Day 9: Bilbao – Ontón(22,6k)

Day 8 is a success. I give my feet a rest and stay in the hostel writing until late afternoon, when GIB joins me for a walk to the Guggenheim. Then we have drinks, food, fun. It’s really nice to talk to someone who’s as open as me, whether that’s a good thing or not. And Gertrude shows up!

The next day I wake up hungover and late. Gertrude is taking the metro to the end of town but GIB, who is now of enough importance to deserve his own name, that is to say, pseudonym, so let’s call him Ralph, wants to walk. I want to take the metro but I also want to chat to Ralph, so I silently talk myself into doing the same. Here to walk not ride etc. This does mean we’ll get to the Pobleño donativo very late though, and there are no cheap options around. But then, I remind myself – this is the pilgrim spirit. Trust that the Camino will provide.

My girl Louise came to hang

We start walking out of town. I am excited to walk with Ralph and continue the conversations we started yesterday, but my mind can’t let go of the accommodation problem. I am not present. I keep glancing at my phone to see if we – or I – could still take the metro. In the end, I decide that this is no way to live. As much as I want to continue our psychosexual bonding, I want to be there for it. And I’m not. So I stop us at a park and come up with a new plan: he walks so he won’t feel like a cheat, and I take my looser morals on a train to the edge of town and then walk the remaining 20k to Ontón, where two other friends have also booked in for the night. We have surfing plans!

I call up the albergue to check if they have beds, and the woman on the phone is so unbelievably nice that I instantly feel I’ve made the right choice. Ralph is disappointed but I reassure him we’ll have a much nicer time talking tomorrow along the beautiful coastline with no stress. We separate, he walks off, and I get on the metro where I put in my headphones for the first time since starting the Camino and leave the big city to the seductive soundtrack of Lana del Rey. It’s my farewell to urbanity for the foreseeable future, and I feel content, responsible and free.

Cut to: evening at the albergue

Oh man, writing is hard. Every time I sit down to do it, someone interesting comes up. Now I’m in Ontón, where I plonked myself down at a shaded table to write all about my day hiking past passion fruit bushes with my new cool girl gang (who, after getting up at six, caught me just as I was leaving Portugalete metro station, upon which they, fully justifiably, commented: “We are not talking to you for at least two hours.”) and then being caught up with by Ralph, but how can I do that when there are new faces around the table and they also turn out to pretty much belong to the Irish Illuminati? Well, I can’t, or I couldn’t, but now I’ve literally hid behind a corner to sit down and continue the backlog, as a whole day spent on blog maintenance yesterday only got me up to day one. Well at least I’ll have day nine done when it gets here. At least until dinner, which is in an hour and which looks set to be a sociable, vino-filled affair.

Today was great. I loved hiking with my new smart, funny and adventurous girl gang, and then Ralph and I got two hours to chat from the beach to the albergue, which we spent on male versus female prostitution, the birth of queer sexuality, gay versus straight sex parties, and that time I had to help a stray dog give birth in Extremadura. It was super fun and tomorrow it seems we are hiking to a campground by the beach where you can sleep outside. Oh, also today we said goodbye to Basque Country, and entered Cantabria – eskerrik asko, Euskadi!

#Caminocheating #soulsearching #thegreatCaminobedrace #LanadelRey #CaminodelNorte #travel #Cantabria #BasqueCountry #travelfriends #hiking #CaminodeSantiago

Day 8: Albergue Gerekiz to Bilbao, plus a death threat (29,1k)

The next morning, I leave the hostel alone at 8:30. I need to be away from people. GIB left at 6:30 with a head lamp on. Lucia is still sleeping, Gertrude is doing whatever Gertrude does between waking up at 6 and leaving at 9:30. I walk fast. I pass two Korean girls. Woodland. It’s beautiful and smells like Ecuador. The Eucalyptus. Then suddenly road. Road and road. Some farms still and then two small towns where I see other pilgrims having coffee and refill my water bottle. I can’t afford coffee but am already tired after 10k so buy some bread and sardines in spicy sauce and eat it on a bench in the town square, close enough to the other cafe-worthy pilgrims to continue our conversation about where to sleep in Bilbao. They book a €38 a night room. I wish. Instead, I book a €14 a night room for two nights and walk on, dreaming about my lie-in and the Guggenheim Museum and pintxos and the freedom of a big city.

