Day 8 -- Samos to god knows where

around 19 km
Sunday, June 10

Canned tuna with stale bread for breakfast, canned tuna with stale bread for another trailside lunch, and canned tuna with stale bread for dinner in my room at a casa rural.

A day of poor planning and chance-taking, but I survived it, even though I couldn´t tell you where I am and it feels wrong to be off-Camino.

How I suffer for my blog
My mistake was to stop in Sarria at noon and spend 2 hours in an internet cafe. I was tired, and I thought a midday break would do me good. Also, my days were welling up in me and I needed to echarlos (get them out). I learned that use of echar from Jose Marti´s poem/song, Guantanamera:
Yo soy un hombre sincero
de donde crece la palma
y antes de morirme quiero
echarlos versos del alma
(I´m a simple man, from where the palm trees grow. And before I die, I need to get these damned rhyming couplets out of my head and onto paper. Or something like that.)

At 2 pm I emerged from my cibercave, shouldered my pack, and walked on. At the top of a long flight of stairs I saw the British woman I´d met in Ponferrada--she was sitting pretty at an outdoor cafe table. She´d rented a room nearby for 10 euros and said there were rooms still available. But I still had walking in me so I pushed on, up a street strewn with rose petals from that morning´s Corpus Christi procession and its lluvia de petalos, or rain of petals.

Rain in the afternoon, three days in a row
I walked through storybook woods with ferns and mossy rocks and fairies (though they hid from me). Out over open fields, waist-high grain and a tangle of wildflowers. It got hotter as the day wore on, and I would have liked to change into my shorts, but that would mean finding somewhere to change, taking off my pack, opening it up and finding my shorts, taking off my boots. Someone should invent pants that convert to shorts without you having to remove your boots. Oh, wait...

I got lost, took a track that wound along a stone wall and then petered out in the middle of a muddy field. By now it was almost 4, and the storm clouds were gathering. It had rained hard the previous two afternoons, but I thought I could get to Brabadelo just under the wire.

The rain began. I´m here to report that ponchos, at least those from Rite Aid on Geary at 17th, aren´t so great, especially if you´re trying to cover both yourself and your pack. It wouldn´t stay closed, and when the wind picked up I might have been flying a flag for all the rain protection it afforded.

I hit Brabadelo, only to learn that both albergues there were completo, full. Someone suggested a casa rural (kind of like a pension, usually in an historic house) up the road. But they, too were completo.

When the young woman at the casa rural told me that, I just stood there. She repeated the news, thinking I hadn´t understood. I´d understood. I just didn´t know what to do next. I was tired, it was raining, and the next town was 7 or 8 km away. I remembered that Dutch guy the first day telling me to forget the bed race, there´d always be a place for me. Except now there wasn´t.

The young woman asked me if I´d like her to call a señora from another casa rural, but this one a ways away, and not on the Camino.

How far would I have to walk? I asked.

She´d come and pick you up, was the answer.

She called the señora, and reported that the room cost 38 euros.

Se puede pagar con tarjeta de credito? I asked (Can I pay with a credit card?)

No, but the señora will also drive you to the nearest cash machine.

On one hand this seemed like a generous offer. On the other hand maybe the señora preyed on stranded pilgrims and would put me up in a dank cellar. No matter; I had no choice.

Waiting for the señora to arrive, I sat in the dining room, where a group of Germans had just left the remnants of a big meal--many courses, wine, coffee, after-dinner drinks. One brandy snifter still had an inch or so of amber liquid in it. That golden inch was like the brightest thing in the room. I stared at it for a while before sneaking over and tipping back the last of it. It burned the damp right out of me.

The señora arrived in a spray of gravel. She put my pack in the trunk of her car, and we were off. It felt strange to be riding in a smoke-impregnated Alfa Romeo, the señora in gold jewelry talking a mile a minute. She took the curves fast and barely concealed her impatience when I couldn´t find a word in Spanish. The peace and quiet that had been gathering in me, earned step by step on the camino, seemed to now be draining out, like a car leaking oil.

Her casa rural was a 17th century farmhouse that had been the family for generations. The entryway smelled of wet dog and saddle leather. My room was not a room but a suite: stone walls, low beamed ceilings, heavy drapes framing windows that looked out over open fields, a luminous green under dark gray clouds. But the place was also a little gloomy and uncared for, with dust bunnies, daddy long legs, and dead potted plants.

And although it was beautiful, I didn´t want to be there. It felt wrong to be off-Camino, as if I´d lost the thread of a productive conversation I´d been having with myself. Being off-camino feels off-base, off-topic. Before, even when I´ve stayed in a hotel, it has been within sight of the camino. I realize now how important it is to not veer from the path.

In the morning, I met a group of Italians who were walking the last 100 km to earn the Compostela. They will walk around 20 km a day with day packs, and each afternoon they´ll be picked up in a van and returned to a luxurious casa rural. I´m trying not to judge other people´s camino, but it´s hard. The señora drove me and two other stranded walkers (a chain-smoking pair of Danish women) and we all agreed that it was a great relief to be back on the camino.