Hornillos del Camino May 5 2010
Leaving Burgos behind, we set of on the most gruelling part of the pilgrimage…the arid and bleak plateau region otherwise known as the mesetta.
When I look back on my Camino pilgrimage, I remember it as a grand adventure and I tend to remember the good times rather than the bad…but bad times there were and very often a particularly amazing, beautiful, fun day or a stay in a monastery or old church or quaint medieval village or a beautiful walk in the woods or the mountains would be followed by a horrible day…the first day on the mesetta was one such day.
It started off badly. We had stopped at a village when Rob decided to get rid of his wind/rain jacket because as he put it ‘his mother had given it to him and therefore it had bad energy’. First off he threw it in garbage bin, but I retrieved it. I thought… since he didn’t want it I would keep it and it was a good quality jacket too…and since I didn’t have one…well…this was unacceptable to Rob because of lingering bad vibes upon my own personage.
I know I should have found a way to sneak it into my backpack or something but eventually I talked him into leaving it outside the local albergue for another pilgrim to find.
Leaving the village behind us and walking our way steadily uphill…it was a gentle slope… the wind soon picked up and so did the rain. I had one of those very thin poncho style raincoats that are effectively disposable after just a few wears.
Soon it was so windy the poncho was blowing about madly and whipping across my face so I tucked it into my belt…that was ok but the sleeves from elbow down on my own jacket were soon sodden. I kept on thinking about the jacket he had discarded and felt very angry. We walked in silence for a long time.
At one point I suddenly became aware that a friend of mine had died. Her name was Georgina and she was more of a friend of a friend...but we had become quite close in in the weeks before I left Australia. Georgina had endured a two year battle with a particularly virulent form of breast cancer which had spread to her bones and finally to her brain.
I stopped, suddenly, aware of a change in the atmosphere…the type of subtle nuance in energy flow that tells you someone you know has died or a beloved pet.
I started crying there and then. Rob rushed over – we often walked several metres apart - each of us lost in our worlds…even to the point of losing sight of one another. I buried my face in his shoulder and sobbed…I don’t even know why I reacted the way I did. We were not that close really but I liked her a lot.
Georgina did die four days later but I found out from my friend Maya that that was the day she slipped into a coma…never to wake up again.
I remember going to see her before I left for the Camino. I lent her my Mayan Calender to read. I said I would get it back upon my return.
We missed the turn to Arroyo San Bol and walked on to Hontanas.
Just past Hontanas…a bleak depressing place…one of those remote Spanish towns where the only people you see are old men drinking in a pub…not even any pilgrims….anyway we just missed hitting that truck...or did we…
Imagine this…a flat plain…you are plodding along in a daze blinded by wind and rain lashing at your face…you do not notice the narrow road up ahead…I only noticed the truck after I crossed the road…it missed me by a whisker…if at all…it just appeared over the crest of a hill and it was travelling at tremendous speed…a big red semi-trailer just like in my dream. What was it doing there in the first place?…big trucks like that don’t generally travel on lonely little roads in the middle of nowhere?
I became acutely aware of Georgina’s spirit just then. I looked up at the sky searching for a sign of her…a bird perhaps…but all I saw were clouds and all I could hear was the incessant flapping of my plastic poncho in the wind...but I knew she was there somewhere…in that vast emptiness… flying east.
At around dusk that night we stumbled exhaustedly into Hornillos…only to find that the one albergue was absolutely full of old ladies and a few old men. I could not believe it…did they arrive by bus or what? We saw no one on the walk there. So we and quite a few others were put in the sports hall, which was ok I suppose. It was somewhere to sleep.
However things got worse when we went to the only restaurant in town for the usual pilgrims fare. The restaurant was full up, so we waited along with a few others for a table to become empty, but none did and we were starving. I remember three glowering dark haired women who continued drinking wine at one table long after they finished eating. Finally they left but it was too late, the kitchen has closed. I was furious. Was this another one of the Camino’s tests…a test in tolerance or something. I could not see the point of it, if it was.
