Communion

Los Arcos to Logrono (Thursday, June 3rd) For once, I thought I'd write about the day I'd just experienced. As we left the city of Los Arcos, we walked through fields of ripening wheat and vineyards, bread and wine, communion country. Which seems very appropriate for what this Camino is all about. As Kurt from Vienna, one of my early traveling companions for the day, said, part of the purpose of the Camino is to get to know yourself, and part is to get to know your companions, to be in communion with them.

Today, we walked about 17 miles or more than 28 km which took us to a total of about 100 miles since our beginning point at St. Jean! That makes us feel as if we are actually making some progress. It was a long day, but not too difficult in terms of climbs, just endurance.

I began the first few km near others, but was essentially by myself for awhile, enjoying the coolness of the morning air and the clear, Carolina blue skies that stayed with us all day. It was a lovely day on the Camino, though it did get a bit warm by this afternoon. Temperatures are all given in Centigrade or Celsius over here, of course, so I have to do my old grade school conversion formula to figure out what it really is by our standards. (26 is 79!) Anyway, a few miles down the road, Kurt, whom I met last night as one of the 12 tenants of my room at Casa de Austria in Los Arcos, caught up with me on his bike. Unlike most of the cyclists, he prefers to take the camino slowly, not racing through. Turns out he's a judge who has taken a year off, unpaid, to travel the world while he is still physically capable. He rode very slowly for a long ways, while I walked next to him. Again, his English was much better than my German, though I've had a lot of opportunity to polish that, too. So we chatted a lot as the miles klicked by. We stopped in one small village bar for a mid-morning break, which is where I heard the temperatures and weather forecast on the tv, and then kept on going.

One of the things we passed is the cairn 'village' pictured here. All along the Camino, people have created cairns, or stacks of stones, some larger than others, some in shapes. Sometimes they draw attention to places to turn. Sometimes they are just creative. Sometimes they are by the many crosses along the path. Sometimes they are a place to unload burdens (putting down a pebble or a rock as symbolic of letting go of something from the sack of rocks we all carry). Sometimes they are just for fun or just for the heck of it. The whimsical part of me sees them in a Seuss-like way, like Whoville, where I expect little creatures of some sort to inhabit these fantastical cairn 'villages' that seem like some sort of merging of Stone Age and Space Age in appearance. I've always associated them with Celtic cultures before, but I know that they are also used as trail markings in other cultures. And what better use for all the rocks in this country?

Kurt and I go through the village of Torres del Rio, where there is this tiny little octagonal church thought to have been constructed by the Knights Templar, whose ministry it was to protect pilgrims along the way. Apparently the octagon shape is something typically Templar. We decided to pay the euro admission fee mostly to help with the cost of keeping up the building, and, like most of the small churches in the little villages, it, too, held wonderful art treasures for it's everyday interior splendor.

Eventually, we caught up with a young woman from Australia, Tamlyn, who had heard of me from Carmel and Alex from Canada. She´s a great young woman who has been a police officer, but who doesn´t enjoy it and is considering a career change with the Camino´s help of time and distance in discernment. Tamlyn is effervescent and energetic. Tamlyn and I get to talking some about our faith. She asks if I have always been a Christian. Her parents are Pentecostal, which is what she was raised. Her fiance (they got engaged two weeks before she left) is Lutheran and his family has been for generations. That´s been an issue for them. She finds the Lutheran church staid (I don´t think that was her word, but that´s the gist of it), after having been brought up her way. But her way was too much for him, and his family is too steeped in their tradition. It isn´t that big a deal for her. So we talk about it awhile. I´m not sure if the topic or finding out that I am a priest is the cause for Kurt to decide he needs to ride faster suddenly. Later he will reappear and ride with Tamlyn. Oh, the power of the collar. :(

Tamlyn and I catch up with Carmel and Alex in the main square of Viana, as they are having their lunch break and we decide to do the same. (Tamlyn & Carmel...) (...and Alex) Viana seems to be a popular stop for lunch for many pilgrims this day - they are at lots of the sidewalk cafes and all over the benches along the Calle Mayor and the plaza. Once again, it is good to get off the feet for just a bit!

