El Camino: Part 8

The morning out of Padron is a slog. The unfriendly waitress, the closed shops, the dingy, bare streets, have left a sense of unwelcomeness on me and I want to leave as soon as possible.

Though there are a few pilgrims in my hostel they speak almost only Spanish and I can’t find a strong connection with them. However they do have a cute and lively hunting dog named ‘Becky’.

Thankfully the hostel I stayed in doubles as a bar/café (as is the common case in Europe) and the proprietress has it running this morning.

She has a friendly smile and seems intelligent, a bit of a far cry from her blatantly unfriendly employee whom I interacted with at the bar the previous night. I order a double espresso and watch the weather in Spanish for a few minutes before I set out.

There are the four Galician pellegrinos, a couple from America (I believe) and another solo gentleman. Desiring some solitude, I wish everyone a Buen Camino and head out into the still dark ‘daytime’.

Leaving Padron relatively quickly, once again the Camino spills out into redolent, old-world, countryside. There’s winding moss-covered country lanes, family vineyards and squat stone farmhouses. The sky is mostly sunny and soft blue sky welcomes me, beckoning me further on to Santiago.

Knowing this is the last day is bittersweet. Bitter because it is a 15 miles day. Sweet because the journey will end and I am getting a nice day of solitude on the road.

And there wasn’t much to this day, it was simply hard.

I walked from 8am – 12pm straight for about 10 miles.

The countryside was beautiful, as always, but I was very tired and in a bit of a bad mood from the hostel and overall exhaustion. Though desiring solitude, I was also feeling lonely that morning. It might have been the contrast between my solo trek and the happy, laughing pair of couples that were the Galicians I shared a slice of pizza with the previous evening. Last but not least, I was also feeling nauseous.

So the morning was just a slog. My feet hurt, particularly the front center on my right foot. I had developed a pretty large blister that I was managing with bandages and Neosporin but it was simply painful. I wrote down in my notes for that morning “Tired – want to take an uber”. This was at about 5 miles into the day.

With great relief, I made it to a ‘Pilgrims' café’ on the outskirts of Santiago. Santiago is a major city of the region of about 300,000 people. So at this point , I finally had left the trail of villages behind and was firmly in the city. There were high rise apartment buildings, lot of cars, grocery stores, etc.

The café was nice enough. I ordered two large slices of a ‘Spanish omelet’ which is a pie shaped omelet slice with chunks of potato inside. Pretty good. I washed that down with a beer, cappuccino and water.

By this time I was starting to come down with some kind of fever as well. The day was not entirely warm, it was windy. But I was cold, really cold. And I couldn’t get warm. I was sitting on the patio of the restaurant but the sweat from the mornings hike was chilling me. The beer and the coffee didn’t seem to help anything.

So as soon as I finished I hit the road again. I wanted to figuratively and literally ‘rip this band aid off’. I had five more miles or so to go.

I had booked a hotel in Santiago the night before. I was done having to shuffle around a city looking for possibly open Albergue’s with dubious quality and occupants whilst I was sweaty and exhausted. A nice, clean white bed was waiting for me, goading me on all the more.

So that’s what I did, I pushed hard through the last five miles.

It was a bit of a tough going because the El Camino itself wound it’s way around the outside of the city, not going directly through it, though it appears from views from the trail that it would be quicker to walk straight there, somehow.

Santiago is also on a hill. And leaving the suburb, I had to descend a hill, hit several switchbacks as I walked through the last remaining sparse villages and neighborhoods, until finally I was in the city proper.

Marching up the last little hills in the last proper village before the city; I was hungry, tired, in pain - then I saw a sign on some kind of school about ‘diversity’.

Owing to the various factors of displeasure and generally hating the profoundly superficial concept of ‘diversity’ I began to rant to myself, and anyone who cared to listen in this little Spanish village, about how dumb the concept of diversity is, as portrayed as a societal good.

