Pulpo Paul

Pilgrims live in a different time zone, waking long before the sun has even given thought to rising, leaving small villages behind in the wee hours of the morning, walking sticks clicking mournfully against the cobbled darkened streets. Then there are other pilgrims... 

My husband and I sat unhurried, the morning of the feast day of Saint James in a quiet café as Grandas de Salime emptied itself of it’s transient pilgrim population. Footage of Santiago flashed across the flickering TV screen behind the bar while the barkeep wiped tables and positioned coffee cups for the incoming locals arriving for a chat. As we sipped our tiny cups of roasted perfection, Karin peeked her head in. 

“Oh, I thought I was the last!” 
We smiled our frothy milk moustache smiles, “Pfft.. We’ll leave eventually..” 

Hours later found me lying on my back on the top of a mountain at the edge of Asturias, my 400lb camera balanced on my face, the lens aiming heavenward as the arms of a windmill wooshed past directly above. The sun played peek-a-boo, creating spots against the vast blue sky framed through my view finder.  We would certainly not reach town in time to get beds in an albergue, but then, my husband.. otherwise known as the snoring machine from hell, preferred private rooms anyway and was more than happy to sabotage our chances of sleeping with others who may angrily suffocate him in the night. (I may still, one day...)

We came down from the mountain, crossing into Galicia where the stew changed names, the grain barns changed from square to rectangular and the scallop shells that we had been following, switched direction, now pointing the way with the tip instead of the base. (a vital bit of information..) We paused for lunch at an isolated old man bar, the bathroom lacking running water, and we sat outside, making sandwiches of tomatoes and tuna while chatting with the two Danish women, Jette and Cristina, one a nurse in love with hiking and the other, a teacher enamored with Salsa and the Tango.  Though both fiercely strong as indicated by their gorgeously toned legs, they felt no need to race into town as they had booked rooms ahead for their entire adventure.    

Fonsagrada was at the top of a mountain. Every town was at the top of a F@*$ing mountain, yet magically, pilgrims still had to climb their way out of each town the next morning!!  Ah... the Camino... 

Fonsagrada, literally translated as “sacred fountain,” boasted a fountain blessed by Saint James which changed water to milk.  We never actually found the fountain, however we did find a beautiful evening pilgrims mass in a lovely little church in the town center. Fonsagrada also plays host to the "Feria de septiembre," one of the largest traditional livestock festivals in the province and the "Feria del emigrantes," a celebration of those who moved away but come home for holidays.  We had arrived earlier to our little hilltop room that Paul had booked ahead for us. We quickly showered and washed our clothes in the sink, before heading out to take in the little town (In reference to washing clothes, my use of ‘we,’ actually means ‘I’..)

We were constantly misjudging people. Maybe it was because we were slightly introverted, maybe it was because we didn’t have European social skills, or maybe it was because we are just assholes. Either way, my husband and I were constantly readjusting our incorrect, misguided views of our fellow pilgrims. 

Jan tops six feet easily, he has a closely shaved head and a well-lived lined face giving away his Dutch heritage. His skin is bronzed a dark gold and his eyes tell countless stories. As a person of barely adult height, I was intimidated. So I judged, and I stayed away. However in the bright late afternoon mountain top sun, with a sweaty cold cerveza con limon in my hand, Karin and Ameya on either side of me and Jan across the table, I changed my mind. 

A soft- spoken man belying his tall stature, Jan grew up on the Dutch Caribbean island of Curaçao and though his parents had since returned to the Netherlands, though Jan had spent time in the fast paced high level world of profit and gain, he had had enough. He left it all, spent years traveling the world on foot and by bicycle, navigating countries and conflicts that most could only imagine, before returning to Curaçao to teach math in a public school. I admired him. Jan also had the ability to give those in his company, the gift of calm and appreciation for the moment they were in. He gave anyone he was talking with the feeling that they were the center of the universe and as a result, we all sought his company. He could sleep in fields and on cold floors, he could climb into windows and eat nearly anything, he could speak countless languages and manage any situation with grace, yet he did all things with a humble gentleness.  My, how I misjudged. 

As the church bells rang, we lifted ourselves from our chairs and headed the one block to the tiny town church. We filed in quietly, mere moments late and relaxed into our pews as the flowing spanish of the priest echoed through the church. At the end, we all stepped forward, the priest leading us through a pilgrims prayer and blessing. “Read this each morning,”  he advised, handing us each, copies of the prayer. 