Today’s walk is difficult and ugly. Most runs along a motorway. Thankfully, there’s cloud cover – and still, as I finally walk into Bilbao, at four it in the afternoon with everything hurting, the sign outside the pharmacy says 38 degrees. My richer friends disappear to their expensive hotel and I walk what looked like ten easy minutes from Old Town to the town centre. They are not easy. My feet ache like never before and it’s all uphill through the kind of streets you find in all major cities around the central station. At least, I reason, I’ll have no trouble finding weed here.

The hotel is an automatic affair. Check in online, get sent a few codes, enter without speaking to a human. In my 8-bed dorm is just one other person, a big man in his forties, which feels super weird. I get undressed, shower, make my bed and lie down to have a nap, majorly missing the pilgrim community of the albergues.

Thankfully, two more guests enter as I’m drifting off, so in the end I half-sleep for about an hour even though the room is loud. In albergues, people are always quiet and respectful no matter what time of day. I guess cause we’re all exhausted and know the need for rest all too well. Here, people come and go, slam locker doors, and talk loudly in different languages.

Anyway I nap and then Lucia and I head back into Old Town and meet up with a few other pilgrims for pintxos and drinks. It’s okay but nothing mindblowing. GIB shows me pics of pintxos from San Sebastián. Pintxo heaven. I knew I should’ve got over my self-hate sooner.

Me and Lucia head back to the hotel around 11pm, both happy to have company for the walk. Still, I remember living in Barcelona and Sevilla and how their historical centres all kind of looked the same – gorgeous buildings, swathes of American tourists and a corresponding number of bland, overpriced restaurants for them to eat basic tortilla at. Like Barcelona, Bilbao’s historic centre does have some bars that look pretty fun – for example, one where GIB and I approach some hippie-goths (that particular Spanish breed that favours dreadlocks, black lipstick, piercings and harem trousers) to ask for weed, and they give us the name of another bar some five minutes away, which I promptly add to my Camino del Norte Google Map – but I still feel pretty happy that we’re sleeping in a more interesting part of town. If I were living here, that’s probably where I’d be.

Well, my feelings of superiority about sleeping in the cheapest hostel in the cheapest part of town are about to ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-change. First of all, as I enter my dorm, I’m surprised to find the overhead lights fully on. A man is sitting on the bottom bunk next to mine. I’m drunk so who am I to judge. But this guy is Drunk with a capital D. Also, gives off homeless and slightly mentally deranged vibes, but then again, both those labels could fully be applied to me as well depending on time of day. So I ask kindly if he would mind the lights going off as it’s “rather late,” polite to the bone. He doesn’t really reply so I turn them off and go to bed.

Drunk dude sits silently in the dark for a while, mumbling what sounds like semi-coherent prayers to himself in Spanish. Then he gets up and turns the lights back on. This incenses the very heavy man sleeping in the bunk above me, and they have a heated exchange in Spanish that leads to the lights, eventually, going off again. I lie down to sleep, but keep my glasses on just in case, something I haven’t done since sharing a room with my best friend Cattis and a very fast Tarantula in Thailand in 2009. It’s a weird feeling. Earplugs and an eyemask are clearly out of the question. Sure I want sleep, but I also want to stay alive.

Our boy sits in the dark for a bit. Lies down for a bit. More mumbling. A few more guests enter, which is reassuring. One other woman – thank God. More big men. The potentially homeless and mentally ill man – let’s just call him Frank – gets back up, fiddles with a locker for a bit, keeps mumbling. Gradually, almost beautiful in its seamlessness, the semi-coherent prayers turn into semi-coherent self-pep-talk. Frank is not happy about the “hijos de puta” telling him what to do, like when to turn if his putas lights, and he’s about to let them know.

He starts shouting at the man who was first to want the lights off. A new guy gets involved. Bitter-sounding spats in Basque ensue. Frank starts spitting on the floor and rambling about getting a “cuchillo,” which, not so reassuringly, means “knife.” And so finally, the guy who’s been speaking to him in Basque decides – Frank, you’re out. I ask if he wants any help; an offer he predictably (and thank-God-for-me-ly) turns down. He gets the guy out, and I wait for him to return for about half an hour. Room access is through codes not keys, so technically, Frank could come back.

But neither of them do, and eventually, I fall asleep.

