A Typical Day in the Life of a Peregrino

From Jerri:

October 23

We spent most of our nights in albergues (hostels) run by municipal (city) or parochial (church) groups, which probably attract a different population of pilgrims (younger, more aggressive walkers, poorer, and more international) than the private albergues and tourist and rural hotels.  We thought that would be one of the attractions (besides the typical cheap price of 5 euro per person).  However, I think it also meant spending time with some weird characters.  Like those people who feel the need to get up between 5 and 6 A.M., rustling their very loud plastic-wrapped sleeping bags and shining their annoying headlamps in people’s eyes.  Why anyone would get up at that hour is beyond me, as it is too early to eat anywhere and the sun does not rise until 8 a.m., meaning you will be walking in the dark.  And what purpose is there in that?

Most places had anywhere from 8 to 70 (and sometimes many more than that) people in a room, usually in bunk beds. We heard lots of complaints about snoring, but I never used earplugs and was never kept awake. Interestingly, I heard coughing maybe one night of the entire trip, meaning this was either a very healthy population or it was just not cold-and-flu season yet.  Otherwise, most people started to stir around 7 to 7:30 when, inevitably, some person would bravely turn on the overhead lights and everyone had to get up.  All albergues have rules about when you have to leave in the morning, typically by 8 a.m.

Getting up and ready was no big deal, as we slept in our cleanest clothes (donned the day before after showers).  All you have to do is fold up your sleeping bag liner, fold the blanket (if the albergue provided one), and throw away the fake polyester sheets provided (to prevent spread of bed bugs, not that we ever saw any or ever got bitten).  Everything stays in the backpack at all times, so there is no packing to do. Brush the teeth, take some ibuprofen, tape up the feet and gingerly shove them back into the boots or shoes, and we are off.

Some people bought food the night before and made their own breakfast in the cocina (kitchen), and a few albergues offered breakfast (typically, café con leche y tostada con mermelada--coffee with milk and toast with jelly).  We tried to eat at the albergue whenever meals were available, as that delayed putting shoes back on for as long as possible!

 

In general, our rule was never to walk in the dark, so that meant either waiting until it was light (around 8 a.m.) or walking to the nearest open café or bar to eat.  As we got nearer to Santiago, the desayuno (breakfast) offerings got better and we sometimes had zumo de naranja (orange juice made fresh by the most wonderful juicer machine) or croissants.

We liked to be out on the Camino before 8:30 if at all possible.  We often tried to select our stopping place the previous night to just before any arduous climb.  We found it much easier to tackle hard sections when cool and fresh than at the end of the day.  If we had the foresight, we would also try to scout out the beginning of the Camino path the night before.  We spent quite a number of mornings in the dawn light trying to find yellow arrows anywhere that would indicate where we were supposed to turn at the end of a small town.

Once on the path, it was a matter of getting into a rhythm.  Depending on the terrain, that was easier on some days than others.  One thing about the Camino:  it doesn’t matter what the weather, you have to get up and go out.  There is no “downtime” when you can just say you are giving up today.  And everyone else is in the same position, so the sympathy (or misery) is mutually shared.

Sometimes we were on dirt tracks leading from pueblo to pueblo (village to village) and those were fun, mostly because there was always something to see (cats, cows, chickens, sheep, all kinds of crops, churches, statues, fountains, barns, and bridges of every sort).  The towns often had introductory plaques.  It was not at all unusual to be in a place established in the year 1070 with a current population of 50 and 4 churches!  So many of these places looked exactly as they must have 400-500 years ago when pilgrims would be plodding by on exactly the same paths.  I often felt like we were on a movie set instead of in the modern world. 

There were some ugly days when we were on what our guidebook called “gently undulating terrain,” which meant that we walked for miles and miles up and down through corn or wheat fields with no shade, no water, no towns, no buildings--that is, nothing but lots and lots of highly annoying flies buzzing around your nose and mouth and eyes.  The worst (not even the heat nor the up-and-down, boring scenery) was having no landmarks at all, so you could never tell if you were making any progress.  It was like walking though Montana or South Dakota on the Oregon Trail.  All you can do is set up a pace and keep walking and walking, sometimes for 3 or 4 hours without stopping.  You would think that you could talk but it was not worth the effort.  We almost always walked alone, with no other pilgrims in sight, sometimes for several days at a time.

There were other days when we knew there would be important landmarks (the Cruz de Ferro or Iron Cross; a known seriously steep hill; the outskirts of a big city) and then we would concentrate on trying to get to where we were supposed to in reasonable condition without getting lost.  This was not always easy, as the Camino is often not well marked, especially in cities, and we sometimes would stand at a crossroads or a city corner, looking all around, trying to find any kind of yellow arrow or shell mark to indicate where to go next.

