was suddenly an adversary...including the boys.

She left the bags with me and went to find the hotel room. I sat nervously with the beers.

She came back. Completo. Full.

Which left us with the field. SIGHHHHHH. At least I´d use my sleeping mat for the first time; it was a nuisance of a whole pound I´d been carrying since St. Jean. We didn´t love the idea of sleeping out in the field, but we didn´t seem to have any other options.

Back all the way through the town to the field. Ran into the couple from last night and the boys; found out the municipal albergue would let you take a shower, but only if you paid €3. Scalping bastard. I did it, the boys did it, Christa passed. We left our bags by the side of the albergue and went for dinner; the boys took theirs with them. On our way out, Neils and Elsbeth, the couple from last night, said they were going to see if they could find a school gym to sleep in. I thought the grass would be more comfortable than a gym floor, but Neils said something about gymnastics mats.

We found a place to eat and tried to make the best of a nervous situation. We decided we´d just drink a lot and hopefully that would chase the cold away. Ha. Ha. None of us really did. We had a good dinner and tried to stay in the moment...but it was hard, because it was getting colder and we knew that at this altitude, there would also be dew in the morning. Some of us, including me, had no sleeping bag. Some of us, including Christa, had no sleeping mat.

It got dark. The passing pilgrims became hated enemies every time one of us asked ¨Tienes camas?¨ Do you have a bed? And got answers like Yes, or We have a tent, or We got a hotel room. Bastards, every one of them. We felt stupid for walking so long, so late in the day, so close to Santiago. Suddenly, the Camino was no longer a game. I thought about what Neils had said about a gymnastics mat...but didn´t like the idea of blindly wandering in search of a school with my pack and my toe blisters.

I tried to explain to the guys that tonight would be about body heat and we had to huddle together. They kept looking dubiously at each other. Boys.

11pm. It fell to me to ask the bartender of the restaurant if we could sleep on the floor in the bar. He looked sympathetic and said no. But he talked about a plaza a little ways ahead of us and made motions that we understood to be a roof and directions off to the left of the plaza.

I said I´d go check it out. The others waited. The streets were silent and dark by now...as I walked, I passed the last albergue we´d checked and the door was still open. I could see space inside and a couch. I passed several sleeping dogs in the streets who barely flicked an ear as I walked by. I found the plaza. The roofed area was like a car park, dirty, with a broken-down post office. Dogs barking furiously somewhere in the dark nearby. Gave me the shivers. I headed back.

On the way, I walked into the open albergue and put on my most pitiful face. In my broken Spanish, I explained to the hospitalera, who seemed kind and was decked with all kinds of amulet necklaces (usually the symbol of a benign person well connected with the earth and karma and the forces of the universe), that I had five friends and we had nowhere to sleep, and that it would be cold tonight and wet in the field. I asked her if we could sleep on the floor. She said no, gently, but her husband said something to her and they took me outside and next door. To their GARAGE....

They slid open a heavy metal door. Inside it was raw concrete, half of it still powdered. But it was WARM. She said we could sleep there. I seized the opportunity and said my friend and I would have to go back to the field and get our bags, but the boys had theirs...she smiled and said she had noticed the boys earlier (her husband had served us at the restaurant) and said that was fine, but we had to be silent when we came in.

I made a dash back to the café to tell everyone I´d scored us a garage. They were ecstatic and headed for the albergue while Christa and I went BACK through the town to the field again. On the way, in a dark stretch, we looked up, and were nearly staggered by the number of stars and the clarity of the Milky Way...we´re usually locked in an albergue before it really gets dark.

We got our bags...no problems...and headed back to the garage, and when we got there, St. James had come and gone and there were MATTRESSES ON THE FLOOR!!! They were old and threadbare, but they were TWICE as thick as the ones we´d had in ANY albergue we´d stayed in!! It was like Christmas. We were overjoyed. There was enough room for all of us, though we were pretty close to one another, but we didn´t care. In fact, we were so warm in there, we were zipping off trouser legs and kicking off sleeping bags within minutes. It was a dusty, dirty old garage and the sound of water in the pipes from toilets and showers was loud, and two of the German boys snored, but to us, it was a Hilton.

And that was enough for one day. Wow. It´s a different story from here to Santiago...this is where the mad dash for beds begins.