We judged Judith harshly as well, as she wandered into town late each day, looking fresh and smiling while picking up her waiting backpack at the hotel where it had been transported ahead. We later learned that she walked her camino according to her own limitations and as we kept discovering, we were assholes to judge. 

Judith is not from Spain, she is from Catalonia, Barcelona, specifically and Judith has very clear ideas of how things should be. She has no doubts. We stood outside the church, starving as dinnertime approached and Judith, who always asked locals where the best restaurant was, knew exactly where to go. She led us across town, a mother with her hapless ducklings, to the local Pulperia (which doesn't mean paper mill..) much to Paul’s horror. 

Pulpo a la gallega is a traditional Galician dish of octopus prepared with paprika, a holdover from  a time before freezers when the spice paprika acted as a preservative. While the less brave at our table ordered the typical menu of the day, Judith ordered a giant round wooden plate of pulpo. A couple of other slightly courageous souls ordered smaller tapas or tastings of pulpo.  Judith’s heaping mountain of shiny octopus tentacles arrived alongside, our much more conservative tastings. Paul looked down in consternation, “Oh, God! They really don’t disguise it, do they? It really is just..”

“You should have gotten the full order, It’s the best in the region!!” Judith said while squishing tentacles between her teeth. 

“What’s the point of having the best of a horrible thing??” Paul said, his face turning a sickly shade.  But, a man bravely determined to try any regional delicacy, Paul dipped his spoon into the tiny cup; green mashed peas layered beneath mashed potatoes topped by shiny red-tinted pulpo pieces.  He raised the spoon shakily to his mouth and...

Well, though our dinner stretched out for hours, let it suffice to say that Paul did not die..

There are Rules...

There are rules... As we had been reminded by a sour waitress the night before, Spain has very definitive rules of etiquette for how things can be done, and of course, these rules are unwritten in order to confuse foreigners, And these rules vary wildly from region to region. Dinners generally don't begin till late in the evening, resulting in kitchens being closed till at least 8:30 pm, thus creating lines of emaciated pilgrims leaning anemically against each other as they stare imploringly at heartless barkeeps. As five of us sat at an outside table in the late evening Spanish sun in the town of Berducedo, our waitress yanked menus out of our hands, punctuating her demand that we could only eat inside. "This table is for four and you are five," she uncompromisingly said.. As we reluctantly moved inside, we added another pilgrim to our table which further sent our server into a downward spiral and by the end of our meal of mixing courses and using the wrong silverware, it was clear that our waitress actively hated us.

The following night in the adorable hilltop town of Grandas de Salime, a number of famished pilgrims stood in the bar section of a local restaurant.

"The restaurant doesn't open till 7:30."
"Can we see the menu?"
"Not until 7:30."

We stood watching the minute hand slowly inch from 7:20 towards 7:30pm, as a card game, populated solely by old men, moved along and Dimitri "accidentally" began drinking another man's glass of wine.

"Oh, Signora?!" Paul said, while signaling to our very male and very Spanish waiter. As our waiter brushed by, Paul dropped his hand sheepishly, his dimple appearing in his very red face."Well now, we'll never get service!"

Traditional blacksmith and woodworking demonstration!

We had descended a knee brutalizing 800 plus meters through pine forests to the sea level Río Navia, before climbing up again to Grandas de Salime. We had exclaimed over the lovely little balcony in our room, overlooking windmill topped mountains and we had learned details of the traditional Asturian life in the perfectly kept Ethnographic Museum..all before arriving too early to the restaurant and hungry enough to eat our fellow pilgrims.

Our waiter stopped, touching the shoulder of one of the beautiful Danish women sitting at the table next to us, before turning my way and inquiring over my delicious meal. I responded to his chivalrous inquiry with a smile and a "todo es bien." He returned my smile, his hand brushing my arm before he raced away without a glance towards my three male companions.

