Feasting

Santo Domingo to Belorado (Sunday, June 6th Feast of Corpus Christi)

I can´t wait to post pictures for today when I get a chance! This was a great day for a walk, though my feet are tired. Stella and I rose early, about 5:30, from our beds at the Cistercian alburgue in Santo Domingo. It was already raining lightly and there were a few ominous rumbles of thunder which, fortunately turned out to be nothing. Half of our bunkroom mates decided to sleep past the normal 6 am waking, probably because of the nice steady drip of rain outside the window, and even though we could have turned on the lights, we were trying to be nice. It certainly makes packing harder. One of the many things I´m grateful for and think of daily - is my dresser at home that I don´t have to pack and unpack everytime I turn around.

(These are a wayside chapel and the bridge as we leave Santo Domingo.) Anyway, we step out onto the street in our ponchos. Fortunately, it is just a mist that will continue most of the time we walk today.

We are going 23 km to Belorado, through about 4 smaller towns and mostly rural areas. The low-hanging clouds cover the tops of the local hills.

We are back into prettier countryside than we have been for the last couple of days. It is all agricultural, mostly wheat, some sheep. The varying shades of green in the mist are lovely. The wheat is still green here, but sort of a soft gray green. I love the way poppies grow so abundantly around the edges of the field but are mixed in everywhere.

In one of the small towns, they have even decorated the sewer covers in a scallop shell pattern!









We stop at a couple of local churches that are open. It is amazing how much beauty and stunning art work was created, even for these tiny villages, several hundred years ago. I take some pictures in one of them and then walk out only to see the ¨No fotographica!¨sign and feel very bad, but can´t take them back. There was a window in the church with the scallop shell.

I started the day walking with Stella, but then walked by myself for awhile before walking with a man at least 15 or 20 years my senior named Vincent from Turino (Turin) Italy. He walked at a fast, steady pace, with no breaks and my feet are tired! I should have taken some breaks; I do better when I do.

When I was talking about animals before, perhaps I mentioned how much Spaniards love their dogs. But they do not seem to love their cats. There are the most pathetic looking cats I have ever seen on the streets of these towns and cities. And then there are the snails, everywhere on these open country roads. Before I started walking with Vincent, outside one of the small towns today, because it was so damp, there was a man picking up the snails in big brown shells. He already had buckets full, so I suppose he was planning on taking them into town to sell them. I asked him if it was for escargot (I think the Spanish call it something similar). He responded with something I didn´t understand but I think included some form of "escargot." So I simply reiterated, "Comida? (Food?)" I speak Spanish on an extremely gifted level! He nodded yes. I have tried escargot and was not impressed. It's a texture thing, I suppose. Personally, I find garlic and butter just as gratifying, actually, much more so, on bread, or spaghetti. Or any number of other things. Especially now after having seen so many of these little guys crawling across my path. And I have pictures of them for you too, eventually.

So I arrive in Belorado. There are signs for a number of alburgues and I know nothing about any of them and just pick one to head towards. My first indication that something is either different or special about this town today is that I run into these two little boys dressed as they are. The Feast of Corpus Christi is not on the Episcopal calendar, and so I didn't remember why it should be such a special day. I briefly thought about my 'men in tights' with the cuckoo clock idea, but these two are clearly not large enough to be pushing a cuckoo clock all across Spain! So I am alert for more going on as I proceed towards the alburgue I've picked, and I begin to see others in medieval costume as well. It looks promising! I also begin to hear music from somewhere. I check in to the parish alburgue which is a strictly no frills alburgue. There´s barely space next to my bunk to set my backpack upright. I'm here early enough to have my choice of bunks, so I choose the one by the window so I can get some air. As a "young" person (it's all relative, isn't it? :)), I have been asked to climb up to a top bunk! Stella, who was behind me a few km, and doesn't know where I've checked in, ends up picking a better place, just around the corner.

We meet up on Plaza Mayor where the festival for the Feast of Corpus Christi is in full fling. I am having a few tapas (one is croquettes of something like ham salad and the other is fried thin buttered toast with crab salad on top) with a glass of the local white wine when I see Stella. I have just met a lovely couple from France. She is making her fourth Camino. She did her first on her 60th birthday in 2007. Her husband has done 7 and he is 73. She said, ¨He is like a steam engine to follow!¨ They reminded me of some couple I know, I think in the diocese. They were going on yet, another 6 km to Tosantos, where there is supposed to be a really nice alburgue - I guess when you do this a number of times, you really get to know where the good places are!

