Day 36: A Cadavo to Lugo (30,7k)

Spoiler alert: my new self-image as Mother Theresa doesn’t last all that long.

I wake up at seven thirty to find that almost everyone has left. I’d read before going on the ol’ Cam that the pensioners would be shining their little head torches and rustling their endless plastic bags from about five in the morning, but on the Norte, this never happened. I guess the sun rose earlier back then, all of thirty-six days ago when it was still September and technically summer. So maybe people thought they may as well wait for sunrise, whereas now, it’s dark until nine-ish, and especially on foggy mornings like those Galicia seem to favour in October.

Full of important thoughts like these, I have some blueberry yogurt DE ANIMAL BIENESTAR and head off towards Lugo. After about 8k there’s a cafe, and as usual, everyone is there. Obnoxious Meathead sees me from far off and raises his hand to wave, or so I think, but instead of a hand I get the finger. Hmm.

I enter the café and tell Waffles, who believes this is “just the relationship he has to people,” rather than a definite sign he heard me slag him off so brutally that one time. Either way, I feel mine and Obnoxious Meathead’s recently improved relations cool back down fairly rapidly. Waffles also says him and his two lackeys took over the bar when they arrived and that he had to wait twenty-five minutes for a coffee while they all had two each. I believe it. You couldn’t make up the rudeness of this gang.

Anyway, I have the most amazing breakfast sat at the bar in the sun pretending to understand a Galician newspaper. They quote locals in Gallego, but write text in Castellano! Fascinating! Everyone else leaves. Why be part of rush hour. Just have another coffee and enjoy solitude.

Today’s walk is long but easy. No rain. When we enter Lugo we are within 100k of Santiago, which is all you need to walk to get the certificate. So we are prepared for some paper-chasers, and sure enough, the albergue is full of shiny new people in pristine sportswear. I try not to be a grouchy old newbie-hater. It goes so-so.

I take a shower and have just laid down for a nap when… you got it. Obnoxious Meathead & Co arrive. HOW CAN ANYONE SPEAK THIS LOUD. Any remaining empathy from the previous night evaporates as they start shouting at/by me in their attempts to make jokes. Sample exchange:

Spaniard 1: “I had a really bad impression of the Swede before but after last night I realise she’s not half bad.”

Spaniard 2: “She had a really bad impression of you too and now that she’s got to know you it’s worse.”

They clearly think we’re friends. Fuck. I stare at my phone and pledge to never approach my spiritual teachers again. Also, I learn that the rubber ring is for “hand muscles,” not autism. Taxi.

But it’s a party in the Lugo, so we escape out onto the crammed streets and walk the walls around Old Town – the world’s biggest surviving Roman walls, how’s about that – before joining the crowds below for some weird music performances and standard wine. As all munis, our albergue shuts at ten though so it’s not a long night. But pretty.

Back in the characteristically sterile Xunta de Galicia-run albergue, I settle into my squeaky top bunk as, around me, all three of the Spaniards snore loudly.

100k. That means we can be in Santiago in four days.

#albergues #endings #Galicia #CaminodelNorte #travel #hiking #CaminodeSantiago #annoyingpeople

Day 35: Fonsagrada to A Cadavo (27,6k)

That kind of day. Six hours. Relentless. Two pairs of socks. Two failed plastic bag experiments. No albergues. Just kilometre upon kilometre of rain, rain, rain.

But not that kind of night. Not only does the sky clear up, and the sun peek out long enough for me to dry my sleeping bag if not socks. But I also talk to my hardest-to-get-hold-of sister, and when I return to the (€8!) albergue, everyone is drinking wine. Beard Braid, Waffles, Fellow Ecuadorian Ayahuasca Soul Sister, a cute younger German psychologist, a Czech guy who perhaps got unfairly bundled up with the Czech guy who refused to do dishes, some new Spanish men, and! Obnoxious Meathead! I’ve had two Coca-Colas and a coffee, so high on caffeine I allow myself to be lured into a conversation about ayahuasca and then I chat to him and his two almost-as-loud Spanish sidekicks for almost two hours over wine and €0,65 vegetable soup.

Turns out dude is not a banker at all, but a bartender in a “techno party” and some kind of driver. He’s really polite and inquisitive during the convo and I start to feel a bit bad about how annoyed I’ve been with him. Especially as I think he may have overheard me bitch about him to Waffles the other day. Bad pilgrim me. That probably hurt. He still badgers everyone else in the albergue all the time, and me when others are present, but if it’s just the two of us he looks sad and says nothing. Ouch. I’m reminded that dude is just another poor human, even if he happens to talk a little loud. He even fiddles with some kind of rubber ring so is probably neurodiverse, too. I really need to be kinder.

But I feel like it’s happening. It’s a funny Camino learning, but really, everyone wants to connect. Even the sour-faced French oldie who sits in a corner staring angrily at the single pot you’ve just used to cook up a bunch of pasta. Note to self: always invite him. He may pretend like he wants you to wash up the pot so he can use it, but really, he just wants to hang. Everyone does. Like Miranda July said, nobody belongs here more than you.

#albergues #soulsearching #praisethelordcaffeine #Galicia #CaminodelNorte #ayahuasca #travel #MirandaJuly #hiking #CaminodeSantiago #rainnnnfeelitonmyfingertips #judgment

Day 34: Castro to Fonsagrada (22,3k)

On Day 33, I walk into Galicia and make a beautiful connection with a girl I’ve clocked a few days previous, in Tineo, a loud and pretty surf chick whom I’d immediately categorized as too cool for me. But like so many times before, the Camino helps you peel off the layers of social posturing that in normal life keep us separate, and after only a half hour of walking together I can tell that this girl is fam, tribe, cut from the same cloth as everyone I love. My type: slightly messed up, but passionate, and ceaselessly exploring. She has travelled around Baja California Sur in an RV, spent three months living with a Shuar family in the Ecuadorian jungle while doing research for her dissertation on white people’s impact on ayahuasca-using cultures, lives between Buenos Aires, London and Miami, and talks at a thousand miles per hour about all these adventures and more. She’s basically more me than me.

It’s really nice to connect so strongly with a female energy on the Camino, and the two hours we walk together pass very quickly as we talk about our relationship patterns, the differences between gut feeling and social conditioning, attachment styles, disconnecting self-worth from our work, Mexico, self-defense breakups, stress, how grandmother ayahuasca has shown us that healing doesn’t have to be painful, and so on and so forth. Interestingly, she has just come from Ibiza, and fully supports my plan of moving there to eat mushrooms, swim in turquoise waters and write failing novels until I die.

Also, she takes a suitably dramatic photo of me as I ceremoniously enter this fourth and final part of my journey.

It’s a long but easy walk. Pretty views. Strong winds. It feels appropriate to enter the final province. Time to tie up the threads, assimilate the learnings, integrate the parts.

Yet again, that word. Synthesis.

Hills like blue elephants, venga

#synthesis #faith #Galicia #CaminodelNorte #ayahuasca #travel #wilderness #sisterhood #CaminodeSantiago