Day 14: Guemes – Santander (18,5k)

Day 14’s walk is epic. It starts along the same paved country roads as the day before, but soon turns into dramatic coastline exposing the clearest water you can imagine. I keep stopping to take photos and it keeps getting better. I walk through an entire field of Uruguayan Pampas Grass.

Eventually the cliffs break down into a long, sandy beach, and in the crossover the water ripples clear and turquoise over rocks and shells. I stop for a paradisiacal solo swim, and then walk the rest of the beach barefoot in my bikini and towel with my shoes hooked to my backpack. The water is cool. The sun is hot.

Waves gradually build up and the beach ends in Somo, a small beachside town full of surf schools. I have some prawns and beer with a Spanish woman in her fifties who’s walking with her two sisters to honour the passing of both their parents. Around us, locals drink Sangria and throw shells on the floor. The waves crash against the sandy white banks below.

Afterwards I get the ferry to Santander with a French girl who used to sell her home-cooked apple empanadas on the streets of Valparaiso, Chile, and we meet a cycling pilgrim from Chicago who likes to start his 60k days at noon. It’s hot, but on the boat we have to put on our jackets for the wind. Masks are obligatory.

We finally find the Santander albergue and it’s dark and dinky, though no darker and dinkier than its 2.3-star Google rating would indicate. I vow to check ahead from now on, then lie down in my tiny bunk for a nap as a French girl shouts at the purse-lipped receptionist for not preventing her bag from getting stolen while she was in the shower.

I don’t really sleep. It’s very loud. I get my period and all I want to do is smoke weed and be touched and lie down in soft spaces. I miss my ex. I miss having a real life. A home.

These days are needed, too.

#soulsearching #PMSBlues #bleed #CaminodelNorte #travel #hiking #CaminodeSantiago