Stella and I explore all the wonderful booths. The whole Plaza is decorated with banners and such and many of the locals are dressed as if they were in medieval times. There is an especially festive service at the church next to where I am staying that starts with a small band procession. One little girl must be having first communion because she is dressed almost as a tiny bride in a long white dress with a wreath of white flowers in her hair.

Back in the town square, there are games for the kids, like walking on stilts, and big hay bales that they love jumping and playing in. There are also many booths vending the local wares of goat cheese, salamis and other cured meats, wines, olives, white asparagus, peppers, fresh vegetables, pastries and breads. Some have samples - yumm! I buy some lavendar soap to ward off any potential bed bug problems in my sleeping bag. There are 3 men in costume working as blacksmiths shooing a horse. There are also handmade jewelry and leathergoods, beeswax and pottery. Altogether a wonderful surprise to come upon this day.

Now back to the alburgue to put my feet up and meet Stella for dinner in a little while! We end up having dinner at Stella's alburgue and it is wonderful. They have a back dining room and there are several other guests that join us. Nothing fancy, just hearty fare with the local red wine. Good bread. Who could ask for more on the Feast of Corpus Christi than bread, wine and companions on the journey as we give thanks for the hands which have prepared it?

Resting

Ventanos to Santo Domingo (Saturday, June 5th)
We leave Ventanos after a breakfast in the dining area of our alburgue - crusty bread and jam again, with tee con leche. Carmel, Alex and I walk as far as the next city, Najera, together and then they catch a bus and on to other links, for they are meeting up with some friends in Barcelona (I think) for a holiday. They say goodbye to the Camino for the time being.

Najera is an interesting little city. The center of the city is gathered on either side of a pretty little river flowing through the middle of it. There are little cafes with outside tables along its banks. I explore the center of town a little bit - behind the initial facade of cafes and other businesses, there is an interesting little backstreet, almost an alley, with a whole other set of businesses. This is where the locals shop - the butchers and grocers are here, the more utilitarian and less picturesque shops. I go back out by the river and the bridge and watch the pilgrims coming by. One of the cafes advertises wifi, and I decide to sit down there for my mid-morning break and catch up on some of my blogging while I enjoy a pastry and some tea.

I am very mindful of one of the "Beatitudes of the Camino" that Carmel came across the other day: "Blessed are you pilgrim, if what concerns you most is not to arrive, as to arrive with others." I am concious that I have come with others, Stella and Mary, and in a sense, Lexi and Josh. I also know that I have a deadline because Stella and I have a specific day for flying home, and I really want to be able to finish the Camino and arrive in Santiago. I cannot walk at the pace that Mary, Lexi and Josh are keeping, and if I do, I don't think I will be able to reach our goal on time. But at the same time, it is so important in my heart, that I "arrive with others," my friends, and not just arrive. It is about celebrating, not just some random goal and checking it off the list. We're in this together. I'm not sure how far behind me Stella is; I think she stayed in the town behind me, Navarette, last night, so she will be at least an hour later than me arriving in Najera. I know that she will have to come over this bridge, right by where I am sitting, so if I just stay here and pay attention, I can't miss her!

Sure enough, after a while and several cups of tea, Stella comes over the bridge, listening to her iPod and taking in the beauty of the city. I'm glad to see her for a number of reasons, not the least of which is because of the tea, I need a bathroom break, but I was afraid to go inside in case I missed her! She's ready for a break, so we stay a bit longer in Najera, and talk about walking the rest of the way to Santiago together, though not necessarily in lock-step. We both need our space, but we are fine with also walking together physically when the mood strikes. Our paces are similar enough except sometimes, Stella just wants to walk listening to the music that her daughter, Jennifer, has loaded onto her iPod. Jennifer has performed some of it herself and she has such a lovely voice! On many occasions, Stella will take her earphones off and hand them to me, or she just places them on my head, and says, "Oh, you've got to listen to this!" As we continue on our pilgrimage, it is comforting knowing that we are usually within a kilometer or two of each other. We begin to get to know each other even better as we share more and more of our life stories as we walk. Stella is an amazing, and an amazingly loving, person.

We leave Najera and head towards Santo Domingo de la Calzado. We are still in the La Rioja region of Spain. When we walk through fields, they are still filled with wheat and vineyards, or with occasional olive and almond groves. But today also has a lot of rocky, arid areas that look so much like our desert southwest. In some places, we climb in and out of rocky gulches.

