Still Walking

Entre Pobeña y Kobaron

I feel the need to explain my silence over the past few days.  It's really easy to sum up: bed bugs.  The first night in San Sebastian I stayed at a Hostelling International hostel that didn't wash the comforters.  A couple days later walking from Deba to Markina I noticed my arms starting to itch, and by that night I was in a state of mild delirium, itching and trying to sleep and trying to not go insane, a state which endures, albeit only in the evenings, to this day.  In the mornings and when I'm walking it's fine, but afterward, when I'm lying down and the adrenalin or the distraction from walking has worn off, the bug bites start to itch, and I start to lose it.
The first day was the worst; the walk from Markina to Gernika was a living hell. The skin on my left arm was tight and jaundiced, with an awkward-looking lump as if I had just fractured it falling off the swings at recess, and the overall feel was as if someone had sprinkled it with habanero chili seeds and fire ants before tightly covering it it in saran wrap.  By the time Gernika came into view I was a shell of a man.  I sat down next to a garbage can and took about a two minute video of myself talking about how I had reached "rock bottom".  Imagine 127 hours but in northern Spain and me perhaps not quite as convincing as James Franco (though the thought of reaching into my bag and using my Swiss Army Knife for some kind of amputation did cross my mind).   I've had bed bugs a few times in hostels in various parts of the world, but I don't remember it ever being like this.

Anyway.

Along with the tough moments there have been some extremely enjoyable ones, which I will hereto enumerate as I lie here in bed not "itching" my arms but rather periodically freaking out and rubbing them vigorously against raised texture of the embroidered duvet covers.

Mark's "Ten Most Important Things That Have Happened in the Last Three Days" (Number one being the "most important")

10) Learned how to say "good night" in Moroccan Arabic from the guys at the reception in my hostel last night (lay-la sah-EEda).

9) Pan-fried a store-bought pizza since there was no oven in said hostel and I would sooner eat it cold than microwave it (It turned out surprisingly well.  I did each slice individually using a pot lid to cover them, creating sort of a mini oven)
8) Made it into Cantabria, a whole new province.

7) Set a new personal best for distance today, covering about 37k, the last five of which were spent walking alongside the highway, cold and drenched and trying to sing "Santeria" by Sublime to stay positive.

6) Walked through the old town of Bilbao.  And then promptly walked out.

5) Traded a Greek yogurt for a tangerine from a Dutch guy who said flying was for "poor people".

4) Successfully communicated in Basque (Opa! Opa!)

3) Did laundry

2) Got bed bug bites

.............

1)  Am still walking.

Highs and Lows (Day 4: Deba to Markina)

When I imagined the Camino de Santiago, I imagined a walk.  More of an amble, actually.  I imagined a flat path, sometimes paved, sometimes not, crisscrossing through pasturelands always with a beautiful view of the coast, forever meandering through impossibly quaint Spanish towns.  

But this is not an amble.  This is hiking.  Or at least today was.  Today's leg, from Deba to Markina-Xemeina, was about 24k, though a great deal of that was spent shuffling up rocky paths, cursing, and then daintily lowering myself down pine needle-covered rock descents.  Actually, it didn't seem that bad, but when I got to my lodging I read through the comment book and saw almost half the people had remarked about how grueling the walk had been to get here and how glad they were to be able to rest.  And then the more I thought about it I decided I agreed with them.  

The winds were near hurricane force this morning, and I left before sunrise from the train station in Deba after being woken up by a strange dude coming into the hostel who presumably worked there but looked like he had just showed up -- at 6:47am while it was still pitch black outside -- to go number two in the bathroom and then immediately leave.  It was very strange and I decided to get out of there as soon as possible.  The first part of the trail was all climb, from sealevel up to about 300 meters.  After that it was a beautiful forest path, through a valley of lowing cattle and a house that looked like it might've been helicoptered in from Lichtenstein, and then back into the forest.  My big problem today was not properly rationing my water.  I was already thirsty and out of water when I got to a sign that said "Markina -- 9.3k".  And it was not 9.3k of flat.  It was 9.3k of ups and downs with rocks, one of which I semi-turned my left ankle on, and at one point I heard a cow bell behind me and felt the ground under me tremble and turned around to see a clydesdale or some other equally massive equine barreling down on me full speed.  I stayed calm and stepped off the road, and he went by without incident to join his friends further down the road.  