#strangerdanger #hostellyf #CaminodelNorte #travel #moneyworries #hiking #CaminodeSantiago

Day 7: Merkina-Xemein to Albergue Gerekiz (21,9k)

The big talkie in the morning is obviously how to bypass Gernika, aka the Camino Accommodation Black Hole. I’ve called up every hostel in the guidebook and finally found three beds for us at an albergue 7,7k after Gernika. But that means a 33k day, which none of us are ready for, so we’re thinking about options. In the end, Gertrude decides to take the bus the whole way to Gernika, as her feet are in a state. Me and Lucia decide to walk past the monastery we didn’t make it to the day before, then on to Munitibar, where we will break Camino Protocol and take a bus to Gernika and then walk the remaining 7,7k. It’s not kosher but we see no other way of avoiding paying €120 for a private room we don’t want, and it will still mean an over-20k day.

With Lucia I have a breakfast of toast with butter and jam and five cups of milky coffee, then set off for the monastery. We discuss love, what is it, why do we think the way we think about it. After about an hour, we come upon three wild-camping Germans we met before and the 23 year old model I met in San Sebastián, the one who invited me to watch the sunset when all I wanted to do was lie in bed and feel sorry for myself. They’ve slept in hammocks over a river and tell us about a “paradise place” for swimming, so we go there, and are amazed to find a shady clearing where the river runs just deep enough to form a perfect pool. The water is surprisingly cold, but on a day when temperatures are already reaching thirty at ten in the morning, we don’t complain. And sure enough, after just another ten minutes of continuing up the rocky path in the scorching sun, we are completely dry and have forgotten all what cold is.

We pass the monastery, have a beer, see some monks, walk and talk. Things get deep. Friendships really do form quickly on the Camino. I don’t even want me time! Also, Lucia is a member of the club of excellent humans who can hang out in silence. So we walk happily side by side to Munitibar, where we catch a ride with an insane Spanish bus lady. Guess who’s on it? Gertrude! We have a picnic in a park in Gernika, take a photo of the closed Peace Museum and walk on. We call up the albergue to book dinner, but the hospitalera says we can only have pork and that making salads is “too much work,” so we carry with us food for dinner.

It’s hot. It’s dry. Outside a pharmacy, a sign says 39°C. But Lucia and I are still chatting, picking figs, taking it step by step.

Suddenly, I see horses – and not just any horses. The adorable, fluffy black ponies hanging out on the picturesque green hill in front of us are Pottokas, the same Basque breed Lucy Rees studies, and they turn out to belong to a gorgeous stone building surrounded by fruit trees, vegetable patches, lush green bushes and all our favourite pilgrims from the Camino so far. Surely, this must be our albergue!? But no. Caserio Pozueta, located about 2k before the albergue I’ve booked, totally flew under my radar as I scoured three Camino apps for two hours the day before. Now they’re full. With my heart like a stone, I walk away from Paradise on Earth, thinking that maybe there will be an obvious reason when we get to our albergue why I completely missed such an incredible place.

Not our hostel

We arrive, and I struggle. The owner is weirdly rude, there’s no space to hang your clothes, and the “garden” is an asphalted parking lot. I sit down at a table and try to stop myself from looking at the photos of Caserio Pozueta’s MUESLI BREAKFAST. What’s more, our bus cheat has got us way ahead of all our friends, and the people at this albergue don’t seem nice at all. The table next to me, for example, is full of people my age who don’t make eye contact and seem obsessed with how this blond guy in a tank top got into Berghain. Vom. I stare the other way until Gertrude and Lucia come out, eat quick, and excuse myself to go to bed.

But I’m too pissed off to sleep. My legs hurt. My back hurts. I am haunted by images of muesli I will never have.

Luckily, I have weed. So I get ready for bed and then head back out onto the terrace to smoke, and everything changes. I sit down at the table with Lucia and tell her my plans. As if summoned, Guy Who Got Into Berghain (heretoforth GIB) shows up. His opening line: “Oh hey. Would you guys like an edible? They’re from California.”

Long story short (!!), we are now best friends and starting a Mushroom Enthusiasts of the Camino WhatsApp group. He was fucking great and I can’t wait to talk more to him. We went to the same uni! San Francisco State. He still lives over there so is also fluent in all things microdosing and psychonautism and shamanism. He asked my pronouns! Trust me, that’s a first on the Camino. It felt a bit like coming home. Also, when I explained that weed turns me into a hilarious genius (example: Gertrude tried to explain the name of the mushroom that grows in her garden in English, and came up with “Pointy Cone Ball Head,” which I therefore decided was her Camino name), the others made “umm I don’t know” faces but he said “I concur to her genius,” soooooo he’s staying.

#LucyRees #Germans #CaminodelNorte #magicmushrooms #travel #horses #wilderness #Pottokas #travelfriends #hiking #CaminodeSantiago #judgment #SantaMaria