On the first day, I finally got the chance to swim. There was this cute little town with a beautiful restored Roman bridge going over a river that actually had some substance to it. Most of the "rivers" we've seen have consisted of trickles of water, barely enough to bathe a baby and certainly not enough to give me decent cover. But this river flowed nicely with rocks on the banks and deep spots to swim in! And the day was fine! I followed a narrow path downriver, away from the bridge, past the farm on the left, and beyond the houses on the right. And I stripped down and got in! It was FREEZING. And it turns out I didn't go quite far enough, because I could see a pilgrim taking pictures of the river on the bridge. I ducked behind a rock. And then I swam! After sweating all morning under the weight of the pack, the water felt so refreshing. I paddled to the middle of the river, but then a horrible daydream seized me of meeting a poisonous Spanish river snake, and I panicked and swam back to the edge. I climbed out, got dressed, and took a nap in the sun on a rock. My skin felt so new! That feeling didn't last long, since as soon as I started walking I got sweaty all over again, but it was a lovely treat.
That night, I camped out by myself for the first time. Sofia had wanted to camp, too, and she took the tent, which left me with my versatile poncho with loops on the edges so that it could be strung up as shelter. I rigged up the coolest lean-to ever! I'll show you:
The bright green thing is my poncho, the orange thing is my stick, the grey thing is a rope, the black thing is my pack, the red thing is my sleeping bag (with me inside). Tahdah! And the tree was a big chestnut, so there were a million spikey chestnuts all over the ground (and sharp pine needles too), keeping me squarely in the middle of my sleeping mat. Big fat slugs crawled on my tarp and my sleeping bag in the night. I flicked one off the tarp from underneath, and it went flying.
I slept relatively well until the deluge at 7 in the morning. My poncho, being what it is, has a hole for my head. I thought when the hood was cinched tight it wouldn't leak, but that was wishful thinking, and the bottom of my sleeping bag got soaked pretty quickly. By that time, the sky was getting lighter, so I just packed up and left in the rain.
Then it rained for three days.
There was a bit of sun in the middle of the day that second day, so I dried out my sleeping bag. And a delightful French lady and a German kid took pity on me that night and paid for me to sleep in an albergue. All in all the rain didn't create too much trouble for me until the third day when I and the German kid, Marius, walked over a mountain in the worst storm yet.
We had stopped at a bar that said "last place to buy food for 15 km!" and ate some ice cream. When we started walking, it was sprinkling a little. Neither of us put our ponchos on, because we had learned through hard experience that they didn't actually do much. Plus it wasn't very cold. So we walked in the mist.
Soon it rained harder. We got wetter. Actually, we got soaked through. And then the wind started blowing. I didn't feel cold because we were walking, but when I tried waving to some pilgrims, my hand would only move in slow motion. Maybe I was colder than I thought... The rain turned to fat, heavy drops that poured down our faces and blew into our ears. And the rain tasted horrible! I thought at first it was my red hair dye running down my face, but Sofia said the same thing later when we compared notes. The rain tasted nasty. And the wind blew and blew. The fog obscured every view. And the road kept going! I sung my german banana song for Marius a couple times, just to keep up morale (it is a pretty good song), but the wind would just blow harder, mocking our feeble attempts at jollity. I seriously started to think that maybe we would get hypothermia, go crazy, and die! If we had stopped moving, we sure would've gotten very cold very quickly. So we didn't stop. We just walked and walked. Right through puddles because it didn't matter any more. When the path started heading downhill, it became a rushing stream. I prayed and prayed that we would reach the next town soon.
And then. I could smell the sea.
We were saved!
Soon we could see it ahead of us, a bay between grey-green hills with red-roofed towns nestled on the coasts. It was a beautiful sight!
Marius stopped at a bar in town, but I kept walking. I had heard tell of a free albergue a couple km away, and I was determined not to stop until I could get truly dry and warm. So I walked through Cee and I walked through Corcubion. I climbed up this hill, and it looked like I was leaving civilization again without ever seeing that fabled albergue! I was devastated. I prayed and prayed that it would be just the next house....then maybe the next house. I figured I had only 10 km to go to Finisterra, and if I didn't reach the albergue, an alberge, ANY albergue, I'd have to press on. I crossed a busy road...walked a few meters...and there, on the ground: "<--- Albergue 50 mts".
This albergue fulfilled all my dearest wishes on that day. I walked in, and sympathetic pilgrims came to greet me. One covered me with a towel, another went to make me some tea. My shoes were taken from me, my pack uncovered by my sopping poncho. I was led upstairs and offered a hot shower. "Take as long as you want," I was told. And I did.
And then I was fed a hot, delicious lunch (for free). And the slighly-drunk, five-times-a-pilgrim gave me a foot and calf massage. And I drank as much hot chocolate with biscuits as I wanted. I had found heaven. It was such a nice place to be.
No comments:
Post a Comment