Santo Domingo is an interesting city as well, and one connected with a funny little legend. As we come into the city, shop windows are filled with the images of chickens, which have to do with the legend. But first, about Santo Domingo, who was a real person. As a boy named Domingo, he lived during the 11th century. Spaniards claim him as their own, but traditions also say he could be Italian, he might also be from the French Basque region, take your pick. Anyway, he felt called to become a monk, but the monks at any number of monasteries found him to be too slow of mind for the rigors of monastic life and study. So, Domingo built himself a little house along the pilgrimage route which was springing up and becoming popular at this same time. From his home, he served the pilgrims, though always remaining unseen, for he felt he, being slow, was too unworthy to be seen by the 'great ones,' those worthy of going on pilgrimage. When the pilgrimage route got bad, he would pave them - and is today the patron saint of all who work on roads! When the rivers rose high, he built bridges, some of which still stand. Where food was bad or scarce, Domingo provided kitchens, and where sick pilgrims congregated, he created refuges for them. Finally, towards the end of his life, one of the monasteries which had early refused to accept him, readily and proudly admitted him to the order.

At the same time as Domingo was serving the pilgrims, about 1080, there arose a story in Toulouse, France, invoking the miraculous intercession of St. James. It became known as the Golden Legend and news of it traveled like lightening across Europe and, of course, across the pilgrimage route. Three centuries later, the people of Santo Domingo's community 'borrowed' the details of the story and made it their own, transforming it into the miracle of Santo Domingo. Today, the story goes like this:
A mother and her handsome young son, who were from Cologne, were traveling on the pilgrimage route and stopped enroute in one of the shelters that Santo Domingo had built. The innkeeper's daughter found the young man quite attractive and sought his attention, but he resisted her advances. The next morning, the mother and son resumed their journey. Now, though, the young girl's 'love' had turned to scorn, so she denounced the son for having stolen a silver cup which she had surreptitiously hidden in his knapsack. Constables were sent out to stop the son and search his pack, and, of course, they found the planted cup. Dragging the boy back to town, with his mother following, crying and pleading his innocence, the constables hanged the young man. But Santo Domingo (his spirit), aware of the boy's innoncence and purity, placed his hands under the boy's feet and prevented him from strangling. When the mother saw that her son was not hanged, but still alive, she ran to the judge to ask for justice, and to ask that he be cut down and set free. The judge, who at that moment had just set himself down before a banquet of two roasted chickens, one a cock and the other a hen, replied, "Your son is no more alive than these chickens!" whereupon both of them sprang to life, re-grew their feathers immediately and flew off - free as a bird! Absolutely flabbergasted, when he could speak again, the judge immediately ordered the young man cut down and restored to his mother's care. None the worse for his experience, the two of them continued on to Santiago.

To this day, there are chicken coops on one of the pillars of the church, and chickens are allowed to roam freely within the church. This story, too, is seen to epitomize the spirit of the St. James and the Camino.

We get rooms in the old monastery hostel. The room where we have to take off our boots has a rock floor that is very difficult and sharp to walk on in stocking feet! Ouch, ooch, ouch! Then up a very narrow, old flight of wooden steps. The newer showers downstairs are not segregated by gender and are full and everyone is remarking about just how cold the water is. Fortunately, we find out about a single bathroom near where our bunks are. Much better - AND warm water!

After getting settled in, we go out and explore. Lots of chickens everywhere. We're surprisingly not very hungry. Or we can't decide what we're hungry for. Not chicken. We stop in a combination bakery and candy store where lots of children are getting penny candy of various sorts. Still no Santiago cakes. Eventually, we end up at an umbrella table at a little cafe in a little back street plaza. I get a salad. Again. Just can't face all that fried food. As we sit there, someone rushes through with a small child that has been injured. There's a hospital just around the corner. We pray that the child will be okay. All around us, street life goes on - extended families out for the evening gather around a table, lots of baby carriages, couples stroll by doing couple things, teens in small groups act like teens at home. Cell phones are as ubiquitous here as the States. A lot of folks here smoke, and it's hard to sit away from it at meals. People here are not as obese as Americans, because they do more walking and less driving, but they are beginning to catch up. There's much more sense of community, because there are public spaces. People live in smaller places and so they come to parks and cafes and meet up with others. There's a brief rain shower, but we stay sort of dry under the umbrella. Others on the street dash for cover. When the shower's over, the street life resumes. And it is time to turn in for the evening.

