Day 2 -- Rabanal de Camino to Riego de Ambros

Monday, June 4
21.5 km

The damage
Two small blisters on my left baby toe. Legs ok.

The good
This is a beautiful stretch of country. Small mountains or large hills, depending on your persective. The trail became a real trail (rather than a gravel road), with rocks and mud and bordered with wildflowers. Lots of green; ancient stone houses falling into ruin or shored up for current use. Makeshift barbed wire fence: thorns massed on top of a stone wall. Cherubic calves toddle after glossy-coated mothers.

The weather has been perfect. Cool in the mornings (I wear my light fleece jacket for the first few hours), warm at midday, never really hot, and no rain. I´ve yet to put on my shorts. The days are long--the sun sets at 10 pm and it´s light another 30 minutes. Most pilgrims are asleep before sunset, since they get up so early and are so exhausted by the walking.

The not-so-good
Feeling very unCamino today. Irritability rules, probably because I´ve been getting so little sleep in the communal dorms. A symphony of snoring serenades you into non-sleep. At dawn, after a night of tossing and turning and your bed shaken every time your bunkmate rolls over, a pair of cropped-hair heifers talk and laugh at midday volume as the rest of the bunkhouse pulls sleeping bags over heads.

Where were you raised? I want to call out in the dim light. A barn?
But I know where these creatures were raised--in Germany. Did I say that English was the primary language on the Camino? I was wrong. It´s German, German, and more German. Ich, ach, ich, ach. If I have to listen to a language I don´t understand, please, let it be French.

Bad pilgrim of the day award
Nola, in her vigorously evil prime. In the bed race yesterday afternoon, she pushes ahead, snarling that she needs a bottom bunk because her feet are bleeding. She´d almost been refused entry into the albergue; there was some question as to whether or not she´d carried her own pack (most albergues give first preference to pilgrims with packs; bicyclists and walkers who get their packs transported get whatever beds are left, and usually that means no bed at all in a small hostal; these people often stay in pensiones or hotels or they camp). But Nola bullied her way past the sweet Brits who run the Refugio Guacelmo in Rabanal de Camino, a lovely old stone building that was the parish priest´s house (see photo). There´s a nice garden, a kitchen, and facilities to wash your clothes (sun-dry).
After being such a pill last night, this morning Nola is cheery and wants to tell me all about her trip. She´s with a group of 12 from South Africa, led by a very spiritual man who has walked the Camino 5 times. The group devotes an hour a day to breath work, healing, and shamanistic ritual.

She looks at me piercingly. "Do you know what I´m talking about?"

I´m from California, I want to say, ground zero of all that shit. "Yes, I know what you´re talking about."

Now who am I, with my pre-Camino visit to a healer and my tear-stained epiphany at 12:30 mass, to judge Nola? But judge I do, and I judge even harder when I meet another member of the group who tells me Nola should be introducing herself as Passion. They´ve all taken new names for the Camino. This second woman is Empress.

Call me old fashioned, but shouldn´t the journey be about getting to know who you are, rather than pretending you´re the Empress?

I could write a book
Oh wait, dozens of people already have. Daniel yesterday told me about a Dutch atheist who walked the Camino backwards, starting in Santiago. Seeing the oncoming traffic all the way. He wrote a book about it. Maybe it´s called Santiago is Not Great (and His Pilgrims are a Real Pain).

The Camino is ripe for an epic lampooning. Someone to do for this era´s pilgrims what Chaucer did for medieval pilgrims in The Cantabury Tales. But it ain´t me. I want to be more generous with my fellow pilgrims. Maybe tomorrow.

Speaking of books, I heard that there´s a bestseller in Germany right now, written by a comedian, that talks a lot about the Camino. That´s one of the reasons so many Germans are walking right now, theorized someone whose name I can´t remember. When Brazilian author Paulo Coelho published The Pilgrim, the Camino was mobbed with Brazilians for a while. You still see Albergues do Brasil.

Still cranky
On the trail, I was still cranky. So many pilgrims! Crumpled tissues and cigarette butts on the side of the trail. Daytrippers (their luggage in a van)in designer sunglasses, nary a day pack to be seen. The trail today paralleled the road much of the route, so I also got to see the hordes of bicylist pilgrims.

My Hola and Buen Camino started to get stuck in my throat. I worried about very unspiritual things, like whether the out-of-office automated email reply I´d set up would create a chain reaction that would bring down western civilization. Can´t change it from here, it seems.
Hit the Cruz de Fierro, an important landmark, at 11 am or so. Dimestore gewgaws taped to a pole (see photo) that happens to have a horizontal piece near the top. But I tried to get in the mood, meditating on the rock my brother gave me to leave here. I did manage to find the perfect place for it, right near a rock with a lizard painted on it. I felt I´d delivered it well, so that buoyed me up a bit. And I found a good place for my own personal dimestore gewgaw--the E key from my old iBook.

Enough is enough
Walking on, I said, Enough with this irritability. Am I a woman or a wren? I left Camino, striking out cross country, and found a perch out of site of the Camino with an amazing mountain view (see photo).
The bees wanted to drink my sweat but after they´d had their fill they left me alone. Ate an orange and thought of Yosemite, the trail from Lower Ottaway Lake to Red Peak Pass. The walk I´d just done was not as steep but much longer. On my way down now--easier on the lungs, harder on the legs.

Getting off the Camino and taking a break did me a world of good. Later, back on the trail, I saw very few people (most walk mornings, and it was now about 1 or 2). I din´t worry about finding a bed for the night.
Passed El Acebo (see photo), where a flock of goats was coming up the narrow street, the billies mounting the nannies and the whole lot of them smelling even worse than a pilgrim´s socks.

Sprung for a pension (20 Euros) in Riego de Ambros. Washed out some clothes, scrubbed the dust off myself, then went out and found the only restaurant in town. A couple at the next table invited me to join them. He Gallego and she Brazilian. In her pack she carries high heels, a black low-cut dress, and an "intimate ensemble" in leopard print.

"Es muy mujer," says her beau. He carries a stove and olive oil.

They met in Minas Gerais 7 years ago, and have walked the Camino every year since.