Day 19: San Vicente to Pendueles (26k, in pouring rain)
- Frida Stavenow
- Sep 25, 2022
- 3 min read
On day 19, I haul ass. I feel behind from the lazy day before and want to catch up with Gertrude, so race past about twenty puzzled pilgrims in the pouring rain between San Vicente and Pendueles. About halfway, Cantabria turns into Asturias, and I swear the rain gets about sixteen times as intense. It rains so hard I stop even trying to avoid the ankle-deep puddles; my shoes are so wet it makes absolutely no difference. Most of the track is on motorways. It’s a miserable day, but I do a lot of thinking.
At my one stop, I have coffee and tortilla with a brainy British transplant from Boston. He asks what I think about Spain and I mumble something about not wild enough and how I actually feel most at home in Mexico.
Brainy British Transplant, who’s in the process of getting his US citizenship and who loves America with a passion I haven’t seen since my eleven year-old, California-dreaming self, is so bewildered by this answer that it verges on disdain. “Then why don’t you live there?” he all but spits out. The subtext is clear: You are the CEO of your own life, and it seems you’re doing a crap job.
I look down into my cafe con leche and give the customary answer. “It’s too far from my family.”
He’s nonplussed. “You know there are flights.”
Yeah but the planet etc I protest. He starts talking about carbon sequestration. The rain has stopped. My head is full. I say let’s put a pin in that one, and head off.
LOOK AT SOAKED BABY DONKEY
But as I walk on through the dirty streams that used to be roads, the question echoes in my head. Why don’t I live in the place I love more than any other? Really? How often do I see my mum and nieces and nephews when I live in London? Is the difference really worth the compromise?
They’re not easy questions. But in the rain I basically decide to go to Oaxaca after I finish walking. Get a paid job as a shaman translator at mushroom ceremonies. Swim in the Pacific Ocean, eat some coconuts, heal some tourists.
Why not?
🏝 🥥 🍄
Because everything is a sign, the albergue where Gertrude and I were going to stay in Pendueles is closed, and instead we end up at Casa Flor, which in addition to an albergue is a Mexican restaurant run by a woman from Veracruz. We get stoned and I eat some unreal enchiladas. A new German joins us and G gets straight in there asking why he walks the Camino.
“To get that thing everyone talks about,” he says.
“And what is that?” asks Gertrude, holding her weed way better than me. I’m just focusing on sitting like a normal human. Feet on floor? Hands on face? How do people do this?
“You know,” New German explains, “how after two weeks you run out of things to think about. And then you learn who you really are.”
How’s about that. Feeling that I’ve received as much wisdom as I can fit in one night, I excuse myself and go to bed, where I listen to medicine songs and regress from all that cut-your-hair-and-get-a-job progress I made pre-Camino.
Before I fall asleep, I Google mushroom retreats in Oaxaca. There are loadsssss.
Me and G-Boz being style icons as usual
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