El Peregringo

My initial plan when thinking about doing the Camino was that I would try to average around 20-22 km. a day. I even made a spreadsheet with the mileage for each day, the name of the albergue I planned to find, etc. It was complete even with a chart showing the altitudes of each location so I had a graphic image of how much climbing would be involved. Here, on day 5, I abandoned my plan, and only walked 10 km., but not because the famous wine fountain at the Bodegas Irache came right at the beginning of the day as you might think.

This is seriously a fountain of free wine for any pilgrim that passes by. It has both a wine and water fountain and is open whenever the winery is open for business, but closed and locked at night. There is a webcam available that shows the fountain, though it’s difficult to find it at the site since the whole stupid thing is done in flash so there’s no URL to get you right to the camera. To find it, go to irache.com, and click “English”, “Skip Intro”, “History” (go figure, eh), “Source of the Wine”, and finally, “Webcam”. It works most of the time, but sometimes it only shows an image from much earlier in the day. Oh well, it, and the wine, are free…

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In the albergue in Estella I met a group of 5 Brazilians. Ziku (at left), one of the three of us who had stayed in Puente la Reina together, has walked the Camino once before, and even though he’s probably 10 or more years older than I am, I have no doubt he’ll walk it again. Plus four women brasilians. Even though only two of the women were actually traveling together, they all formed a group as if they’ve been friends all their lives. Since I had spent quite a bit of time with Ziku the day before, I was included in their mini-herd even though I had a fairly hard time understanding fast, female, Brazilian portuguese. Whatever… Little did I realize that what I had become a part of would essentially dominate my Camino for the next several days.

The two Brazilian women traveling together had not originally planned to walk the Camino. They had been planning on traveling much of Europe, and while in Spain they heard about the Camino and decided to scrap part of the rest of their trip to walk. They really weren’t prepared. After only 4 days of walking, both of them had severe blisters, and one poor girl’s shoes had worn all the skin off the back of her heals such that her feet bleed almost constantly. In Estella, Ziku patched up the blisters in a time honored Camino way (skip to next paragraph if you are prone to queasy stomach). Apparently it is the practice on the Camino to take a needle and thread, push the needle through the blister and out the other side, and to leave the thread in the blister. They say it helps it to drain and not seal up and swell again. Ziku sewed up these two women so much that I swear their feet looked like floor sweepings after a quilting bee. I couldn’t stand to look at their feet with all the strings hanging out, but over the day today, I did get a few shots.

I left the albergue fairly early, and began walking alone (which looks like is going to be my modus operandi). However, I stopped for coffee just beyond the village of Irache, and while reading email and drinking my coffee, three of the Brasilian women limped in. And I mean limped. Two with the severe blisters and the third with tendonitis and swelling in both knees. They needed help. Though I found it hard to believe, they claimed not to know what ibuprofen is, but in half an hour after they took some that I gave them, they were limping along less and making better progress. Their plan was to try and do some 25 km. that day, but if they had actually made it, they would have been in such bad shape they’d end up in a hospital. Pulling out my guide books, I found a very interesting sounding albergue in Villamayor de Monjardin only 10 km. from the day’s start, and I convinced them to stop there to attend to their feet.

It was actually pretty enticing for everyone as we climbed to Villamayor. The scenery was absolutely beautiful, and since the village sits at just about the highest point around, it was spectacular, even though the climb was at times a little rough.

Just outside Villamayor we came upon a very old stone building that had been recently rebuilt in part. Looking inside we discovered that it was an old “fountain”. I use the word fountain because I really don’t know what to call it. The front of the building was two open arches. Just inside, it was a stone stairway the full width of the building which descended steeply 3-4 meters down to a pool. There was a small trickle of spring water coming in one corner and the water was ice cold. We all took the opportunity to bathe our feet in the icy water. I really couldn’t get any decent shots of it, since I could get far enough away (without falling off a cliff) to get the whole building, and inside the field of view was even more limited. After consulting my guidebook, I found that this is called the “Fuente de Moros”, or the Moor’s Fountain and was probably constructed originally during the Moorish occupation over 1000 years ago…!

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Once we arrived in the town, the “jardín” part of the name of the village was entirely appropriate. It seemed as if virtually everyone had a beautiful little garden associated with their home, even if was all in pots.

There are two albergues in Villamayor de Monjardín: the municipal one, and a private one run by a Dutch church. The municipal one looked pretty grim, but from what I had read, I wanted to stay in the Dutch one anyway. The experience there was one I will always remember. The hospitaleros (the people who run and take care of the hostel) were two Dutch couples. The members of the church take turns spending one or two weeks a year here to assist pilgrims. If you arrive between 1 and 4 in the afternoon, there is a sign that tells you to go upstairs, find a bed, take a shower, and that the hospitaleros will see you after their naps. This was a wonderful, warm, welcoming place. One of the guys immediately took charge of the Brasilian feet and spent at least an hour washing and dressing their wounds.

There is no public kitchen in this albergue. Instead, the two Dutch couples cook and serve both dinner and breakfast for the pilgrims. Once we were all seated, there was a prayer, and we were each given a copy of the gospel of St. John in the language of your choice. They didn’t have Estonian (one of the pilgrims there is Estonian), but they had virtually every other language covered including Norwegian (there were four older Norwegian women doing the Camino there as well).

