30k a day eh??

It started at 7am with a crazed short frenchwoman
barging into our room screaming and yelling in french
the gist of which was that if we didn´t get moving
soon we´d never make it to roncesvalles (the next
town). so we packed our stuff and got to walking. at
first it was amazing, we walked through farms and
roads covered with cowshit. then we hit the mainroad
for a bit and we overtook our first group of pilgrims.
needless to say this inflated our egos, we were
feeling strong, the road wasn´t that tough and this
day was supposed to be the hardest one, well lets see
what we can do. we really picked up the pace for quite
a while, we got really close to roncesvalles, about 2
miles. And then we went off road and hit the
mountains, already quite tired after our last push we
started an excruciating climb, up painfully steep
fireroads surrounded by barbed wire (which it was all
you could do to avoid grabbing and using as a railing;
indeed nate did) Finally reaching the top shells of
men we immediately were hit by the wind so frozen,
starving, exhausted and humiliated we arrived into
roncesvalles and ate all the food availlable at the
small cafe there.
we checked into the first albergue for a good lie down
directly after. This albergue kinda reminded you of a
bad summercamp dormatory, stained small mattresses and
rickity old beds and so close together some were even
touching so you had to becareful of the man next to
you. One man came in and said to us "oh man i don´t
like this, kinda reminds you of guantanimo bay eh??"
but to us just the lie down was heaven, although
having only one shower for 30 sweaty pilgrims wasn´t
exactly and airfreshener.
One of the best things about the trip is the pilgrim
meal that is generally offered everywhere you go, it´s
like the usual set menus at restaurants across europe
except that here along the camino they give you twice
the food, half the price and wine, and everyone loves
you " what you are pilgrims oh here let me buy you a
drink" or "i´m gonna givve you the best meal i can".
this night in particular we had a huge trout each,
fries, a wonderful garlic soup and a bottle of wine
for about 6 bucks.
However of course you must walk 8 hours a day, which
takes a toll let me say. It´s taken me this long to
write because we wake up at 6am and walk until around
3 then we have to lie down a bit and then of course
gorge ourselves and be in bed by 9 or earlier, it
leaves little time for anything else. I´ve read 10
pages in my book. But the camino itself at least what
we´ve seen of it is amazing, and travelling at a swift
3 kilometers an hour is the way to see it.
immediately that level of silliness that 3 boys on an
extremely intense physical adventure can achieve has
been attained, all day long is spent laughing at the
silliest things, not the least of which is the fact
that my scallop shell (the scallop shell is the symbol
of the pilgrim here) cut me open the first night as my
bag fell, an ominous start. Or the fact that there
seems to be nothing in this country to eat that
doesn´t contain a healthy portion of eggs in it, i
think i´m eating about 10 a day which i´m sure can´t
be good for me. We hit pamplona after 3 days and
decided to take a day off, levi had an ingrown
toenail, nates knees were bruised (!?!) and i had
about 3 blisters (since moved up to 4, 2 on each
foot). so we went out, Pamplona on a saturday night is
quite the rowdy place, first of all we´re beginning to
realize that basque people are the nicest in the
world, the first ones we meet immediately love our
story of a couple of american pilgrims, get a good
chuckle out of it as there buying us a few beers, and
say "but seriously boys you won´t make it to burghos
(about half way)" in fact no one that night was
willing to believe that we were pilgrims and if they
did they refused to believe we would make it.
and that´s pretty much what it´s like, each day we
spend several hours walking and then approximately the
same amount of time "tending to our feet" stuffing our
faces and occasionally talking to people twice our age
doing the walk who always seem to be in better shape
than us(or at least they hide it well).


Well that peice of email has been saved on my account
for about 2 weeks, it is impossible to find any sort
of internet in small rural spain. i´m not going to
read it so if i repeat myself i´m sorry. after
pamplona we continued our walk (as we do) for 2 more
days before once again being hobbled to the point of
stopping in a town called estella. the great
highlight of that town was that it was pretty big,
therefore we hoped to get internet, alas every
internet cafe we went to either was down or had a
whopping 1 computer (why you would call it an internet
cafe is beyond me) also in desperation to escape the
10 egg a day and 2 pounds of ham diet of ours we went
out for the worst chinese of my life (which is saying
something) where levi´s chiken was actually raw. this
may not seem like a big deal to you, but to those of
us with 8 hours of hiking a day those 1 or 2 hours of
the day when food is involved are very important and
raw chicken is not the answer for an aching stomach.
by the time we started up again things had vastly
improved, the blisters were healed-ish, nates knees
seemed to have regained some of their bounce and
levi´s pinky toe was on the mend.
although i must say that about an hour a day is spent
dealing with the feets, applying antibiotic cream,
putting band-aids on, popping blisters, massaging feet
mid walk, indeed by the end of this i´ll probably miss
taking such good care of my feet.
we walked for 7 straight days, got quite a good rhythm
going, we even made friends with an australian couple
who were like us "party pilgrims" looking more for
adventure than any spirituality. we walked with them
to burgos where we had already planned a nice day of
rest, again though there was no internet, indeed we
can hardly get anything accomplished on these days of
rest because for some reason with out the packs our
feet hurt more and so we stumble through the streets
from kebab place to pizza place to more fried egg
place and back to bed. we´re lucky if we get laundry
done.
after burgos we hit the meseta, or the flat plains
which it turns out is essentially like walking in a
muddy wind tunnel, the wind howls so loudly you can´t
here the person next to you and you begin to think
your hearing voices. so that´s where i am, trudging a
long absolutely loving it, can barely walk at night
but that´s all i do during the day so why would i want
to anyway. there´s a ton more funny stories and funny
events but either i can´t remember them off hand,
they´re to ridiculous to mention or perhaps not funny
at all, it´s tough to tell anymore whats funny when
you´ve been with the same 2 people for over a month
with little outside contact other than a strange
australian couple and some very solitary pilgrims.
ell