Trail Mix: 920 km on the Camino de Santiago

For Kim,

because without her there would be no story worth telling.

And for my parents,

who never doubted what I said I would do (except when it came to making the bed and doing dishes).

While a picture may say a thousand words, Jocey Asnong’s illustration says nearly a thousand kilometres. The vitals are all here: the official Pilgrim Passport, the iconic scallop shells we tightly knotted to our packs, the guiding arrow and unforgettable map that continues to unfold over and over in our heads three years later.

Illustrator Jocey Asnong’s whimsical rendition of the Camino Frances route, beginning with the daunting Pyrenees, westward to Finisterre.

CONTENTS

Foreword by Jane Christmas

Introduction

Early Footage

Backdrop

Sidewalk

Walk This Way

Making Mountains out of Foothills

ONE

→ Basque Country and Navarra

Pyrenees, Paellas and Pints

Found Bras and a Beer Truck

Pinchos and Pods

Full Moon Werewolf Wine

Spoiled Rotten at Chapitel

Sommeliers for a Day

The Wiener Pizza Fiasco

La senda de los elefantes (The Elephant Walk)

TWO

→ La Rioja and Castilla y León

The Angel’s Share

The Chicken Church

Mary from Prince Edward Island

Today’s Entertainment: John Deere and Friends

Marzia’s Philosophy

THREE

→ The Meseta

A Spanish Happy Meal

Bunk Bed Break

An Unconventional Convent

Halfway with a Tutu

Baguette-Busted Retainer

Bunk Bed Deception

Zombie in León

No Slippers, No Service

Ta-da! Wet. No Wet!

FOUR

→ Cantabrian Mountains and El Bierzo

Sleeping in the Clouds

Atomic Sunrise

Tester #16 and Mystery Meds

A Night with Nigel at the Tree House

FIVE

→ Galicia

Pink Gin and Flaming Eyeball Rituals

Pissy Palace and the Mad Hatter

Wendy’s Hello

Corncrib Crypt Lessons

38 Accidental Kilometres

The End of All Ways

SIX

→ Camino Finisterre, End of the World

Police Tape

Feeling the Pinch

The Undiluted Magic of Muxía and Marzia

A Backpackless Day

Santiago’s Afterglow

The Infinity of Mile 0

The End. The Beginning.

Footnotes

Suggested Packing List

Homework

32-Day Itinerary

After one last hike on our home turf, Kim and I try to calm rattled nerves with Prosecco before our flight to France the next day.

FOREWORD

The one phrase unlikely to be uttered by anyone returning from Spain’s legendary Camino de Santiago de Compostela is: ‘What happens on the Camino stays on the Camino.’ Nope. You’re just not going to hear that. Because here’s the thing about the Camino: Once you’ve walked it you have to talk about it; there is simply no other option. Talk about it, write about it, paint a picture of it, compose music about it. You want the world to know about your Camino.

No easy task, that. How to sugar coat an 800-kilometre trek that involves tortuous climbs, exhausting daily slogs, and sleeping in bunk beds. With strangers. Who snore. Who have dubious hygiene. And not always the same strangers. Different ones every night. Try spinning that into the best experience of your life. People will think you are mad. So begins your transition from pilgrim to missionary.

For well over 1,000 years, pilgrims have travelled with little more than their faith and a wish to reach Santiago de Compostela alive so they can off-load their burdens—emotional, psychological, physical or relational—and reap a miracle in the city’s elaborate cathedral. Often the miracle is discovering relief from your burdens in the company of those lugging burdens of their own. As it was in the 9th century so it is today: The Camino provides. That such a naïve ethos exists in our social-media-swamped, evidence-based world is miracle alone.

In 2003, during a fleeting conversation, I heard about the Camino. An instant eruption of goosebumps was all the push I needed to do it. It felt right. Didn’t matter that I had never hiked or hefted a backpack. You can do a lot worse than follow your instincts. A year later, off I went. It was hard, relentless, lonely, exhilarating. And life changing. As I write this, I am sitting with a man I met on that Camino. We’ve been together ever since. And though I vowed never to set foot on the Camino again, I was back in 2018 to hike the Camino del Norte, one of the longest and toughest routes to Santiago.

