Camino 2013

Wynette: Around our 3rd night on the Camino, we decided to stay at Hotel Akerreta, in tiny Akerreta near slightly bigger Larrasoaña. Before we left home we looked ahead for possible places to stay the first few nights and saw this one, I think on TripAdvisor. We didn’t make a reservation till noon of the day we stayed there, however, since we weren’t sure how far we’d get. As we were checking in, the owner asked us if we’d seen the movie The Way. We said yes. He asked if we remembered the scene where Martin Sheen meets the Canadian woman, the people eating on the patio, the man pretending to be bullfighter. We said yes and then he said all that was filmed in the hotel. He pointed out the patio where all that happened. I think I got the picture below from just about where Martin Sheen was standing when he was talking to the fictional owner who was pretending to be a bullfighter.

We didn’t know about any of this when we chose the hotel. At one point in the day or so before, I’d mentioned to Charlie I wondered if we’d pass that place and recognize it. Was very cool to run across it like that. Also a lovely place to spend the night. Here’s the delightful man who really owns the place.

We didn’t spot the bridge where Martin Sheen dropped his backpack. We saw several similar bridges but never found a place that seemed quite right. I don’t think we’ll see it now because I read the movie was filmed in sequence and that was near the beginning.

We are currently in Burgos. I’m not sure but I think this is where Martin Sheen’s backpack was stolen and they ended up partying with the Gitanos. But we haven’t yet seen any gypsies here. Maybe we’ll find out if, as we leave Burgos tomorrow, we recognize the gate to which the gypsy boy carried his pack.

Wynette: In one stretch of the Camino we saw some vineyards with very rocky soil. This one was the worst. It reminded me of something my dad had told me about. He bought some farm land outside Hobbs when he and Mom moved there after he retired. A patch of it was pretty rocky. Dad told me that nearly every day he’d go out there and pick up a bucket of rocks. I need to ask him if he ever got all those rocks out.

It would probably be easier to walk the Camino one step at a time than clear all the rocks from the above field one bucket of rocks at a time, well, at least easier on the back.  But it seemed many fields nearby had been derocked pretty well. I suppose over hundreds of years.

Wynette: A few miles before Santo Domingo, we came to a rest area for pilgrims. Unfortunately the cement lounge chairs were already taken. (This is the only place like this we’ve come across so far.)

Charlie: Tomorrow April 22 we are starting out on what Brierly calls “the sublime Meseta” a plains region in North Central Spain. Opinions differ about it. Some people think it is boring and some people like it a lot. I guess it is sort of like hiking through Kansas. Wynette had new shoes and we are optimistic.

Charlie: Burgos is the gastronomic capital of Spain for 2013. I’m not sure exactly what that means but I read it before coming here and it is written on a huge banner on the center of town.

We went to lunch today at La Fàbula restaurant. It turns out that after 14 years it is closing in two months. The waiter said they were trying all sorts of things before they close. We each had a fixed price menu one for €25 and one for €35, a lot for lunch but not that high considering what this place was like. The food was excellent. Each menu was six courses, each pretty small, being from very good to excellent, so we got to try 12 things. Wynette said it was kind of like tapas.

We took photos of each dish but we won’t try your patience by inserting them all here but I have to include one.

Charlie: We walked through Cirueña yesterday and it was about the most depressing place we have passed. Kind of a poster child for the Spanish real estate bubble. It is/was a little town of 200 people but as we approached we saw this large cluster of new buildings. This was just the beginning. As we got closer we saw more and more rows of condos. All second homes we think. There must have been hundreds and hundreds of them. They were all shut up tight with those roll down shutters they use in Europe. They were just starting to show the years of neglect. There was a nice looking golf course which we suppose was the draw to get people to buy there.

It was like a ghost town, rows and rows of buildings and no one around anywhere. Many of them had “Se vende” (for sale) signs on them but we figure there is little hope of selling any of them. They are not nice enough for the rich people who made all the money in the real estate bubble and the middle class people who might buy them have been devastated by the five years of recession and austerity. It is all very sad. I would not be surprised if they are bulldozed down in a few years.

We took some videos of it, see the ones on April 17.

Charlie: We have been surprised at how busy we have been on this trip. On a typical trip if we spend five or six hours traveling we call that a travel day but we do that every walking day on this trip. When we get into a town we need to find a place to stay and settle in. Then we have to wash out our clothes since we only have two or three of everything. Then there is getting lunch. We have been trying to eat our big meal at lunch. In Spain that means around 3pm which is actually good since we are not ready until then. Then some resting. Around 5 or so we go out and look around and go to a supermarcato to get something for dinner which we usually have in the room. More resting, blogging, dinner and it is time for bed.

We imagined we would have a lot more time but there is always something to do. There is time on the trail, although we talk to each other a lot. There are so many interesting things to notice and discuss.

Each person walks his own Camino. We’ll see if ours turn more contemplative.

Charlie: We took the bus 14 miles from Santo Domingo de la Calzada to Belorado and started walking from there. The path we missed was mostly along the highway although still pretty. We only got a couple of miles before Wynette’s feet were hurting so we picked up the bus to Burgos. Wynette is going to look for new shoes and we are going to stay a couple of days here. It is a beautiful city. We got a nice hotel right by the cathedral with a view of the cathedral. The Burgos Cathedral is very impressive.

Charlie: Brierly, our guru for all things Camino, has not much good to say about stage 10, from Santo Domingo de la Calzada to Belgrade, mostly a path along a busy road, so we are going to take the bus tomorrow morning to Belorado and start walking from there. Probably a short day, about 8 miles. Then a 10 mile day and then another bus into Burgos. It is not much fun walking through the suburbs of a big city. Then a rest day in Burgos to look for shoes.

Later: Here is a photo Wynette snapped, from the bus, of pilgrims who didn’t take the bus.

Charlie: we have been impressed at the high quality of the signs on the Camino. It seems like whenever you are wondering whether you are still on the Camino a sign shows up to tell you that you are, unless, of course, if you are not actually on the Camino and have lost your way, which had happened to us only once and only for 30 meters or so. There was no sign where we looked.

This has given rise to the popular “Camino quantum sign theory.” This theory claims that there is actually only one Camino sign that is everywhere along the Camino at the same time in a state of quantum superposition and when a pilgrim begins to wonder whether they are still on the Camino, an “act of observational wondering,” the wave function collapses and the sign appears exactly where the pilgrim is looking for it. We have seen this happen dozens of times.

Not all pilgrims accept this theory however. Some support a “Many Caminos” theory which claims that each pilgrim has his own Camino where the signs are exactly where he looks for them. You can see examples of this in guide books that talk about “your Camino” or “walking your own Camino”.

The sign quality had gone from stellar in Navarra to merely very good in La Rioja but they have added km posts every km which are nice. You can see them in our pictures and videos. Navarra used these pretty blue and yellow tiles with the Camino shell on them.

The most common sign is the painted yellow arrow which appears on sign poles, on the pavement, on roadside guard rails, etc. They are very reassuring.

In fact, you could walk the Camino with no map or guide book at all and just follow the signs. I like to read the guides though. I am constantly switching between the Brierly guide, Google maps, and the My Track app to see how far we have gone. When we are close to a town I get the walking directions from Google maps, mostly for the distance to go. You can update it with two taps and count down the km.