Tamlyn decides to take a longer break, but Carmel and Alex and I continue on and enter Logrono together. The way into Logrono is through a long industrial area that is one of the least pleasant parts of the whole Camino. It is very hot and barren in a concrete, industrial kind of way. And it smells like we are walking through a paint booth. I fear for what we are inhaling as we walk. There are a few underpasses and we pause there to stay in the shade for a few moments before tackling the next stretch. This part of the walk continues for several kilometers. Finally, we are through with industry and we begin to enter what looks like the historic part of the city. It is perhaps the first town or city we have entered going DOWNhill. It has gotten to be a joke that everything is invariably uphill on a gravel path. The first few buildings are some seemingly down on their luck hovels with trinkets for sale. Stella will later tell me this story that I miss: there is an older lady sitting outside one of the houses. She calls out to us. We don´t really understand what she is saying and we assume that she is just trying to sell us something, so we decline. The real story is this. Years before, the local priest asked this woman´s mother to offer water to the thirsty pilgrims as they went by and to count the pilgrims. The woman didn´t know how to count. So for every pilgrim who went by, she would drop a pebble in a bowl and then, when her daughter (the woman we saw) came home from work, she would count the pebbles for her mother, and the woman could tell the priest how many pilgrims had come by and had received water. The woman eventually died and her daughter retired and took over the job of offering the water. She offers ¨water, a prayer and love¨. I wish that I had known that as I so glibly passed her by.

We passed through a lovely little park, stopped in a pilgrim information center and crossed into Logrono, a city more than 1000 years old, via a beautiful bridge. Our packs had been shipped to the Albergue La Rioja. Does anyone reading this have connections to Interpol? (Yes, I´m serious.) I am planning on reporting the man and his daughter who run the place. They took not only our pilgrim credentials, but also our passports (the number is in the credentials) and said ¨Come back in half an hour¨. They did this to everyone and wouldn´t give a bed to anyone if you didn´t. They were also a most unpleasant team to deal with in other areas. I was trying to ship my backpack ahead again, or find out how, and they wanted the money directly rather than the usual procedure of leaving it in the envelope for the company, which was odd. And when my lack of Spanish couldn´t convey that I didn´t yet know where we were going the next day because I hadn´t talked to my friends at another alburgue, they both got mad. Very different than anyone else we´ve had to deal with. None of us trusted them. In the middle of the night, as once again I couldn´t get to sleep, I could only think of black market uses for keeping our passports for so long.

After getting settled in, doing laundry, and getting my credentials back (!), I decided to sit out in the courtyard for a little bit to wait on Stella and the others. Stella arrived first, but too late to get a bed here. The other three were behind her by 20 minutes or more. They all end up at a church run (and much nicer) alburgue down the street. Down near their alburgue is this game done in inlay in the sidewalk. The game is called La Oca (The Goose) and it is about the pilgrimage to Santiago. I don't seem to have any way of contacting them since my phone can't seem to call Stella's, so I just decide to strike out on my own. The city itself is lovely. I walked up to the Calle Mayor to find a farmacia (pharmacy) for some help with blisters, have a glass of the local La Rioja (the region we´re in) wine, and try some tapas, and I accomplished all three! I had the glass of wine by myself, and just enjoyed people watching, but then got up and walked down the pedestrian mall of the main shopping area. I ran back into Carmel, Alex and Tamlyn who were enjoying Sangria, and we had a nice time continuing to people watch and enjoying the food. This bar, like a number of others here in Logrono, had great tapas. The tapas were a tortilla (totally different than Mexican tortillas) of potato and eggs, about 2 to 3 inches high and an eggplant and cheese layered dish that had been broiled, both very good. Laura, still no Santiago cake. Describe it again, please- perhaps they call it something else here.

There was major archaeological work going on next to the alburgue and children up until all hours of the night, well past midnight. Then there were those pilgrims who felt the need to get started about 4 in the morning so they could enjoy the cool of the morning... so not much sleep in Logrono, and anger at the unpleasant people who run this place...the combination doesn't make for a good way to start the day. Especially the harbored anger.

There are a lot of us who travel in sort of a clump, moving approximately the same speed during the day, and generally ending up in the same cities and alburgues at night, so we are getting to know one another a little. Communion involves a lot of give and take. Twice, at least, probably more, when I have been really frustrated with specific people for keeping me awake at night with snoring or tossing and turning, I´ve ended up getting to know them better by walking or talking with them and that changes how I see them. And that is what communion is about, isn´t it, changing how we understand people and seeing them with our heart, through God's eyes and not our own.


This is a church steeple at night from the window by my bunk in the alburgue

Variety

Estella to Los Arcos (Wednesday, June 2nd)
We leave Estella in the light of the rising, pinky sunlight that reflects off the river, the Rio Ega, running through the center of the city. Crossing the river, we enter the "newer" sections of the city - neighborhoods that go back only four or five centuries, rather than nine! But these neighborhoods held the more influential people at the time they were built.

