My repeat case of summer leprosy had returned, my pinky toes nearly rubbed off. My feet itched painfully from two weeks of wet socks, and mosquito bites, turned welts, dotted my skin. My right hand had a white stripe, a reminder of the sun and the strap on my walking stick and while my feet were ghost white, my calves and shoulders had become honey brown. My face showed a combination of crinkled eyes, red nose and a perfectly centered zit that looked remarkably like I expect my unicorn horn to, when it starts coming in. My shorts hung loose and my thighs no longer rubbed when I walked. My muscles had reshaped according to the mountains and I awoke each morning to rub cramps from my legs. My bag and boots carried the sweat and dust of a few hundred kilometers and I smelled more foul than a rugby team in a smartcar. My transformation to peregrina was complete.
A few days earlier as our little group of four walked the cliffs, a solitary form followed a hundred meters or so behind. We looked back to spot this young man silhouetted dramatically against the rocky cliffs as he stared forlornly down to the water below. A day later, we saw him alone again, his pale eyes watching us as we passed him on his park bench. In Villaviciosa, an hour before I began the Primitivo, I saw him one last time, his face carrying a shy joy as he sat in front of a market with 4 youthful smiling Spanish men, the same group of boys with which I had traded a song for an empanada in San Vincente. As I said my final Buen caminos to this happy group continuing on their coastal way, I nodded to the boy with the lonely blue eyes, the boy who had found friends and was no longer alone.
My pace had slowed considerably upon parting with Hafid, my path leading through hills foreshadowing the mountains to come. As the kilometers grew between my feet and those of all the pilgrims staying near the sea, rain clouds covered the late afternoon sun, ensuring another day of wet socks. I walked the quiet treelined road, the lovely houses perfectly painted and dressed in flowers. "Donde esta San Salvador?" I asked an old man watering his lavander. "Cinco kilometers mas," he responded with a toothy smile. "WHAT?!" The man's wife elbowed him in the side and rolled her eyes heavenward. "Cinquenta meters mas," the man replied while howling with laughter.
Moments later, I dropped my dusty backpack near a bed and quickly unlaced my shoes. "There is a tour of the monastery and church in ten minutes!" Annette, a curly haired German music teacher told me, "and there is a piano recital after!" She added. I raced through a shower and showed up 8 minutes later with wet dripping hair and only slightly stinky clothes. We oohed and ahhhed while our enthusiastic tour guide pointed out significant details inside the tiny musty 9th century church that our monastery home for the night was built around. I stood between Annette and Jose, an attractive Majorcan primary school teacher, as Jose translated our tour guide's frantic Spanish to a more reasonable, understandable pace. "It's an entrance just for the king?, I wonder if I could get one of those at my church!"
At the end of our tour, we were herded into a surprisingly large recital hall decorated red and black, with a shiny large piano as the focal point. I sat, with dusty clothes next to a flamboyant impeccably dressed man who smelled of flowers and we listen to a cello piano duo play through Schubert and Shostakovich for an approving audience. After the musicians and patrons filed off the monastery grounds, Annette, Jose and I sat chatting around a table with tea and cut fruit. After the hectic pace and crowd of the northern route, we were thrilled to find ourselves in the calm sanctuary of the monastery of San Salvatore. The sun dropped, I strummed through chords on the ukulele and Annette's clear voice worked through the lyrics of traditional hymns before we tucked ourselves in for the quiet night.
I awoke in the middle of the night to muffled laughter as Manuella and Lucie kicked at our frenchman's bed. His snoring echoed through our sparsely furnished room and into the halls beyond, drowning out the sound of the group of 70 scouts that slept in the other rooms. Oblivious to our snickers and sighs, he rolled over and gave us a few moments peace.
We began with an early morning coffee dwarfed by mountains, and said goodbye to Lucie and Manuella as they stopped for the day in a quiet little collection of houses called San Esteban. After we all exchanged emails and numbers, I sneakily discovered that my lovely companion's name is Hafid.
We finished our day, laying in the soft grass at the cliffs edge as waves rushed the rocks below in the costal town of La Isla. We had celebrated our entry into the region of Asturia by cooking far too much for dinner and sharing wine with a loud American and a free spirited German couple. Thanks to the wine, we slept soundly, Hafid snoring from the room beyond.
"This is the best pasta in a bag that I have ever eaten!" We sat in the shade of a thousand year old church as Hafid handed me a ziplock of pasta salad from our dinner the night before. As we unlaced boots and laid our socks in the sun to dry, we devoured our pasta, cheese, stolen prunes, and chocolate.
*****
"Yes! We can go this way," Hafid encouraged while holding the barbed wire down for me to step over. Due to a tractor plugging up our tiny path, we had backtracked uphill (of course) and were trapped between a mountain and a fence. I hesitantly climbed over the fence, testing the ground with my walking stick as Hafid charged ahead. We cut through a field of tall grass with ferns as our carpet and thorns angrily grabbing our legs. Discovering the other side of the tractor to have an 8 foot drop, Hafid jumped spryly down, and turned to me while I clutched a tree branch.
"Throw me your camera! We don't want to take chances with the cameras!"
"What about me?" I shrieked as I slid down the embankment. We laughed for miles, our welts and bruises well earned.
Hafid was the perfect walking companion, fearless, curious and a dispenser of tiny fact tidbits. Full of compassion, he talked of his students, a mixture of immigrant and refugee children in his adopted Brussels home. An avid photographer, lugging a large Canon and two lenses, He talked of how to show perspective and the use of exposure compensation and I happily listened and learned. We spent many moments taking pictures and comparing ideas. And as always when with anyone French, I was well fed.
Hafid sat, puffing on a cigarette that he had searched the entire town of villaviciosa to acquire, while I sneakily plucked all the baby pickles out of our tapas of olives and pearl onions. We slowly sipped our drinks, drawing on a fresh reserve of energy to complete a long and soon to be lonely day. Three kilometers later our paths divided, his continuing along the coast towards Santiago and mine cutting inland through the mountains of Asturias. "If you are hungry," Hafid advised, "just look up!" He pointed with his walking stick to the lush fruit trees above. We kissed cheeks, his white short beard tickling my skin, and with a last "See you in Santiago!" He was off, his Picasso Quixote form speeding across the landscape.
My repeat case of summer leprosy had returned, my pinky toes nearly rubbed off. My feet itched painfully from two weeks of wet socks, and mosquito bites, turned welts, dotted my skin. My right hand had a white stripe, a reminder of the sun and the strap on my walking stick and while my feet were ghost white, my calves and shoulders had become honey brown. My face showed a combination of crinkled eyes, red nose and a perfectly centered zit that looked remarkably like I expect my unicorn horn to, when it starts coming in. My shorts hung loose and my thighs no longer rubbed when I walked. My muscles had reshaped according to the mountains and I awoke each morning to rub cramps from my legs. My bag and boots carried the sweat and dust of a few hundred kilometers and I smelled more foul than a rugby team in a smartcar. My transformation to peregrina was complete. 
A few days earlier as our little group of four walked the cliffs, a solitary form followed a hundred meters or so behind. We looked back to spot this young man silhouetted dramatically against the rocky cliffs as he stared forlornly down to the water below. A day later, we saw him alone again, his pale eyes watching us as we passed him on his park bench. In Villaviciosa, an hour before I began the Primitivo, I saw him one last time, his face carrying a shy joy as he sat in front of a market with 4 youthful smiling Spanish men, the same group of boys with which I had traded a song for an empanada in San Vincente. As I said my final Buen caminos to this happy group continuing on their coastal way, I nodded to the boy with the lonely blue eyes, the boy who had found friends and was no longer alone.