Finally in Markina I found good cheap lodging for 12 euros and for the second night in a row it appears I'm the only one in the room.  I went to the restaurant that's also owned by the hostel owners to use their wifi and got to talking to Cecilia, an Ecuadorean girl who works there.  I finally got to ask someone the question I've been wondering about these tiny towns in the middle of the Basque Country  -- How are there so many Africans?  I had speculated that the Basque Country had programs for refugees and people seeking asylum, not only for humanitarian purposes but also because the more people the Basque Country can get speaking Basque and living in its small towns the more it bolsters the prominence and relevance of the language, but it's still strange to show up to a town of less than 5,000 people in a historically inaccessible and mountainous part of Vizcaya, and see a bunch of people from Cameroon standing on the corner.  From what I understood from Cecilia I was basically right.  In her case though she was slightly miffed because she said a lot of people come here and get help from the state and even though they could get a job, they don't.  She said there's no real incentive to work when the state will just maintain you.  

I had hoped to work a couple hours but the internet wasn't cooperating.  One of my goals on this walk is to not stress out about things I can't change, so rather than getting pissed off about the lack of internet I got to talking with a Polish kid who had walked into the restaurant who's also doing the camino.  The kid was an animal.  He basically walked all the way from where I was two days ago to Markina -- in one day.  In other words, he took today, one of the most challenging sections of the Camino in terms of elevation change and terrain, and tacked on about another 13k.  He explained that in Poland his job is to walk around in the mountains, so he's pretty used to it.  When he found out I was lugging around a computer so I could work he frowned and said, "I could never do that.  Computers aren't really my cup of tea."  I explained that they're not really mine either but that I had to make money somehow and that this job was allowing me to do this -- travel all over the world and do things like 825k walks through the north of Spain -- but he was staring glaze-eyed off into the distance at this point, so I quickly changed the subject and we began poring over his guidebook and discussing tomorrow's walk.  

I had decided that if I didn't work tonight it wouldn't be the end of the world, and went for a stroll to the church Markina is famous for.  Despite being dark inside and night outside, the door was open and I went inside where I was confronted with a massive rock.  By massive I mean about 20ft tall and 30 feet wide.  It's sitting in the middle of the church and it's the only thing in the church.  There were some pews around it and an alter in front of it, but basically there's a church in Markina - Xemeina that contains nothing more than an enormous boulder.  I have no idea about the history of the church or why the rock is there, but I assume it has something to do with paganism or that it's a meteorite and for the time being don't plan on going out of my way to read about it more, since in this case I actually do like the mystery.  

After leaving the church I walked back past the cultural center which had a nice glow about it and what looked like a cafe inside.  There were pinchos (little sandwiches and things -- basically tapas) out on the bar and the internet was plentiful.  The guy working there was extremely kind, too.  I worked for about an hour and a half and then my neck and shoulders started to hurt in pretty much every posture I tried, so I decided it was time to get out.  While working there though I enjoyed a glimpse of community life in Markina.  On one end of the cafe a group of guys in their early 30's prepared the stage for a concert this weekend, and people were constantly filtering in and out in little groups, speaking Basque and Spanish and saying hi to each other.  The music was also good.  The barista had Matt Costa playing, which was awesome until after about the third time through the same set of five songs on repeat.  

At the end of the night, the guy working there walked over and put some sandwiches on my table.  "Help yourself if you'd like," he said, "otherwise I'm just going to throw them out." I happily accepted them and instantly devoured two of them like a golden lab eating food that's fallen on the floor, and as I was getting ready to leave he came over and set down yet another sandwich.  When I was leaving he shook my hand and said, "My name is Borja", charged me 2.80 cents total, and I was off into the unseasonably warm Basque air rejoicing and thinking about what a wonderful night it had turned out to be.  

