Dreams and the Camino

Recurring Dreams in my Life

January 27

The three places that I return to in my dreams include a big old house that looks like an institution sometimes,  a tropical reef and a narrow,  winding river in the bush….Middle Cove or thereabouts.

Sandy I was going to tell you about my dream house first but instead I shall tell you about the tropical reef…coz I went there last night. Danton was there…I was horrified because he was not the only one visiting the reef on this particular location. A big old crocodile just happened to be there as well…I was so scared for Danton because he didn’t care. For a start he was lying on a very small sandbank with his back to the croc.
At one point he got up and gave the croc a hug or rather wrapped his arms around its head. He swam back to shore after that with the crocodile following him and me following the crocodile…then I woke up.

About my dream house…one part of consists of a long hallway with four large bedrooms either side of it. They have the appearance of faded mouldy grandeur….the carpets are all richly patterned and there are double beds…four poster style in each room…there is an overpowering smell of mould and dust and emptiness.

Another part of the house resembles part of a house that both you and I once occupied in the Forrest…the dining room which I have sequestered as my bedroom.  Another part contains a guest wing which is sometimes occupied by friends that I don’t know at all in this life…but friends I know very well, nevertheless, coz we have adventures together from time to time.
Yet another wing of this house is so old and dilapidated that just walking through it is dangerous in the extreme…and it is always dark. In some places the floorboards are so rotted away you can see the basement below where the lion lives.
The whole wing, which is really just one very large room,  is filled with furniture and other things…all in a dilapidated state. The kitchen is at the end of this of one very large room and beyond that water.

Sometimes… when I find myself in there creeping around trying not to disturb the lion…it disturbs me…like taking swipes at my foot when it goes through the floorboards or else it will amble by ever so nonchalantly.  To evade capture I press myself against the wall or hide behind a chair or some other bit of furniture and hold my breath. As it passes me he (yes it is a he) flicks his tail which always just misses me by a whisker…as if to say ‘I know your there you big buffoon’.

San Juan De Ortega…another extract from Sandy Parkers' Journal

May 2 2010

“This was my favourite place on the Camino. My accomplice Rob Millroy and I arrived there at 9.30 in the evening after the longest longest day of walking…28 kilometers I think.  I am so fit…I have been walking all day and I feel fine.

The albergue at San Juan Ortega is a thirteenth century monastery and the most amazing place we have stayed in so far. After dumping our back packs on our beds in the dorm we went to the local bar to get something for dinner. I ordered an egg sandwich which turned out to be a roll of ginormous size with omelet in it…no way could I eat that much bread so I discarded the roll and just ate the egg.

‘We live in a Beautiful World’ by Cold Play was playing on the radio and it lifted my spirits. I used to sing that song on the Camino but I had not heard it in my head for over a week…not since leaving the Pyrenees.
I went to bed on the top bunk that night that night…Rob on the top bunk next to me but I could not sleep. Rob wasn’t sleeping either. I had this idea that things might improve if we swapped beds so that I was sleeping on top of a man and he on top of a woman…and it worked like a dream. Within minutes we were snoring our heads off…knowing me and knowing Rob.

We left San Juan de Ortega about nine the next day but not before leaving crystal offerings.

At Atapuerca we met up with met Wolfgang…the second Wolfgang I should add…and had a nice chat. Saw Patrice again, the Italian lady with a leg injury, we met that morning at St Juan de Ortega.

I purchased three figurines at the shop in Atapuerca – a Neanderthal man and woman holding a baby and a sabre tooth lion…the man had a spear but when I got home and unwrapped it the spear was missing…so he’s got a toothpick instead…still it works and it’s a perfect fit.
All this stuff…the rocks…the figurines and some clothes I sent back to Australia… I could not carry them all Sandy. When next I walk the Camino I am not collecting anything…maybe one tiny rock… but that’s it.
Near Burgos a major city in the north of Spain I kept on seeing rocks and stones in the shape of maps of Australia and dead grey aliens…or were they babies…this was on the outskirts of the city…the industrial heart land as it were. I pocketed some of these rocks to add to my collection. I was wearing army style pants with pockets down the side and this was where I put them…that way I would not have to bear the weight of them in my back pack. I already had too many rocks as it was.

Upon our arrival in Burgos, we decide to spoil ourselves and stay in a hotel…couldn’t find the albergue in any case. There were flashing signs on billboards everywhere advertising the erroneous proposition that Burgos had more than fifty hotels. Well we walked for two hours around that city looking for a hotel…by this time my back was aching from the pack and my feet were covered in blisters…beating the pavement in a big city is far more grueling that walking through a forest…Sandy!

Passed two bars with the same name… El Horno and two funeral parlours…but still not hotel.

Passers by told us that most of the hotels in the city had been converted into apartment blocks. No one knew of the existence of any hotels at all…Sandy.  I just could not believe it…of all the cities and towns we passed through we never once had that problem and the irony of it…the sheer weirdness and ridiculousness of it…is that the city was full of billboards flashing signs advertising the non fact that it had more than fifty hotels in it.  I was incredulous Sandy…

Finally…around nightfall we found a little hotel called the Marie Luis and booked in for two nights. Too weird.

Can you imagine eating a burger that has four different kinds of half cooked meat in it as well as egg. That was dinner that night purchased at a nearby pub…horrible… I threw most of it out and I was hungry.
Burgos was definitely not the highlight of our pilgrimage…more like a shock introduction into reptilian society.

The next day leaving Burgos…I found a rock with an N on one side and a half face on the other…a little further on…I found another rock with the other half of the face on it. Strange but true.