As a couples-bonding exercise—even as a friend-bonding exercise—the Camino can’t be beat. It intensifies shortcomings and strengths, both your partner’s and yours. Another miracle of the Camino is not always that you completed it, but that despite your sometimes bratty, bitchy behaviour you still had a partner by the end of it.

If you have considered walking the Camino, Jules Torti’s book is a great start. It will give you an idea of what to expect, what to pack and what to leave behind. (Bonus points to her for leaving distracting phones and tablets at home.) Those who have trekked the Camino Francès will recognise places Torti mentions along the way. Much has changed, some hasn’t: Los Arcos’s grumpy vibe has apparently not improved with time, and those chickens are still clucking in the cathedral of Santo Domingo de la Calzada. You will empathise with the should-I-stay-or-should-I-keep-going dilemma that confronts the exhausted pilgrim mulling the dregs of available accommodation options. As for the café con leches: Is there better coffee anywhere than on Spain’s Camino?

For women, the Camino is particularly empowering. There are few places in this world where you can walk solo for 800 kilometres without the worry of being molested. Torti didn’t walk alone, but with her partner Kim.

If the pandemic taught us anything it is the need to make hay. Who knows when another virus will imprison us in our homes? Who knows when our body parts will give out and render us unable to walk long distances and enjoy the grand sweep of awesome landscape the Camino affords at every turn?

What happens on the Camino does not stay on the Camino, and for good reason. The Camino is to be shared and savoured. Long may it be so.

Jane Christmas, What the Psychic Told the Pilgrim

JUNE 2021

Around the world we’ve seen caution signs for snakes, turtles, hippos and banana crossings--but never cats. Translated, this sign in Santiago means, Let them cross.

INTRODUCTION

Did you see that woman’s feet?

I was intentionally walking like a horse with blinders. I didn’t want to see anyone’s feet or grimaces of pain. Tiger Balm perfumed the air as Camino casualties massaged cramping calves and rewrapped tensors. What had Kim and I agreed to? It all seemed so innocent and possible as we logged our training miles on the Ferndale Flats in Ontario. Exactly, Ferndale FLATS.

From Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, France, we would encounter an abrupt elevation gain from the prairie-like 180 metres to Col Lepoeder’s bird’s eye view at 1430 metres. Was it even possible to walk at a 90-degree angle? Yet we were confident we could cross the Pyrenees with a few Clif Bars and some fancy climate-controlled Helly Hansen gear.

A smiley American bounced past us in a hat with flapping tails, announcing to no one in particular that this was her eighth time walking the Camino. As the day progressed, we would hear her same story eight more times as we jockeyed positions, slowed to chug tepid water and change sweat-soggy socks. The awesome trifecta of insomnia, jet lag and lactic acid hit all at once. Eight times? Like, eight failed attempts? My perfectionist self couldn’t register that kind of defeat.

Early Footage

You can terrify yourself quite easily; very little effort is required. Just dwell on that irregular mole on your shoulder, or the way your heart sometimes flips and skips a beat for no good reason. Simpler yet, do the existential math. At 44, I’m nearly half over. All of this is the natural composition required for two things:

1. A full-blown panic attack.

2. The inspo (do millennials still say that?) to start getting stuff done. Like walking the Camino de Santiago.

I loathe the term bucket list, unless it involves beer, but the Virgo in me loves a good list, so, in no particular order, this was the stuff I had to get done already:

1. Make watermelon rind pickles.

2. BOTSWANA!

3. See (not participate in) a roller derby.

4. Go ice fishing.

5. Sign up for a life drawing course (either as a model or artist).

6. Attend the Burning Man festival.

7. Sleep in a lighthouse.

8. Learn how to make wax seals to monogram envelopes.

9. Read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn .

10. Walk the Camino before my lower back decides otherwise.

Kim and I had been headlong and knee-deep in Botswana research. I had another year left on my ten-year yellow fever vaccination and it made sense to capitalize on the immunization with more African travel. We’d sketched out a loose itinerary and logistics thanks to a well-dog-eared copy of Lonely Planet’s Botswana & Namibia. Emails filtered in daily from safari operators with spotty details and big price tags. Our scrambled short list of Airbnb properties, seat sales and safari dates didn’t jibe, so we’d rejig everything again. And then Kim’s dad was hospitalized. She flew to Charlottetown, PEI, at the end of July as soon as things flipped for the worse. At 92, it wasn’t a surprise, but Earl’s quick downhill slide still wasn’t expected.

There were sticky elements to contend with. Should I stay or should I go? Kim and I didn’t have a land line—in fact, we still only have one cell phone and laptop between us, and one vehicle. So, when Kim went to PEI, I was housebound and we could only communicate via email. I waited and paced for days, anxious for updates. When our neighbour knocked on our door before nine in the morning, I knew it had happened. It’s Kim. Anne held out her iPhone and Kim’s silence on the other end was heard. Earl had died and funeral plans were escalating fast. It doesn’t make sense for you to fly out now, Kim reassured me.

Her dad’s health had cast an understandable shadow of worry on our travel plans for the past few years. We were visiting remote places that would make a quick return impossible. At best, if we did learn of any trip-altering news, it would be a two-day affair to return to Canada. There’s no easy way to grab a flight from Uganda when you are in the middle of Queen Elizabeth National Park in Rubirizi. What would we do if we were halfway down the Yangtze River? Checking emails became increasingly stressful and inconsistent as we liked to travel without any devices, and internet cafes have outlived their purpose in the Wi-Fi world.

While Kim shifted to the uneasy acceptance of not stalling our travels because of the what ifs, the reality loomed the further we went down the Kazinga Channel or the deeper we went into the Bigodi swamp.

When Kim returned home from PEI, my words cut in and out like an FM radio station along a mountain pass. I hadn’t talked to anyone in weeks aside from a hello when jogging past someone. We fell into each other’s arms in a desperate way. Wine was opened and the stories flowed with a hot mix of tears. Kim said she had something for me. For us. I certainly wasn’t expecting a souvenir from the island. It’s just something small.

I unfolded the tissue paper to find two small silver scallop shells. I felt the peculiar weight of them in my hand, knowing immediately what the shells indicated. The shells were the size of a quarter and the insides were engraved with the words Imagine and Wish.

I think we should walk the Camino.

It was time.

Death always brings a sudden immediacy to life. There’s an urgency to see places not seen. With ailing and aging parents, a carefree trip becomes stitched with guilt. With Earl’s passing, there was an unspoken release to travel without the anchor and tethered worry.

My grandmother reminded my siblings and me on a daily basis of life’s fleeting nature. If god spares me, tomorrow I will _____ (buy that ground beef on sale at Loblaws, get my hair permed, start crocheting that Nordic knit sweater). She was spared for 80 years and her hope for god to spare her another day had nothing to do with a bucket list of exotic places. She was happy to be spared to babysit us and fry up hot dogs, provided the humidity didn’t overwhelm her. My grandmother had zero ambition to see any geography beyond Buffalo, New York’s shopping malls. That was her version of international travel, and her face would be Liquid Paper white at the border crossing. Nan didn’t want to be spared to see the Jökulsárlón glacier lagoon in Iceland, or the mountain gorillas in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Buhoma. She definitely did not want to sleep en plein air in Egypt’s White Desert with dung beetles skittling about. She was wholly content with nabbing a Dollar Days sale on peanut butter and a little Arsenio Hall before bed.

I wanted to be spared to reach the end of the Camino de Santiago with my hamstrings and patience intact.

Kim is the only person I would dare walk 920 kilometres across France and Spain with. We didn’t decide to walk the Camino because her dad died – it was simply time. Like fashion icon Jeanne Beker suggests, there’s no good time to get a puppy. You have to just add them to the mix and the dominos will topple in a highly likely, cumulative way. Like the Camino, there’s no ideal time for the general population to take a six-week sabbatical from life. The time commitment alone might explain the number of retirees and twentysomethings that dot the Way.

