The Camino de Santiago is the third most well known pilgrimage in the world (after Mecca and Jerusalem). The pilgrimage has been in place for over 1,000 years and consists of several routes (depending on where you’re coming from). All of the routes, however, have one final ending point: Santiago de Compostela – the cathedral in Santiago, Spain that holds the tomb of Apostle St. James (Santiago in Spanish).
This semester I have been taking a class all about the history of the Camino de Santiago (The Way of St. James in English), the legends about how Apostle Santiago was transported to Spain, the discovery of his body, the history of Spain, including the Muslim invasions and the Spanish Reconquista. When also studied various architectural styles, feudalism in Spain, the Black Death, and life during the Middle Ages. This has been, by far, my most interesting class. While the spring break trip on the Camino that I just finished was not a required part of the class, I can’t imagine not having capitalized on this opportunity to see with my own eyes what we had been studying all semester. And, although I’m not super religious or even somewhat religious, I thought it couldn’t hurt to have all my sins pardoned (one of the main reasons peregrines started making the pilgrimage centuries ago.)
Lots of pilgrims start at the Puente de la Reina, which is about 15 days from Santiago. Since we only had one week off for spring break, however, we started much closer to the finish, 111km from Santiago. (The minimum requirement to receive your “compostela” where you are certified as a true pilgrim is 100 km). Our journey would be split up into 8 days. Two days for travel, 1 day in Santiago, and 5 days walking.
As you may have noticed, I’m writing in English. This for two reasons: first, I am seriously behind in my blogs and need to write about the camino before I forget any details. Secondly, I am worried that my limited Spanish would inhibit my ability to share and describe the experiences I had on the camino: I had enough trouble learning about the Turkey-Dog scale without it being in Spanish, so I won’t burden you with this task either. Oh, the conversations that arise after spending too much time with the same people in the countryside!
Getting There:
At 8 o’clock in the morning 19 students and I got on a bus for the longest bus ride of my life! We were expecting 20 students; however one of the girls didn’t show. No one had her cell number and we couldn’t wait any longer, so we left without her. We later learned that she thought we were meeting up at 9am instead of 8am! This was my worst nightmare, such that I could hardly sleep the entire night before. I did, however, almost commit my other worst nightmare – forgetting my tennis shoes. I was out the door almost out of my apartment building when I realized, “I’m not wearing my tennis shoes, and they’re not in my pack either”. What a mess that would have been! I know that the first pilgrims walked the camino without shoes, but I wasn’t planning on being quite so…traditional. (Fortunately, I didn’t forget my shoes, or anything else important.)
Getting on the bus with everything on the packing list was only my first of many challenges of the day, however. After about 3 hours of bus-riding, I decided to take a nap to catch up on the sleep I didn’t get the night before. Because we had an entire tour bus for 20 people, I had two seats to myself and was able to lie down my head on the seat next to me. This seemed like a great idea at the time: fall asleep and wake up when we get there. The problem came to my notice when I woke up less than an hour later with a sudden need to throw up. As quickly as I could I dumped the contents out of my sack lunch, ran to the first row of open seats, and looked at the road. Just a little too late though; thank goodness Spain uses plastic bags instead of brown paper bags to hold their lunches. While I was already 3 hours into the bus trip, I still had 9 hours to go. And each of these 9 hours was completely miserable.
From this point forward I continued to feel nauseous and could get over my motion sickness, even with the frequent rest stops every couple of hours. When we finally arrived at the hostel for the night it was already 9pm. We had literally spent the entire day in the hostel. I didn’t know where we were or what our plans were for the next morning, but I knew that there was a bed for me and that is where I went. The others went out for dinner but I didn’t even want to think about food. I crawled into my sleeping bag, took a few sips of a PowerAde that one of the guide’s gave to me to drink, and prayed that when I woke up in the morning I would feel better. Oh, and I forgot to mention – during almost the entire bus ride, it was raining buckets outside and even turned to hail at times. So, you could say I was feeling a little less enthusiastic about the camino that evening than earlier in the morning. (“Please don’t let tomorrow be another Day 3 Inca Trail” I kept thinking to myself.)
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