As always, the little bar-cafes are alive with junkies getting their early morning fixes of caffeine with expressos and cafe con leches, and sugar highs of croissants and other sweet-laden pastries. Delivery trucks of fish and bread fill the streets, not only with their bulk but with their odors, while little, old ladies are out with buckets of water and brooms, swishing it over their doorstoops, cleaning them for another day. Someplace, a rooster crows. It matters not how big or small the community, there is always a rooster somewhere.

The path leads us up (always up) through the center of the city and out toward the 'suburbs.' Along the way, there are some newer rowhouses, our way marked by bollards, each of which bears a scallop shell symbol. At some point, Stella and Mary need to make a pitstop and tell me to go on to where we are to meet up with Josh and Lexi. I don't know exactly where that is, except that the evening before, they had said they thought it was about a 20-minute walk from where we were having dinner, right along the Camino. Somehow, I miss them completely, never seeing a sign for Ayegui (the area they are in), never seeing a sign for their alburgue, and never seeing them waiting for us (though we are running a good bit later than we told them.)

A little bit later, I find myself in the area of Irache, according to a sign. I don't have a guidebook, but I think I must have missed them by now, it's been a lot longer than 20 minutes of walking. I pass this wonderful gate and a lady offers to take a picture of me with it.
It turns out, she is the support person (and driver of the support vehicle) for her husband's bicycling team that is doing the Camino. We talk a little as we head up the hill. Yes, always more up. There is an impressive and very old Monastery here, but now what it is perhaps better known for is the everflowing "Fuente del Vino," the Fountain of Wine, from the bodega, or winery, that is here. It is only about 8:30 in the morning when I am passing this place, but I take the cap off of my water bottle and sample the wine. It's red. And not really very good. Perhaps you get what you pay for. It was free. Some people stay longer than others.

Even with pausing for the picture, and waiting my turn to taste the wine, the other four are not in sight, but I'm pretty sure that they can find their way without me (especially since they have at least two guidebooks with them!) and we will all meet up in the afternoon in Los Arcos. So I continue on. It is an interesting walk. Soon after the free-wine break, the trail goes through a resort and campground area, then back into more fields again. My mid-morning break is in a little village up (again, up - I've decided that all towns are in the UP direction) on a hill. Entering the village, I get to watch yet another farmer/gardener and admire his wonderfully straight rows and plentiful, seemingly pest free, abundant harvests. I enjoy so much trying to figure out what people plant in their gardens here. It turns out he also has two cement tanks where he is raising fish. In the cafe in town, I run into Ed and Terry from Rochester again, as well as the two girls from Milan, Italy with whom I have crossed paths several times. I have a little fritata with my tee con leche and that is my breakfast this morning.

The countryside varies a lot from kilometer to kilometer. By late morning, it is looking more and more like our southwest, and by the time I walk into Los Arcos in the early afternoon, the town looks like a town from a western gunslinger movie. Sort of, anyway. If you squint. At least this end of it does. I wander through the streets until I find the alburgue where we have sent our packs. It has a second name of "Casa de Austria." (picure of front porch with writing of pilgrims on the wall!) Come to find out that it is run by the Friends of the Camino organization in Austria (people who have walked the Camino, probably many of them more than once). There is a Spanish man who runs the place, but the hosts who look after it are always Austrian volunteers. It is quirky and colorful and fun. (fountain on front porch) And very clean. I claim a bunk, hoping that the others get here in time to find space. Like many other alburgues, all walking sticks and boots must be left at the front door to avoid tracking unnecessary dirt throughout the building. (courtyard and tendedero)

The others arrive later and after the chores of getting settled in, cleaning up and laundry are done, we go exploring and have dinner. There is a lovely church, Iglesia Santa Maria (most churches are named for Mary, second runner up seems to be Saint Nicholas for some reason). The church is in the process of total restoration. There are sign boards along the cloister that have information on what is needed to preserve and restore the painted woodwork, metal surfaces, plaster, stained glass, tapestries and so much more. I find it fascinating as it taps back into one of my passions of what I thought I was going to be doing with my life - design and preservation. The walls in the church are unusual in that they are all painted wood panels rather than plaster. The cloistered courtyard is filled with a gorgeous and fragrant rose garden. There are also lots of carts, or pageant wagons, with figures of saints or of the Holy Family for different church festivals throughout the year. In the back end of the church is sort of a museum with a variety of vestments and other church paraphenalia from throughout the centuries. Some of it, honoring different saints, gets a little strange.

