Day 2: Pasajes to My Personal Hell, via San Sebastián (17k)
- Frida Stavenow
- Sep 14, 2022
- 9 min read
After a night in San Juan, I descend the steps to the port where the hospitalero has told us to catch the ferry.
“How often do they go?” I ask.
“Constantly,” he says and waves me out the door. He’s woken us up at 6am, like all the albergues (or so goes the Camino lore), but this time without atmospheric church music, brioche hot dog buns or much advice for the route ahead. Except for the constantly-running ferry, that is.
I did manage to stall proceedings by waiting for the other thirteen pilgrims to do their tooth-brushing and face-washing and water bottle-filling before I got up, and so it is not in complete darkness that I gingerly make my way down the stone steps towards the harbour, ancient, pretty and still slippery with morning dew. Thankfully. It’s enough of a challenge in the 07:12 twilight, and if there’s one thing I know about the Camino it’s that you do not want to get injured. Especially on Day 2. Getting injured means having to beg for the hospitalero to let you stay at the albergue for longer than the one-night maximum, and hospitaleros, as I’m quickly becoming aware, like to empty their buildings before sunrise. I’ve already walked five laps around the small port town of Pasajes, all but exhausting its list of exciting sights such as the town cafe (unbelievably rude waitress) and the mini-mart, so god knows what I’d do for eight hours a day if I fell and twisted my ankle.
Still, it feels good not to carry those goddamn hiking poles (74 year old mountain goat lent me his for the duration of the first day), and I start to rethink my decision to spend the afternoon searching for replacements in the San Sebastián Decathlon.
I get down to the port, and what do you know: there are my fellow pilgrims, the ones who left at 6am sharp to lead the bed race to San Sebastián. They only speak French, but, like so many times on the Camino, the message is international.
No boats.
A local jogger comes past. “Festivo!” He shouts. “No boats til eight! Or maybe nine.”
What to do, other than sit down and write about steps in your flight-moded Evernote? Some people head into town to find a cafe, but after yesterday’s hidden pork and mandatory wine fiasco, I am keen to avoid Spanish restaurants for as long as possible. In my pack I’ve got an orange and some chocolate and two peanut butter cereal bars for breakfast, and a tomato, half a baguette, half a bag of lettuce and a tin of sardines for a second breakfast, or, if I decide to really commune with nature and take my own advice to “slow down,” lunch.
After chatting to my new pilgrim friends, I realise that me and 74 year-old mountain goat hiked faster than the 21 year-old from Austria who’s doing her third Camino ever has. No wonder I’m tired. Also, how did I go to Spain to stop people-pleasing and end up spending five hours on the first day pretending to be interested in the intricate geopolitical history of a small port town in the Basque Country, all while out of breath? Today, I am going to go at my own pace, stop when I want, honour my toes, and not spend €12,85 to eat the flesh of an animal I’ve entirely without logic decided blocks my spiritual connection. Andamos!
The boat shows up at eight, we cross, and I sit down to give the other pilgrims a head start before I follow them up a tall-as mountain on my glorious own. It leads to a stunning trail, wild and coastal, with grand views of waves crashing against the cliffs far below. The trail is shielded by woods on both sides, and at the very top, I follow a smaller path leading into thicker, higher brush. It comes out onto a small mountain peak overlooking everything. I eat my orange and cereal bar and feel like the ocean fills my heart with wind.
The trail is also full of good-humoured day hikers, who all greet me in different ways. One says hola, so I tell the next one hola, who then says egun on (hello in Basque), so next time I say egun on, and then the person says kaixo, or what sounds like “epa,” or just hola, or sometimes “buenas.” I experiment for a few hours, but there seems to be little rhyme or reason to what greeting people choose.
Soon enough, San Sebastián shows up ahead. It’s stunning. A long, turquoise beach full of waves. Surfing! Surfers! Decathlon! All my life I’ve been wanting to live in a big city by the sea, but I’ve yet to found one that ticks all the boxes. Why haven’t I been here? San Sebastián looks like absolute paradise from the absolutely paradisiacal mountain I’ve just crossed.
Once I get to street level, I sit down to find Decathlon on Google Maps. Even if I’ve given up on hiking poles, only two days on the trail have taught me that my mother was entirely right in questioning the length of my “shorts” (more like very short men’s boxers, in Lycra) and I’ve grown tired of showing my whole pikachu every time I unclip my backpack. Also, I realise I’ve forgotten the towel my mum’s friend lent me in the albergue I left this morning, and there is no way in hell I’m going back.
Well, Decathlon is closed. For the festivo. Damn. Google suggests a half-dozen alternative sports shops that are open, so I set off for the centre of town. On the way I pass some surf shops, which would probably stock both towels and shorts, but they all look too fancy so I walk on. I arrive at one of the sports shops, two, three – all shut. I walk past another handful, then give up and head back towards the sea to walk to the hostel along the beach.
Lots of surfers. And surf chicks. The smell of sunblock, sweat, salt.
Instantly, I feel less-than. Like I’m too fat, too pale, too unathletic to be welcome here. Oh and too old, of course, how could I forget. I walk past a surf school of the same name as the one I used to go to in Barcelona. I was young then, certainly by today’s standards, and yet I felt the same. Unwelcome. Like the older girls knew much more, had been there longer, knew each other in a way I’d never know any of them. So, I realise, it doesn’t really matter what the reality is. I just always feel left out. Fucking anxiety. If I started taking antidepressants, would I not feel this irrational yet constant hum of rejection from life? And would I, then, be able to stop acting defensively, be able to let people in, form bonds?