There’s no spoiler here. If you know someone who has walked the Camino, the catalysts are as well defined as the footfalls on the ancient pilgrimage route: Someone died. Divorce. Quit job. Lost job. For a smaller percentage, the magnetic pull to walk the Camino is undefined. And that’s where we fell in line.

Kim and I had talked about the Camino more than we had about Botswana over the years. Ask any good Catholic and they will know of the fabled Way of St. James. But Hollywood deserves a bigger nod for introducing the Camino to an even bigger audience in 2010 with The Way. Directed by Emilio Estevez and starring his father, Martin Sheen, the film gave serious celluloid treatment to the traditional pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. The plot resonated in unexpected ways and appealed to every demographic, age and nationality. The Camino seemed to provide answers. Like a unicorn, the film debuted and its magic and promise of hope had viewers move from popcorn to packing.

Sheen’s character, a career-centric ophthalmologist, finds his golf game interrupted by a call from the French police. His son Daniel has died in the Pyrenees. Sheen’s world shifts sideways and, upon landing in France, his grief takes a twist as he battles to understand his son’s rootless, nomadic decisions. Sheen decides to walk the Camino to figure out Daniel’s seemingly pointless death and, in turn, finds his own way. The motley crew he initially resists becomes fast companions, and this is where the audience sees the glittery glimmer. There’s Sarah, the Canadian, desperate to walk away from an abusive husband’s paralyzing grip. Jack, a chirpy Irishman, has writer’s block. Joost, a jolly Dutchman, is trying to lose weight to gain his wife’s affection back. Collectively, they’re all trying to quit something by starting in a new direction. Smoking, emotional eating, judging. The stories are familiar and it would be impossible not to identify with some aspect of The Way. Though not every viewer cottons on to the spiritual essence of the film, it has motivated countless others from (ironically) every walk of life.

For Kim, The Way was her first introduction to the Camino, even though she was a Catholic! We watched it in my annex apartment in downtown Toronto, cozied up on the sectional EQ3 couch I’d had delivered that day. Without acknowledging it out loud, we both knew we’d see the footage for ourselves one day. We were going to do the Camino. That was 2012.

I’d heard of the Camino through a friend (and possibly Shirley MacLaine), though the idea never took root. Mag had mentioned it was something she wanted to do, but her knees were dictating otherwise. She must have mentioned the religious connection, or I tuned out with talk of Saint James, thinking it would be too holy roller for my nonbelieving self. Why would I walk 800 kilometres to the alleged burial site of the apostle Saint James? I’d only been to church with my grandmother a handful of times, and each time involved a strawberry social. And that was because god had spared her!

I loved the concept of such a physical challenge, but I was iffy about the celebrated finish line being a cathedral. I wasn’t prone to visiting churches in any of my travels, short of forced visits in Quebec on an elementary school trip. So why would I suddenly want to walk all that way to attend a mass and see the swinging botafumeiro (Galician for smoke expeller)? It is an engineering feat in its own right, as the 80-kilo thurible is carried and swung on a pulley system by eight men. This swinging censer has been employed since the 11th century, originally intended to douse unwashed pilgrims in a plague- and epidemic-weary era. The incense is also said to serve a dual purpose as an oration to God, or form of prayer. Of course, thanks to the grand finale scene of The Way, the mass has become a sold-out affair.

Is it wrong that I was only curious to see the pilgrim’s mass because I’d read about the 1499 incident when Princess Catherine of Aragon visited and the botafumeiro disconnected and flew out the cathedral window? In 1622, 1925 and 1937 there were also accounts of frayed rope and hot coals spilling everywhere – but nothing as dramatic as the botafumeiro flying out the window!

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be called a pilgrim either, but I did like long walks with my gal. And watching movies over and over – which we did with The Way.