Diversity is good insofar as it is good. But to laud diversity as the primary good, as the means of achieving a great society, is total nonsense.

I understand the public relations campaigns come from trying to smooth the integration of an influx of migrants into a homogenous Europe over the last decade or so. Policy decisions aside, is there nothing greater within the human spirit and human community to aspire to other than simply celebrating one of the most superficial things about us as a species – our skin color?

We all share 99%+ of the same DNA as human beings. We share 98.8% DNA with chimps. Point being, it’s ok to celebrate differences if we come from an understanding that despite what might seem like diversity superficially (skin color, culture, etc.) is really not. And that in fact most people across the planet are very similar in outlook and temperament. And that, yes, we should celebrate and aspire to our greatest achievements as a species. Because we are capable of so much more when we believe that we are in the first place.

Alright, rant over.

My rant was not as eloquent as this (or ineloquent, as you may find it) but that was the general thrust.

So with the last few miles to go, I powered on.

My hotel was right in the heart of Santiago, next to the old city and the cathedral. I found it and checked in. I was exhausted and coming down with a fever, so I didn’t even shower, just removed the clothing I needed to, slipped into bed and immediately fell asleep. It was around 2pm.

I woke up a couple hours later. I grabbed a shower and headed out into the bustling streets.

It was a Sunday, of the previously mentioned Nadal (Christmas) season, and Santiago being a holy city, was alive with people. I walked down the main thoroughfare filled with restaurants and El Camino kitsch stores, along with flocks of school kids, families and couples.

Finally, I made my way into the square where the massive cathedral faced out onto several other flanking magisterial buildings. One looked like it had become a five star hotel for the very wealthy pellegrinos or simply for those looking to stay in a beautiful place.

Ambling up to the Cathedral I asked an employee of the gift shop where I could get my pilgrimage pass stamped and officiated. He gave me a rapid burst of instructions in Spanish, which I did not understand, then repeated it again in perfect English, even though I had originally asked in English. C’est la vie.

Long story short, I couldn’t find it for a good half an hour, took a wrong turn, came back and asked a police man where it was. His directions were much more concise and I found the city tourist office.

There you can enter into a digital kiosk the route you took, your personal info, etc. And you are spit out a ticket to receive your certificate of completion.

It was almost closing time so almost no one was there. Though I did see on the counter that over 100 pilgrims had been there that day. That felt pretty cool.

I paid the 3 Euros to get my distance and the route I took embossed on the medieval looking scroll they provided and then perused the gift shop for gifts for my family for Christmas.

Having officially completed the El Camino, I figured I should see the cathedral. It is an imposing, noble cathedral made of sandy colored granite. Google tells me the style is Romanesque, one of the finest examples there is.

In my error-prone search for the tourist office, I had tried to get into the cathedral by the back door where I was helped and politely shooed away by an usher. Not understanding that this was the exit of the cathedral the first time, I again walked up to this usher trying to get in. This time he explained to me that I was indeed trying to enter through the exit and pointed me around to the other side.

He spoke great English and asked where I was from. Responding ‘New York’, as I do to keep it simple in these interactions, he told me he was from California.

After I made my way through the cathedral, spending a good 20-30 minutes resting, praying and in awe of the massive gilt altar, I exited the correct way this time and made a comment to this extent to the same usher.

This sparked a nice chat where he told me he’d gone to UCLA, lived in Santa Barbara but had moved here with family. He’d done the El Camino as well. Then he said something that struck me, which I took down in full.

“I don’t do what I studied in school, but I enjoy my life.”

I could see many people in America with the opposite formulation of that sentence. Or maybe it’s a false dichotomy.

The rest of the night I spent wandering around Santiago to get some Ibuprofen and Ramen. Achieving both, I got to bed around 10pm to catch a 9am train back to Vigo and from there to take a bus back to Lisbon.

With that, I’ll leave you there. My best and much love.