Morning at the municipal hostel in Ponferrada was busy and crowded; I
came disheveled into the kitchen to find nearly every seat at the table
full. I looked around for a place to sit
only to see Danielle and Jean-Louis, the friendly Quebecois from the meseta,
motion me over and offer some spare yogurt and grapefruit, and we made small
talk about the day. I didn’t know then
how much time we’d spend together in the last stretch of our pilgrimage, and I
ventured outside to find a proper bar with breakfast food.
Across the empty parking lot and the main road was the only open café I
could see, a place full of cigarette smoke and hastily commanded by a
thick-chested bear of a man who took my order ‘My Cousin Vinny’-style (one
breakfast, coffee or tea). There were
some familiar faces – mostly on the ‘familiar’ rather than ‘friendly’ side, and
I ended up sharing a table with a Cuban expat couple in their 60s who were on
their fourth Camino. The man spoke at top volume from underneath a
curled cowboy hat, talked about how much he loved living in Atlanta, and joked
about how every time they’d finished the Camino ‘it was the last time’, but
after a few years his soft-spoken, demure wife would begin to talk him up for
another 500 miles through Spain. They
finished and paid before me, and I soon followed them into the early morning.
Ponferrada in the early, early hours of the morning was the only place
on the Camino I felt persistently nervous: the Way was poorly signed, the
streets twisting and winding their way through increasingly dodgy, poorly lit
areas, and there were still crowds of young men lingering around the bars under
smoke and neon lights. I wandered around
for quite some time, checking the guidebook to little avail, and eventually
fell in with several other pilgrims who showed similar signs of concern. Through a series of hand gestures and
one-word sentences, we followed what appeared to be a natural course through a
school campus and out of the city via the bridge, our course taking us into an
outlying community with a beautiful, quiet stone church. As the sun began to come up, it granted a
beautiful light to the statue of Mary out front, and I was glad the Camino had
taken me past this point.
Most of the rest of the morning was the same – wandering through several
suburbs of Ponferrada, stopping at a roadside bar for a late brunch where I
drank coffee at the table outside and watched the pilgrims shuffle past, and
eventually finding my way into more wine vineyards. I had planned to cover a lot of ground, and
even though I stopped at nearly every opportunity to explore the chapels and
villages (always, always in search of coffee), I made very good time. Nearly two-thirds of the way to Villafranca,
I stopped at an upscale café adjacent to the village church to have a late
lunch. There was a wedding wrapping up
at the church, and its’ revelry and volume spilled out into the street,
children and old people laughing, and I was struck by how much I wanted a
friend alongside me. In that moment, on
a bright sunny day with coffee in front of me, I wanted either Vittoria or
Jeppe there to laugh and be silly, to revel in our sweat and toil together.
The stretch from lunch to Villafranca became quickly tedious, following
the road for the afternoon as temperatures rose and I shed my layers in a vain
attempt to keep from sweating. By the
time I began the long climb uphill, I looked as if I were back in Georgia in the
summer: rings of sweat around my neck and down my back, empty water bottles
clanking against my pack. Oh, and some
of the signs were… mildly confusing:
When I crested the ridge to my first view of Villafranca del Bierzo,
however, the effort paid off: Villafranca rests carefully between hills like a
picture of medieval Europe, and my imagination was active as I walked into the
city. The first few hostels on the
outskirts of town looked unappealing, and I needed to find an ATM, so I headed
toward the parque central.
Cobblestones. Steep cobblestones. After a full day’s walk on dirt, gravel, and
pavement, with bruised feet and an aching back, cobblestones are close to
torture. Those damned cobblestones wound
their way to the city center, bringing me, cursing under my breath with each
step, to an open square full of tables, restaurants, and (thankfully) banks
where I got my cash and plopped down on the sidewalk to catch my breath. I’d forgotten that it was a national holiday
as well, and the town was feeling festive.
Mindful of the hour, I got up and pushed on to the hostel across the
river, a place called Albergue de la Piedra I’d heard recommended.