I shelved the Botswana guidebook and reasoned it was probably better to have a new dose of yellow fever inoculation under my belt anyway (you actually get the injection intramuscularly in your deltoid, not under your belt). Kim and I had been to Zanzibar and Uganda within the last few years, so I was satiated with Africa for a while. Barely, but for a while. We plunked in a new airport destination, backspacing GAB: Sir Seretse Khama International in Gaborone, Botswana in exchange for CDG: Charles de Gaulle in Paris, France. Even the currency converter website we frequented had held our search for US dollars to Botswana pula. I liked that pula meant rain in Setswana, because rain is very scarce in the Kalahari Desert, making both the currency and rain precious and valuable. In turn, the euro conversion was even more precious indeed!

Kim set about determining essential trip math. How many days did we want at the beginning and tail end? Was a 30-day itinerary realistic? Should we build in a rest day every seven days? More importantly, if we were to start walking in September, with the elevation (and climate change), encountering snow close to Santiago was a reality we had to consider. The sun was already setting on August 15, 2018. Though we were both fit and of the same stubborn endurance level (both mental and physical), how many days did we need to train in Canada before hitting the ground running in France?

Luckily, we didn’t have to beg for extended holidays from work or be constrained by constant email contact with family members. My parents were well versed in our off-grid, incommunicado ways. Kim was happily retired after 32 years at the steel mill. As the editor-in-chief of Harrowsmith magazine, I was in a perfectly suspended time between issues and didn’t need to be accessible until November when the spring layout began to ramp up. My soon-to-be-published memoir, Free to a Good Home: With Room for Improvement, was in the trusty hands of the editorial team at Caitlin Press. I was free range.

But, first, we needed stuff. Everything, really. We needed sleeping bags as light as Kit Kat bars. We had to find laundry soap in the form of flyweight flakes that we could simply add to a basin of water to simulate a laundromat. Similar to those clever Listerine strips placed on your garlicky tongue for fresh breath, space age laundry flakes promise to freshen socks in the same reliable manner.

Jittery from the commitment and coffee, Kim and I began crawling through endless blogs and Camino forums. We’d both read every Camino book available, from Jane Christmas’s very frank and comic What the Psychic Told the Pilgrim: A Midlife Misadventure on Spain’s Camino de Santiago de Compostela to Shirley MacLaine’s somewhat trippier The Camino: A Journey of the Spirit. Though the books were published in 2007 and 2000 (and the others even earlier than that), the packing list doesn’t change. While there have been giant advances in GORETEX, packs, down and moisture-wicking clothes, you still need to walk and carry everything on your back.

However, going lightweight is a heavyweight on the wallet. Sure, there are affordable sleeping bags out there, but they are also the size of schnauzers. We needed chihuahua-sized bags that folded up into something that could double as a football if need be. It was easy to ignore the suggested sleeping bag liners to save on weight because at day’s end we wanted warmth and comfort, not a skinny silk or synthetic sock to crawl into. I couldn’t imagine wrapping up in the equivalent of an oversized T-shirt in some 15th-century, stone-walled, nun-run hostel. Even in the dead of summer I have a down duvet up to my nose and, most likely, long johns on.

Above all else we needed backpacks. Surveying our inventory, we had a Goldilocks supply of too big and too small, nothing just right.

We broke the bank on merino socks after several Darn Tough and Smartwool ambassadors with Camino cred insisted. At 30 bucks a pop, it was hard to believe the socks had a lifetime and stink-free guarantee. Game on! I wondered if these merino sheep were massaged like Wagyu cattle. Were they fed truffle oil and IPA beer while listening to Yo-Yo Ma or the Rosetta Stone (Learn Cantonese!)? Were these sheep an endangered species? Research would later reveal that this economically influential breed can produce 103 kilograms of wool in a lifetime. I don’t know how many pairs of Darn Tough socks that equates to, but that sheep could definitely retire in the Maldives quite comfortably.

It was a pilgrimage just to track down all the required kit we needed from our outpost on the Northern Bruce Peninsula. I prayed to the Saint of Backs to keep my Tinkertoy