The End Is Nigh: Camino Days 29-32

Day 29: Sarria – Portomarin

Distance: 23.6 km

The day was split in two. The parts where we walked alone and then the part with our team.

I had been getting worse and almost completely unable to sleep so our first task of the morning was buying cough medicine. Not an easy thing to do on a Sunday morning in rural Spain. Luckily, Spain seems to have some weird rule/law that at least one pharmacy must be open in town at all times. I was able to find the pharmacy the night before as I laid dying in a bathroom trying to steam open my sinuses.

So as we headed off to the pharmacy, we had no idea when we would see anyone again.  We knew we would get behind our group by at least an hour, and as bad as I felt, we would not catch up. We were immediately stopped by the police. They honked their horn many times and pulled right in front of us. They then began yelling at us. Great I thought, we are about to get arrested for who knows what, and before I even get my cough medicine.

Thankfully, they were only trying to tell us we were not headed in the correct direction of the Camino. We thanked them, waited for them to drive off, and continued to walk away from the Camino, since we needed the pharmacy more than Santiago.

Medicine bought, we tried to play catch up. Problem was, there were no great places/towns to stop for 9 km. We did not catch up with our Camino family. It put into perspective how lonely the Camino could be if you stopped walking with people you had been with for weeks. We had spent almost every waking minute with Candice and Rachele since we met them.  

And then all of the sudden we were apart. We didn’t know if or when we might see them again. If you didn’t stay at the same albergue either, you could go days without seeing the same people even though you all walked the same road and stayed in the same towns..  

We finally stopped at the 9 km spot. It was not much of a place, but it provided one of the few spots to sit. We lamented the fact that we were alone, that we would never catch up, and that we didnt want to make new friends. We spoke about how much we missed our little team.

And then up walked Candice and Rachele.

They had stopped at a small house that served breakfast (they like to brag that it was the best breakfast they ever had. That may have been because they didn’t have to listen to us during it.) We had walked right by their breakfast spot, but decided not to stop so we could try to catch up.  They told us how good it was, how they had tried to linger so we could catch up. They told us how much they missed walking with us.

In our fit to rush, we had walked right by them.  We laughed and hugged, happy as could be that our group was back together. We walked together the rest of the day. “The Camino Gives” indeed.

We ran into The Hippie on this day also.  The Hippie was a pilgrim who started around the same time as us. We hadn’t seen him for weeks. He, initially, was walking at a faster pace than us. Injuries had befallen him though and his walk had slowed to a crawl. He was in very bad shape when we saw him and he was in poor spirits as well. We didn’t think we would see him again and wondered if he would make it at all.

Portomarin, our destination for the day, was a neat little town situated on a river. We stayed in a municipal albergue (called Xunta in Galcia) and in true municipal fashion the place was packed with old people aka: the snorers, and more importantly zero cooking utensils. We were forced out for dinner. We grabbed dinner at the fancy place in town. The octopus and squid were grilled and pretty tasty. The pizza was of a frozen variety. We were all very unhappy.

Day 30: Portomarin – Palas de Rei

Distance: 27.0 km

Elizabeth noted in our Camino book that today was a pretty walk.  I do not remember what it looked like. Most of my day was spent looking backwards at Elizabeth. Something had taken hold of her the night, and as we started walking, she began to fall ill. Within 30 minutes of our walking we were stopped.  

We eventually told Candice and Rachele to start walking and we would catch up. Around 45 minutes later, we had moved maybe 15 feet. We had strewn our stuff about the trail and people walking by were concerned. I waived them off as Elizabeth wandered up and down and in the woods trying to puke up whatever demon was crawling around her insides.

We did start again and would stop every couple of minutes. It was a terrible pace. I messaged our team and told them how bad it was and that we would most likely not make it to the town we had planned to stop in. I also said we might not make it past the next town, whatever it was.  It was looking like we might not cover 10 km the entire day.

But, just like the day I could barely walk, Elizabeth and I had the same strategy. Walk to the next town, sit as long as it takes. If we can start walking again, great. If not, stay there and live to fight another day.

While this slow process was working against us, we were also combating one of the worst elements of the Camino.  New pilgrims.

They show up around this area because you need to only walk 100 km to get the certificate at the end of the Camino. That is roughly four days of walking. It’s a popular starting point for Spanish who want a short weekend trip and people who only want a sheet of paper without doing any real work or getting dirty.

I watched one man take a picture of every single mileage (kilometer) marker the entire day. These markers happen at odd intervals, but on this day alone he took 40+ pictures of stone markers.  Every time he would stop to take another stupid photo, we would pass him. And then Elizabeth would stop to try to puke and he and his wife would pass us again.

I watched two men with what looked like dry cleaned, pressed and starched outdoor gear, try to find a way to avoid walking in a long puddle of water a couple of inches deep.  They stood in the middle of the trail blocking the path of everyone else who had been on the trail for the last 30 some odd days. We are covered in cow shit, exhausted from all the people sonring, and we can’t keep walking because a couple of grown men don’t want mud on their HIKING BOOTS.

The two of us continued our glacial place, and I kept providing the team with updates. Due to our separation the day before, we vowed to use Facebook to keep in touch if we ever got separated again. I didn’t want them waiting on us all day and wrecking any future plans post Camino just for us.  