As we had discovered earlier in the day, the orange juice box attached to Dimitri's backpack had long since been emptied of it's oranges and actually contained wine. No one knows how he finished each day's stage, staggering to the end with swollen knees and severe dehydration. But in his way, he walked his camino completely on his own terms. About 5'9" and thin, with white hair and two children in their 20s, Dimitri traveled to Spain from his home in Kaliningrade, a tiny Russian seaport outpost sandwiched between Poland, Lithuania and the Baltic Sea. Dimitri had arrived for his grand adventure on the camino Frances, but upon discovering hordes of other noisy pilgrims, he quickly jumped over to the Primitivo, a path considerably more physically demanding, though slightly quieter.

Paul, who had in a sense, adopted Dimitri for the duration of the Camino, later told us that he asked Dimitri why he came to the camino. And his response..? "To learn English!" As if everyone wanting to learn English would choose to travel to a Spanish speaking country. But it is only on the Camino that a man would come from Russia to walk 300+ kilometers with a Brit from Oxford, a German with perfect English diction and two Americans... (We won't mention the questionable things that Americans can do to the English language..)

At each meal, Dimitri would wait for a lull in conversation. "I 'ave a joke," he would say with emphasis on the 'k,' and we all would turn towards him with anticipation. "Stalin humor," he would call it, and though at times the punchline may have been lost in translation, we laughed at the animation of the storyteller himself.

"I 'ave a toast.."

Sometimes when a pilgrim wakes on the morning of the most difficult stage of hiking,  superman underwear are an absolute necessity. 

Ameya and I woke slightly stiff from our long wander the day before and walked gingerly down to a breakfast of cereal bowl sized cafe con leches and assorted pastries before hefting backpacks and grabbing our walking sticks. We walked companionably through the first 5 km of farmland, only stopping momentarily to pet an appreciative cow. But almost immediately, the mountains rose to taunt us, reaching up into the clouds. "We can do this" we said, our eyes wide and looking heavenwards. Other pilgrims sat in the grass nearby, shoveling energy/food into their faces, mentally preparing for the climb ahead while a stray cow watched judgmentally. We trudged slowly up the freakishly steep path, the promise of a spectacular view, shoving us forward, and upon reaching the "top" we discovered that we had only just begun. 

Unlike the previous misty days, the morning of our highest climbing had dawned clear and bright and the air held that crispness that only exists in the presence of mountains and cows.  As we climbed higher, our turtle forms shuffled forward 5 inches at a time between each break for water. Sweat collected on our sunscreen saturated foreheads and our walking sticks bore our heavy forward leaning weight. But similar, I 
suppose, to childbirth, upon lifting our heads and looking around us to see the world drop dramatically away, all pain was immediately forgotten... (Though some pilgrims would claim otherwise.)

"Today, I was sitting on a mountain, eating lunch with this incredible view and I wanted to share this moment with my husband," Joanne told us in her adorable Quebec accent over dinner later that night. "So I called him and he picked up on the first ring. I ask him where he is and what does he say?? The toilet!" Joanne shrugged cutely and puckered her lips as we laughed and collectively launched into a conversation of phones in bathrooms. 

We seasoned pilgrims had spent a grueling but spectacular 9 hours hiking through the Asturian mountains, charting the most physically difficult stage of any Spanish camino with an ascension of approximately a thousand meters. We had touched the crumbling stones of medieval pilgrim alburgues with distant horizons stretching in all directions. We had passed each other multiple times as differing break times constantly brought us all even. We all nearly face planted our way down a crumbling steep descent, and we all stumbled gratefully into the first bar in 20 kilometers in the tiny town of Lago. Our backpacks littered the ground like dead upside down June bugs outside the bar as thirsty pilgrims marveled over extra ice cubes. Upon discovering the full bar, Ameya, our Oxford friend Paul, our happy Russian Dimitri and myself realized that unless we got moving, we would be sleeping outside. And so, with tired legs and obscenely oppressive backpacks, the four of us raced the final three kilometers to Burducedo to secure the last two rooms above one of the town's two bars. 

"I 'ave a toast.." Dimitri said in a thick Russian accent. Paul, Karin, Joanne, Ameya and I put down our forks and raised our glasses as Dimitri continued. "I wish to buy a house..but I am able to buy a goat. Let's toast that our abilities match our wishes!"  We clinked our glasses and laughed long into the night.

 Ameya being knighted after climbing his first mountain, as per Dimitri's instructions.. We didn't have a sword..

 The parting of the Red Sea..

 The right idea!!