After exploring the church, we look for a restaurant and find an interesting one up on the second floor of a building. We sit at a table that is obviously built around a part of a piece of equipment, but we're not quite sure what it is. Later in the trip, Stella and I will see one on display in another town and find out it is part of a large olive press to make olive oil. We have a wonderful dinner together. The music in the background is American and Lexi, Josh and Mary recognize the artist.
Eventually, we meander back to our alburgue. We find that we are sharing our room with a rather rowdy bunch of Germans that talk way into the night, but then they don't particularly like to be disturbed in the morning!

ANFAS

Puenta la Reina to Estella (Tuesday June 1st)
We leave Puenta la Reina as we do most towns by going down the Calle Mayor. I usually get going between 7:00 and 7:30 or so, sometimes earlier, while the morning is cool. Some of the little shops are open already to cater to early shoppers and pilgrims - the alimentacions and panederias - the small grocers and bakeries, the pastacerias and bars or cafes that sell the cafe con leches and pastries that start a lot of people's days. Stella and Mary stop in one for some cafe before they get on the way and I keep on going. The Camino leads across the old bridge out of town. I get to it just as my friend, Emilio, is taking off his boots and socks. He says it is tradition to cross it barefoot. I ask him why, is it for good luck? He does't know. I was slightly tempted to do it until he admitted he didn't know the reason behind the tradition. I couldn't see going to the trouble of taking both pairs of socks and my boots off if I didn't know why, so I just walked on over. So far, nothing bad has happened that is attributable to my neglect of this tradition!

The path followed the river for just a short ways and then cut away. As in a number of places, there was a very descriptive sign board, all in Spanish, unfortunately, that described where I was headed from here, and a lot about the geography, and what I would be seeing. I wish I could have deciphered more of it and taken advantage of it! As all the days have been so far, it was another lovely day of walking through gorgeous country side with wide open blue skies.
This is one of the days when we have found a sherpa service for our backpacks, so it is a very enjoyable walk with just the things I think that I will need during the day. I usually stop somewhere in the morning, if we go through a small village or town with a bar or cafe, for a tee con leche. You can see that it is open by the number of pilgrims and backpacks lined up at the tables outside if they have a patio. It feels good to get off the feet for a bit and to get the load off of the back, whether it's the full backpack or just the canvas tote with less stuff. On this occasion, as on several others, I start a trend. I have to ask directions for a cafe, and I am the only one there for a few minutes, but the place quickly fills up with pilgrims after I arrive. One reason for the mid-morning stop is always also to use the facilities! After that, I'm back on the road - it's a steep little climb up through the village and in this town, there is one of only two (or perhaps a few) places where the Camino goes right through a building! Look for the yellow arrow below the step - it took me a few minutes of looking around to spot it! This is the city hall for the town, and there was a special do-it-yourself stamp for the credentials in the passageway through the building.

After crossing over the little river where the frogs sound like sheep, there were several more little villages and, while crossing a field in the kilometers between two of them, I came across this STOP sign that made absolutely no sense to me. Perhaps it is there to make pilgrims wonder. There are absolutely no roads leading up to it or away from it. There's nothing in front of it except a gigantic wheat field. Very strange! But I guess it did its job - it made me stop for a couple of minutes to try and figure out what in the world it was doing there!


One of the little towns I went through this day had this vacant lot just filled with poppies - there must have been thousands of them! The same town had this little Romanesque church, plain on the outside, but with this wonderful altarpiece on the inside. So many of the little churches along the way were open and they were filled with such lovely art treasures to enjoy.

It is an easy day's walk this day and I get to Estella by early afternoon. The entrance into to town is less than auspicious. Off to the right, down in a sort of gorge or low spot, behind some trees,are some high rise buildigs that have laundry hanging out here and there (a very common sight), but the buildings themselves look horrible - broken windows, grafitti, trash, other problems so that the buildings would almost look abandoned but for the laundry. It's hard to believe that people could live in buildings that look so bad, but we don't get that close on the path, so perhaps close up it is better. I'm trying to be optimistic.