Day Three: Hip Problems

Classic Camino sign: arrows pointing in opposite directions

Well, I did something I probably shouldn't have done last night -- I splurged on a hotel.  I could've walked a couple more kilometers to a town that was having a festival, a festival that maybe only happens once a year, but I couldn't be bothered.  Before I knew it I had handed a piece of plastic to the woman at the reception and in return she handed me another piece of plastic, and her piece of plastic opened up a beautiful clean, cozy, warm room that was all my own.  For one night.  

I justified the hotel room purchase by the fact that since the little town was having a festival I could very well get there and there be no lodging available (backtracking is out of the question), and also by telling myself I would work an extra two hours this week to make up for it.  Which means I spent a good deal of my time at the beautiful little hotel working, though this was fine because I was tired as a dog from walking all day and didn't exactly want to go out and dance the cha cha or run wind-sprints. I did go for a stroll though., and Getaria is a nice little town.  At around 5pm like clockwork the inhabitants make their way to the public areas, parks and plazas, so their kids can play and run around and scream (sometimes in Basque, sometimes intelligibly).  During this time I walked down to the ocean, watched the swell rolling in and a fisherman with a rod about 20ft long trying his luck (in my life I've seen ONE person fishing from the shore actually catch something, and it was about five days ago in France), and then stopped in the main cathedral for which the town is somewhat known, possibly because the floor is slanted or because it seems to take up about half the city center.  On my way home I went grocery shopping and bought some corn on the cob, some arugula, yoghurt, an avocado, and some peanuts.  The body wants what it needs, and apparently my body really wanted arugula.  The women working in the store were speaking Basque, which was nice to hear.  Since saying the first day how I had heard no one speaking Basque I have since heard it quite a bit.

One thing I noticed after being in the hotel for about an hour, lying on the bed and generally letting my body slip into a state of torpor, was that my left hip started to seize up like an un-oiled Lada engine.  This was startling, since your hips are a fairly critical component for walking.  If it was my pinky I could ignore it, but everthing that's important for walking and keeping your self upright and passably homosapien is somehow connected to the hip.  And mine felt like it had just turned into cement.  I realized, upon reflection, that it probably had to do with the waist strap I was tightly cinching around it to take weight off my shoulders.  When I woke up it still felt pretty stiff, so I walked most of the day just using the shoulder straps, which of course meant that by about the 15th kilometer it felt like someone had thieved the Swiss Army Knife out of my sidepocket and driven it directly into my shoulders.    Luckily, today's walk was short.  Also luckily, my feet are still blister free (knock on wood).  And with blister-free feet, I feel like I shouldn't really complain.  

The town I made to today is called Deba.  It's small beach town of about 5,000 people, the last beach town before the Camino juts inland towards Bilbao.  At the tourist office the woman informed me that there's a shelter only for peregrinos, and that it costs five euros.  This is wonderful, the only slight downside being that there's no WIFI which means in order to work tonight I have to wait until the Spaniards wake up from their afternoon naps and go on a little bit of an internet wild goose chase.  It's annoying to have to work, but then again if I didn't have the job I currently have I wouldn't even be doing this right now.  So who am I to complain. The one thing I WILL complain about is how there's no one else in this hostel.  Which means another night of talking to myself and staring listleslly out the window.  However, I know if there was someone here the only thing that would be running through my head is, "Are they going to snore are they going to snore are they going to snore am I going to want to kill them" so I should probably just revel in the solitude.  

I've walked about 70km so far, and have about 798 to go.  Tomorrow's walk to Markina-Xemein will apparently reveal "the Basque Country's other face: mountainous, wooded, bathed in shadows, but also much more demanding and, at the sime time, singular and beautiful." (my crappy translation).  

I'm excited.

#pincho