Turns out they were ignoring that altogether. I got one message that said they would wait for us where ever. Because we had walked 700 km together they weren’t about to walk the last 100 without us. Then, as we arrived into a town at around the 12 km mark and halfway through the walk for the day, we saw them sitting in the sun outside a cafe.

They had been waiting there for the last hour and a half or so, determined to wait as long as it took for us to regroup.  Of course, they had eaten lunch and had a few beers, but still. They could have been well on their way to finishing the day out. Instead, they stayed behind to wait on us, mainly Elizabeth I’m sure.

It was another special moment on the Camino and one that means a lot to us.  I suppose the team had become friends at some point along the Camino.  Like a band of wild, dirty, grumpy dogs. We were together again.  (We remained together for almost a week after finishing the Camino too. Talk about withdrawls)

So we kept walking. Elizabeth lead the way. When she stopped we all took a break too. Little by little we edged closer to our destination for the day.

With 8 km to go we stopped in a cafe, Elizabeth needed a break.  While we sat discussing Hot Pockets (which flavor we used to eat and how we used to cook them), The Hippie strolled up and began to talk to Elizabeth. At that exact moment Elizabeth walked right by him over to the ditch and began hurling. She achieved such a feat while standing upright, every so slightly hunched over, still wearing her backpack, and using her trekking poles to ensure proper balance.

We were all impressed with her ability to multitask so well. Eventually, Elizabeth returned to where we had been sitting and apologized to The Hippie, letting him know that he was not the reason she was puking. Elizabeth later confided that she thinks Candice’s fondness for the four cheese Hot Pocket is what took her over the edge. 

I have no history of what happened later that night, but I’m confident we went out to eat without Elizabeth.

Day 31: Palas de Rei – Ribadiso de Baixo

Distance: 26.5 km

Our bodies continued to deteriorate. We continued to crumble. The days were getting longer as we were barely able to leave by 9 am and arriving to the cities around 4-5 pm. We tended to be the slowest people on the trail.

Today was another day of walking. I think that sums up the day. More encounters with new pilgrims all happy and new and clean. The Camino spirit had died with us several days prior. We were tired of seeing the joy on their faces. I wished for more rain just so they would have a small idea of what we encountered over the last 30 days.

There were two highlights. A tiny pony and Rachele turning vending machine tortellini into an excellent pasta dinner.

I preferred the dinner trick, but all the girls seemed to prefer the tiny pony.

Day 32: Ribadiso de Baixo – Pedrouza

Distance: 23.6 km

The next to last day and the last night of the Camino.  We were all in better spirits on this day. I still had the cough and cold of course. I was getting maybe 2-3 hours of sleep if I was lucky.

We walked and talked and laughed together soaking up our last kilometers together. We discussed trying to walk further to arrive in Santiago the following day before the noon mass, but that was quickly squashed.  Some of the day each of us walked alone. We each had our own pace. Sometimes we walked together.

We didn’t meet any new people over the last couple of days. I don’t think we wanted to. We were a completed group. We wore our stripes proudly. Plenty of pilgrims walking the brief section had on their tour company backpacks, walking gaily along on the trail, blissfully unaware about how awful it was to sleep in a room with Il Drago.

They would never know about the prospective nuns singing with us pilgrims or the cloistered nun singing behind us in mass, or the classical music that woke us up the morning after Easter.

They wouldn’t know the backpack lunches or the bocadillos y cervezas or waiting on a store to open from siesta so you could grab dinner and a cheap bottle of wine.

They wouldn’t know about Semana Santa in the small towns and the wild parades with teenagers.

They wouldn’t know about the Italian group that drank all day. Or the crazy amount of Germans on the Camino. Or the odd couple. Or run into a young South Korean who told his translator that we (Elizabeth and I) were the first people from America he had ever met (how’s that for first impressions of the USA).

They would never meet their rivals. They had none.

We got all of this.

I made quesadillas the final night. We drank Spanish beer. We played cards. We had a playlist of songs about walking.  We enjoyed our last night as best we could. It was the end.

And then we went to bed.

Except for me because I couldn’t sleep. I laid in bed, half sitting up, trying to keep from coughing, but could not stop. I needed a cough suppressant.

Instead I got a shaman. As I laid there, coughing up my final lung. A hand slid under the rail of my top bunk and placed itself on my wrist. The other hand was moved over my chest, about 3-4 inches above it.

A woman of unknown, but I assume based on her features seen that night and later the next day, Asiatic descent, told me to stay calm. Sure I thought. Strange women come to me in bed at night all the time and put their hands on me. No problem.

I knew by her hand on my wrist she was trying to get my pulse. I assumed in order to slow it down or check it or whatever eastern mysticism she was practicing to help me to stop coughing.

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that if modern medicine hasn’t cured the common cold yet that her voodoo was not going to be effective. But at this point, I didn’t care. I just needed her to go away.

So I let her wave her hand up and down my chest, lungs, neck, face. She was waving all the bad out. Of course if she wanted all the bad out she should have started at my feet, but I guess she only cared about her ability to sleep and not my general attitude.

After trying not to cough for five or six minutes, she was satisfied that my aura was in better condition and her goal was achieved. She patted me on the wrist, said goodnight, and floated off back to her bunk bed.

I kept coughing and got maybe an hour of sleep on the last night of the camino.