Listening

Logrono to Ventanos (Friday, June 4th)
I leave Logrono with Carmel and Alex and walk all day with them. I enjoy their company and we walk comfortably together. It is a day that we, Carmel and I, get to know a lot about each other, spending time listening to one another´s stories, asking questions sometimes. Alex, who at 18 is both very mature and yet probably the youngest person on our section of the Camino right now, drops back sometimes. When I´m not around, he´s good company for his mother, but he leaves space for us. He also is a good conversationalist when he wants to be, but he´s just as happy to let us talk sometimes. He is the one of them who wanted to come as a result of a story that his mother, Carmel, told him a number of years ago. A few years ago, he decided that this is how he wanted to celebrate graduating from high school, and he knew he wanted to go with his mother. They get along well and are a neat team.

Leaving Logrono, we walk along a beautiful park-like setting, which is a far cry from the industrial area we walked through for a little ways coming in. That was both stark and hot, and it smelled like we were being sprayed with paint, or dipped in vats of chemicals, for several kilometers. But this morning is lovely. Lots of people are out exercising. The walkway is wide and extends for several kilometers out into the countryside, with trees on at least one side, and sometimes both. The path arrives at a lake where there are fish of some sort (bass would be my SWAG) that are huge. We cross over a little wooden bridge where the fish are swarming. Each fish would feed a family of six with no problem. They look to be at least 16¨long and 10¨or more in circumfrence, and there are dozens of them. I suspect they are hanging around the bridge where the ducks are because they know that there are people with fishing poles elsewhere! I tried to take a picture of them, but not sure it will show the fish.

At one point, soon after the park outside of Logrono, we are walking on a hillside up above and along a multilane highway. There is a chainlink fence separating us from the traffic and all along the chainlink fence, pilgrims have fashioned and attached all sorts of crosses. Some are made of wild flowers that have since dried, others of twigs, others of pine needles, some of things that pilgrims had with them and have left. It is a walkway of hundreds, perhaps thousands of crosses.

We come to the town of Navarette first and then it is 8 more kilometers to Ventanos. Once again, it is Mystic Seaport. I swear that the village of Ventanos is like a child´s pull toy, on wheels and somewhere, someone is pulling the string, moving it ever so slowly just out of our reach, because we can see the church on the hill for some time and it never ever gets any smaller.

While we are walking, we notice a large, dark, ominous cloud suddenly appear on the horizon behind us. We will not find out until we reach Santo Domingo the next day that an explosion has occured at a factory in Logrono that has killed one person. The cloud goes up, eerily similar to a mushroom cloud in shape, dark, dark gray in the center and fluffy white on top, rising very high into the sky. We can see it miles away, even over the hills.

Even once we reach the turnoff for Ventanos, it takes forever to reach the village, but we finally do. And despite the seeming length of time it has taken to reach it, we are a half hour early for the albergue to open. We noticed that other pilgrims ahead of us in reaching Ventanos decided to keep on going to the next village. This is enough for us this day, so we drink our fill from the fountain next to the door, take off our packs and collapse in the shade across the street, knowing it will be hard to stand back up again. Finally, the door opens and (remember Frau Blucher from Young Frankenstein?) a German woman opens the door and asks ¨Do you want to come in or would you rather stay outside?¨ Not a tough question! It is a nice, neat place, with a lovely courtyard out back, and a little supply store in the front hall. Once again, all walking sticks and boots (bota) are left by the front door. Wonderful tiled bathrooms (separate men and women which not all the alburgues have had). There are only 8 beds in the room where we end up - Carmella, Alex, Tamlyn me and four German and Austrian women. NO SNORERS! And they have wifi!

We get settled, do laundry and then go explore Ventanos. It is a village built on a hillside, rather sleepy and not much to it. We wander around the local church (which has a great view - remember how far away we could see it!) , cross through the 'busy' little village square, and find more beautiful roses. After that, we're hot and ready for a cold beer at the only little bar/cafe on the hill. Later, we go to dinner at the only restaurant and have paella marina (sp?) which is paella with mussels and clams, squid (calamari) and shrimp or something that more resembles crawfish. It has a really good flavor. Better than what I had earlier in the trip with the not quite identifiable meat object in it. A nice evening in a nice place. Only, despite the cleanliness, I think this is where I get the only bedbug bite I will get on this trip!