At the entrance to the town, there is an interesting fountain. Pilgrims often refill their water containers from these fountains. There are signs that tell you whether the water is potable or not.As we get into town, it gets much better. There is a river (Rio Ega) running through the middle of the town. Apparently the Muslims came and established a city on one side of the city and then the Christians came and established one on the other side. When the Muslims were finally pushed out, the two were merged. Interestingly, the official city history in the brochure I picked up mentions nothing of its Muslim past! It simply mentions a previous Vascon settlement which gave way in 1090, with the formation of the pilgrimage route, to the establishment of the new city of Estella, approximately half way (20 km each) between Puenta la Reina and Los Arcos (tomorrow's destination). It's because of all the pilgrim traffic that there are so many religious buildings here, mostly in the Romanesque style. It's a very pretty city. There is a very old ruin of a little church up on the hill and there will be some other interestng buildings to check out in this city as well. The city is nestled amongst rocky outcroppings of hills, buildings being built right into the rocks in some cases. I am really missing having my guidebook to tell me what I am seeing (and to let you know).

As I come into this part of the city, there is a nice green space by the river with a map of the city. We have shipped our packs to an alburgue named ANFAS. I'm sure it means something or is perhaps an acronym, but I don't know for what. I locate it on the map and have to cross the river on a little foot bridge to get there. It is just a couple of blocks away. So far on this trip, signage has been excellent. There will probably be a whole blog entry on just that.

The alburgue turns out to be very nice. Since I am there relatively early, I have a choice of beds and choose one next to the front window. I am so tired of being suffocatingly hot at night in these places. Unfortunately, the German guy who will choose the bunk on top of me will roll and roll and roll and roll all night. Squeak, shake, squeak, shake, squeak, shake. We have decided that all of these alburgues are furnished with children-sized bunk beds because it is impossible for any adult (even me, who is not that tall at 5'5") to sit on the edge of the bed upright. I was on the top bunk on one that was so skinny I was afraid all night of rolling out. This alburgue has a mission to help the physically and mentally disabled. Some of the employees here are disabled. It is the only place so far in Spain that I have seen a lift for a wheel chair (and since my mother is in a wheelchair, I am very sensitized to this issue and look for it everywhere). Most of Spain that I have seen so far is not accessible for the mobility impaired. The people in this alburgue were more helpful than any place else so far, which is saying something. We have lost count of how many times people have gone out of their way to personally escort us to where we wanted to go. The most extreme example of this was when Mary and Stella were coming through Trinidad de Arre, the town just before Pamplona, and had sort of lost their way a bit. They asked a man, who then walked them the whole way through town, about 45 minutes, just to make sure they got to Pamplona. On a regular basis, people will walk several blocks with us to show us where a cafe or something else is that we have asked about. They are wonderful.

I got settled into the alburgue, got cleaned up, did my laundry (the usually order of things) and then headed out to get a salad for a late lunch. I found a nice little cafe practically around the corner. The service was really slow (she apologized for not seeing me, which would have been hard not to do since there were only 8 tables!) but it gave me a chance to say hello to a group of six Irish cyclists who were doing the Camino and to relax and absorb the street life.


Stella and Mary got in later and as it turns out, Lexi and Josh finally caught up with us here in Estella. They stayed in a little alburgue in a 'suburb' of Estella, Ayegui, and walked into town to have dinner with Mary and me, down near the train station. The building in the picture is actually a music conservatory, but it is a central gathering spot. That's the lovely thing about European towns and cities - they have a gathering spot where the community actually meets. We had yet another 'pilgrim menu' dinner, this one the worst yet - steak fries, fried egg, spaghetti (unremarkable sauce mixed into pasta), and boiled chicken drumstick and wing. Yummm? Not so much. It isn't what the Spaniards eat, the problem is, the real restaurants don't open until at least 8 or 9 and they are expensive. Most of the alburgues close their doors at 10. So, I have tried to find tapas places or some other alternative. The smaller towns don't seem to serve tapas, just the pilgrim menu or menu del dia (menu of the day) where everything is fried. The salads are always the same, also - iceberg lettuce instead of that beautiful produce we see in everyones' gardens! Laura, I still haven't seen a Santiago cake, but I'm looking!

A postscript (after my return from the Camino) - this alburgue in Estella was the only one which asked for any feedback on their service or on the conditions which we found there. Hmmm. Secondly, on reading more in Michener's book, Iberia, which I didn't get read before I left, I find out what a political hotbed Estella has always been, going back for a number of centuries. Who knew, looking at the quiet, but interesting facades of its buildings? Michener, writing in 1968, refers to it as an 'ornery little town,' where 'if you read the history of this part of Spain, it becomes a repititious account of how people who were against the government holed up in Estella and fought it out when all others had surrendered.' It is also the only city in Spain which has historically allowed women to become bullfighters!