I walked in the door to a tiny kitchen/reception area immediately ahead
of two other pilgrims, a blonde woman and a man who looked exactly like a
young, grizzled Charlton Heston. Before
we could ask the price or pull out our credencials, the couple running the
hostel had us sit down, take off our boots, and brought us coffee. A golden retriever wandered up and sat on my
feet; the hospitalera told me his name was Conan because “He is muy
fuerte”. The pup wagged his tail and
licked my hand. De la Piedra welcomed me
in like a second home, and before I knew it I’d been shown around, offered use
of the laundry, chosen my bed in a gorgeous fourth story room open to the air
and boasting heavy, comfortable beds, and been given a brief history of the
building. It seems the couple had built
the hostel themselves, making use of the native rock as a fourth wall that ran
from the ground floor to the ceiling… I was jealous of their commitment and
lifestyle.
The two pilgrims from earlier and I were the first ones in, and so we
made introductions (Esther from Copenhagen and Rob from Charleston) and threw
our laundry in together. Esther lay down
for a nap; Rob and I went in search of drinks and conversation. Right around the corner from us was a café
overlooking the bridge, and after he bought himself wine and me coffee, we sat
on the balcony and told our stories. Rob
was a merchant marine in his twenties who had come on pilgrimage at the last
minute (beginning in Leon), brutally damaged his feet in the process, and
decided to become a priest. A Jesuit, no
less. This he told me in such a direct,
earnest manner that it was a while before I realized his manner was the result
of his constant intoxication.
I struggled with Rob, to be honest.
My gut reaction was to be judgmental and pull away from his drunkenness,
his want to ‘instruct’ me on matters of faith, and his poor social timing. I’d come on pilgrimage to be still of heart
and mind, to focus and accept, and this guy was going out in all directions and
quickly attaching himself to me in the short time we talked. But as I sat there, listening, I recognized that
judgment and worked to let it go, to practice just being with another person
and grateful for their company.
After our drinks were finished, Rob went out to explore and I went back
to the hostel, finding Esther reading on a couch upstairs. I sat down on a couch across from her and we
started talking. Her English was good
enough to communicate facts but slow to recognize sarcasm, but we did well
enough. We shared our stories and talked
about our respective professions – she worked in social services with teenagers
as well.
Esther told me the saddest reason for going on pilgrimage I heard the
entire time I was in Spain, but I won’t repeat it here.
A strange thing happened as we talked – I found myself rapidly,
powerfully attracted to her. Despite her
immediate sadness and sorrow, she exuded a vibrant sense of life and fullness
coupled with a feminine goofiness that somehow worked. It was something of
the sense that she was a person who had always, and would always, be fully
genuine in any situation. Maybe I can’t
adequately describe it, but it was there.
For what it’s worth, in that conversation I loved her goofball laugh and
her clever expressions, her calm assuredness and how she sat like a cowboy,
legs splayed and boots propped up on a chair. It was one of those moments where I wish sincerely there were a way to say "You are beautiful, and special, and recognized" without sounding like a creeper, without expressing intent.
Soon, Rob returned from his wanderings, irritated that no grocery stores
were open on the holiday, and we decided to go to the restaurant across the
street for their pilgrim’s menu. Walking
into the restaurant, Casa Mendez, we ran into Fanny and Marc – the French couple
I’d met on my birthday so long ago – and we all found a table together.
Casa Mendez was more upscale than I was accustomed to in small towns,
with a wide round table and proper silverware laid out. I had to ask the French which fork was for
which dish, and for most of the meal I was happy to be quiet and bask in their
delighted banter. They were both quick
to insist I return to do the Camino from Arles, their hometown, and quick to
insist that the ‘rude France’ stereotypes are untrue outside of Paris. If France is anything like those two, I will
be happy to go one day. I laughed at the
banter until my sides hurt and watched Rob down glass after glass of wine, topped
off with some strange green dessert liquor.
By the time the check came he was, in a word, drunk.
We finished the night around our table with a discussion of which of the
three paths to take in the morning – the standard route along the roadway, a
more scenic route over the mountains for most of the way to the west promising
rugged terrain but little civilization and few waymarks, or the eastern path
over Mount Pradela which would merge with the Way a little over halfway to O’Cebreiro
– the town marking our entrance into Galicia province and the official final
stretch of the Camino de Santiago. Still
undecided, I followed my companions back to the hostel and went to bed excited,
thrilled, and more than a little sad to move toward the end of my
pilgrimage. Little did I know what was
to come.
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