I remember that’s exactly what I once wrote ayahuasca does. It permits you to have a secure attachment style for six months. Which is usually enough to really make a change that will last.
No matter what the cause, as I walk further down this Basque surf Mecca that only half an hour before I thought might be the perfect place for me to move to, I feel ashamed. Of my unwashed hair, my backpack, my aging face. I shouldn’t be here, is the phrase on loop in my head. That there are other people who are older, less tanned, less skinny doesn’t even register. I’m the worst. The ugliest, the loneliest, the most embarrassing.
I call up the hostel. What will I do if they’re full? Obviously, there’s no shortage of hotels in San Sebastián, but I’d be hard pressed to find anything for less than €100 a night. The next pilgrim’s albergue is another 20k away.
They don’t pick up the phone, presumably because they’re too busy checking in hot, tanned gangs of securely-attached surfer friends in town for the party tonight.
But if there’s one thing I’ve learnt in my whole two days of being a pilgrim, it’s that you walk on. So walk on I do, towards La Sirena, a youth hostel that charges an extra 20% if you’re over thirty.
Turns out, they have loads of beds. A super friendly woman checks me in and lets me rent a towel for €2. Guess I can continue showing my poon until the next sports shop. I get changed, leave my bag and head to the beach to eat my lunch.
It’s way too hot to eat at the beach, and I’m not about to shell out €21,90 for a beach tent (although, in all honesty, that would be a pretty perfect way to hide my anxious little ass). Instead, I head back into the park in front of the sea and sit down on a bench in the shade of a tree to eat the second half of my winning bread-sardines-tomato combo.
And what do you know. No sooner have I unpacked it all, than I start feeling like a total hobo. Beautiful people in dresses my sisters would wear keep walking past looking at me with concern. The same lunch which on the trail made me feel like a wild, lucky, resourceful pilgrim in San Sebastián makes me feel poor and – you guessed it – unwelcome. What are these clouds blowing in? Am I about to have a nervous breakdown? In public??
I eat quickly and throw my trash away, only then realising I chucked away the bottle I had bought to keep for day trips. Not wanting to strengthen my already intense hobo look, I opt for not rooting through the trash but contributing to the buildup of plastic landfill instead, and walk to the beach.
Blue and white parasols, chairs, tents. All for rent, for cash, for people with money and jobs and no problems with feeling welcome in this world. I stand still and think how I hate the civilisation in Spain. In fact, I hate all civilisation. I miss the trail. Does this mean I’m becoming a hobo for real? I think of Frances McDormand in Nomadland, how I thought it was so sad that she went back to sleep in her car even though there was a sweet man offering her a bed in a house.
But only two days into the Camino, I get it. Being on the road is being free. Being still, being in town – there’s a feeling of needing to justify your existence.
And I can’t do that.
I don’t know what to do tonight or tomorrow. I wanted to be in San Sebastian two days to go to the beach and enjoy the food but all I want to do now is hide and save money. Buy food in supermarkets and eat it on the trail. Restaurants scare me. People scare me. I can do the people on the trail, with them I have fun. But this reunion with people who have jobs, who are happy to pay €22 to rent a tent on the beach, who wear expensive jewellery and have gym-toned bodies and tiny bikinis and all the youth in the world – they make me want to hide.
Maybe I’ll come back for surfing and Pintxos and culture another time. Buy dinner and breakfast and lunch in the supermarket and set off at sunrise for the next town, I think it’s Zarautz. Maybe they’ll sell travel towels there, too.
Eventually I manage to chill out somewhat, have a swim, meet some people. But I don’t manage to shake the feeling of less-than, so around six I head back to the hostel, which, it must be said, is not bad. They may charge twice what most albergues charge (or at least what the frequently see-through donation boxes of the donativos suggest we leave) but in comparison it is pretty much a luxury hotel. First of all, they give us sheets. Actual sheets! Made of linen! Second, they have towels for rent, which saves my ass. Third, the beds are sturdily built, meaning that I do not wake up every time my bunk mate stirs in her sleep. Female-only dorm. Toilets and showers inside the dorm. Lockable lockers. A whole laundry floor. Functioning kitchen. Perhaps most indulgent of all: the hours of silence are 23-8. People here sleep to eight!?
I’m in bed by 20:24 but that’s because I have crippling anxiety and sunstroke. The other guests drop in one by one. A gorgeous 23 year-old Polish model with bundles of energy invites me to watch the sunset with her friends and a bottle of wine, and I know I should, but I have no juice left. So instead I lie in bed and write about being asked, feelings of unworthiness flooding in from all directions. What a fucking wash. I didn’t even walk half what they did today and I have no energy. I’m in one of the world’s most famous foodie cities, and I dine on supermarket gazpacho, bread and cheese. Also, am I writing about life so I won’t have to partake in life!? God, I suck.
Thankfully for the itinerant depressives of the world, there is the Netflix app. So I watch an American documentary about a Chinese factory opening up in Ohio to give my ungrateful, dramatic ass an idea of what it’s like to feel lucky to just have a job, any job, and I do feel their plight but fall asleep within twenty minutes. I wake up again at ten, and the dorm still isn’t full. Those who have arrived snore, though. I struggle to fall asleep again and then spend a fitful night scratching my arms and looking for lost ear plugs among the, it’s got to be said, rather confusing sheets. Nomadland, I still feel ya.
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