At other times, we couldn’t look at the scenery or do anything but concentrate on walking.  This was especially true on what the guidebook calls “rolling boulders,” which are fist-sized rocks that move when you walk on them, usually placed inconveniently on downhill slopes so you have to pick and choose every step at a snail’s pace so as not to kill yourself with falls.  Unfortunately, many parts of the Camino have been “improved” in this way and the only thing that made them worse was when it rained so that they were slippery, muddy, and rolling, all at the same time. There were other “improved” areas, called sendas, which are wide, flat paths, usually asphalt, that would be perfect if you were riding a bike.  Unfortunately, these are extremely hard on the feet and were invariably running with a major highway on one side and empty fields on the other side. Talk about dull and boring.

As soon as we would have a string of truly bad days, we would get a really easy one.  Maybe lots of interesting scenery, or many towns close together, or lots of open churches or museums, or meeting up with peregrinos from other days.  Then we would find ourselves at our end-of-the-day goal saying that was too easy and checking the map to make sure we really were at the right place.

On most days, though, we would walk for 3-5 hours, stopping at every fountain to fill up our water bottles, often being passed by fast walkers early in the morning and then passing by the same walkers later in the day.  We would typically stop for lunch around 12-1 at a bar, where we would have bocadillos (sandwiches of cheese and/or ham on baguette with no mustard or mayonnaise) or tortillas (Spanish omelet of potatoes, eggs, and cheese) or whatever was the specialty of the region (I had calamari, various kinds of ribs, and other unidentified meats and seafood).

 

Then we would look at where we were on the map and decide how much farther we could go.  After calorie rejuvenation, we would often look at each other and exclaim something like, look, it’s only 5 or 6 kilometers more to the next municipal albergue (instead of the private one we were aiming for).  That’s only 3-4 miles.  We can do that!  And we’d go right back to walking.  No matter what we said or felt at lunch, however, the last 5 kilometers were always the hardest, and no matter what the weather or terrain.  Before that, you are resigned; you have to walk, no matter what.  But by the end of the day, you start to worry about whether the albergue will be completo (filled) and if they will have hot water and if the town will have wee-fee (WiFi) and how bad will your feet look when you get the day’s tape off.

When we would finally get to the end of the walking day, usually between 3 and 4 p.m., we sometimes had a choice of albergues.  We would always choose the public buildings (when we could find them) but, otherwise, we would avoid the first one in town (too close to the beginning of town, too many drunks sitting out front, likely fewer spots available) and go for the second or the one closest to the end of town (always moving forward, you never want to move back).  At check-in, almost always there would be a sympathetic hospitalero (volunteer) who, after determining which languages we would all have in common, would ask how far we’d come, what was our home country, and how were our feet.  We were not the oldest by far on the Camino, but we soon learned to take advantage of our ages and ask for beds abajo (lower bunks). We’d then scout out the sleeping rooms and laundry facilities and determine if there were any electrical outlets (for Karen to charge her phone) and find the showers.  First priority, after getting the shoes off, was to shower (best possible was hot water that ran continuously, with doors or curtains and a place to hang your clean, dry stuff) and change into the cleanest possible clothes.  Some albergues would do your laundry for you for a small fee and in some you could use their machines.  Most peregrinos wash clothes every day (not me) and hang them to dry, so you always see lines of clothes flapping from the bottom of bunks and out windows and across porches and lines.

We would change into flip-flops and then venture out into the surrounds to do errands, like find a farmacia (for ampollo [blister] remedies), check out the local churches or ruins or sights.  If the streets were cobblestone, we could not go far or fast, as you can feel every stone on your tender feet.  Dinner in Spain is at 7-9 p.m. and sometimes we would wait till then to eat (especially if dinner was included at our albergue). Almost always that would be what is called menu de peregrino, which is usually 8-10 euros and includes three courses: some kind of soup or salad or fruit, followed by a main dish, which can be meat or fish with potatoes or salad, and dessert, which is usually flan, unsweetened yogurt, helado (actually sherbet) or mousse (really chocolate pudding).  All meals have wine and water and bread but you have to pay extra for coffee or tea.

If we were too hungry to wait, we would look for a bar that had an open kitchen (most were closed from 4-7 p.m.) and we would fill up on what are called raciones (rations), which are usually small single dishes of cheese or meat or tortilla.  Most days, we would try to catch up on journaling and send off blog posts, if there was WiFi, before going back to our albergue.  Several times, we went to Mass or another service for peregrinos, and every one of those experiences was fun and different.

Depending on how bad the day was (on several really cold, rainy days we went to bed at 7-8 p.m.), how many people were in the room, and what else was going on, we would usually go to bed around 8-10 p.m.  Almost all albergues close their doors at 10 p.m. and many turn out the lights at the same time.  Everyone in the building has to get sleep and get up in the morning to walk, so no one whines.  They all lie in bed, even if they aren’t sleeping.

What you don’t get from the above story is the incredible variety of experiences we had every single day.  No matter how boring the day seemed, I always had at least 3-4 pages of journaling and often 5-6 pages, not including the stuff I would invariably remember several days later that I wanted to include.  I never had time to read a book (I didn’t have one anyway) and ran out of knitting yarn in Pamplona.  But we were never bored and usually did not have enough time to do half the things we would have liked to do.  I used to wonder about the people who have done the Camino not once but multiple times, and now I can see why. Every time, it must be a completely different experience.  You can’t ever get to see or experience it all.