In some ways, Estella is really my first “stop” in an albergue on the Camino. I spent my first night in a hotel, the second in our house in Pamplona, and the third night was in the new albergue where there were only three of us in the basement of the Hotel Jakue. Furthermore, Ana and the girls drove to visit me in Puente la Reina. Arriving in the albergue in Estella, with lots of people, was thus essentially new.

The word “albergue” is often translated as “hostel”, or perhaps even better, as “pilgrim hostel”. There are public, municipal albergues, albergues associated with monasteries or convents, albergues in the attics of churches, and privately owned albergues operated as businesses. My night in Estella I chose to stay in the private albergue and not the municipal one. This one was special even as a private albergue since it is run by an organization out of Pamplona that tries to help persons with disabilities and isn’t run for profit, but rather to benefit the special cause.

Here’s a look at the interior of what is a fairly typical facility along the Camino. Though this shot doesn’t show it, about 50 of us slept in this one room. There was quite a symphony of snoring (and I was probably a soloist).

It was here where I really began to meet other pilgrims and to get a sense of why others choose to do this. Some do it for faith, some have done the Camino more than once. Some, apparently, elect to abandon the walk and their shoes along with it.

The village of Estella is right on the Ega River. It has been an important city along the Camino since the year 1090, and was heavily defended by castles and fortresses at each entrance. As a medieval city it was divided into segregated neighborhoods, with Basque and proto-Spanish speaking Navarros in one area, Jews in another, and the French in still another. It was a rich city and I honestly don’t think my words can do it justice.

This is a link to the full size version of this image. Warning: it’s 3 megs!

Estella was rich enough that even the municipal buildings were works of art. Of course municipal at that time didn’t mean there was separation of church and state. The Ayuntamiento building includes a statue of Santiago.

The church in Estella is so tall that with the single lens I’m carrying I couldn’t get any sense of the height into the images. The woman with the purple towel/cape in the above image, a brasilian, told me that when she was here a year ago with her husband, seeing the church in Estella is what inspired her to do the Camino.

The public, or municipal, albergue is in the center of town, just across from a fairly new stone bridge.

I absolutely have to go back to Estella again. There is too much here for a one night stay.

A fairly non-descript day of walking. Admittedly this is only the fourth day so I have little to judge from, but the walking itself doesn’t seem like it’s going to be too hard on me–we’ll see (famous last words).

While the walking itself wasn’t all that hard, what I walked on was incredible! There are long stretches in today’s walk where pilgrims are actually walking the original Roman road that passed through this area. It completely blows my mind that my steps are on paving stones a Roman worker laid over a 1000 years ago! In the image at left you can see very clearly the edge stones on this section as it begins a descent down a hill. In New England we think we have old stuff…this is mind blowing.

Roman road building set the standard and we continue to use many of the same techniques now. There is a base of large, hard-packed gravel, covered in sand. The edges are very large stones set vertically with the sand and gravel packed in between the part of the stones that are above ground. Then, the paving stones are fitted on the top–higher in the center to shed water–and then wedged in tightly by driving stone wedges in at the edge.

Some parts of this section of the road were restored in the middle ages–the contrast is pretty easy to see in these images. The leftmost image is before restoration and the center image, after. Apparently the restored sections are rougher than the original, though at the time of restoration they were probably better than the then currently deteriorated state. I still find it amazing that a road re-built in the middle ages is in such great shape. Too bad we don’t have this kind of engineering anymore…

This section of the road descends to a largely destroyed, though still crossable bridge, also of Roman construction. I have no idea who the pilgrim is in the image of the bridge above–I turned back after crossing and beginning the climb up the bank on the other side to shoot this image.

The countryside here is mostly rolling–in places similar to Vermont, though less green. The Camino passes through large numbers of asparagus fields. The Spanish love white asparagus–it’s only recently that you can even find very much green asparagus, and I have yet to see fresh green asparagus. Virtually all of it eaten here is canned and white. It’s white because they keep it completely covered by straw until it’s cut so the chlorophyl never develops.

Chinese white asparagus has begun to destroy the asparagus market here in Spain, and many of the old top brands of asparagus like “Cojonudo” are now sourced in China. As a result, many of these fields are being dug up and replanted with vines to expand wine production. That in itself is problematic because the global price for wine grapes is already at or below production costs according to some of the farmers I have spoken to along the road today.

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The Camino today passes through a number of small towns. Pilgrims typically stop for rests as they pass through these small Camino towns, and over the centuries, economies and construction become shaped by the pilgrimage. In Lorca, a number of pilgrims paused to cool off, refill water bottles, and relax. Lorca has only one long street, and the centuries of pilgrims spending money to buy bread and wine as they passed through brought some amount of riches. As a result, a number of the houses have family crests denoting minor nobility.

After Lorca, the Camino passes through Villatuerta. At the church of Villatuerta, there is a modern statue of Santo Veremundo. He was born here and spent much of his life in the Irache monastery outside of Estella. The statue shows Veremundo dressed as a pilgrim. Since there is some discussion as to whether he was actually born here or not, his bones go back and forth between this church and one in nearby Arellano every five years.

This area has been occupied for millennia, the Romans bringing olives with them. There were lots of hermitages and there remain a lot of olive groves in the area.

After 22 km of this beautiful and historical section, I arrived in Estella, which deserves its own post…