Camino Journal Day 12

Around the circle from background to foreground: Victor, Marcos, Richard, Patricia, Ivan, & Diane

Noja, Spain

April 13

The days start to run together. It’s amazing how fast the body and mind can accustom themselves to just about anything. I’d met hundreds of people and shared thousands of small conversations, all meaningful in their own little special way. Joyfully waking up early reminded me of my years sleeping-in to 4pm. And despite the connotations that come along with this late and lazy rising, it’s the best way to deal with the Texas heat. Sleep all day with the a/c on and then go to the gig during the evening, stay up all night and get to sleep around 7 or 8 am as it starts to heat up again. Maybe during the hottest years on the planet, humans could adopt a schedule like this. Sleeping in the cool underground or caves, or if energy is available, in the sinful 68F degrees of air condition inside, while the outside swelters to over 115F degrees.

Being a little hung over, I dragged a little bit getting my things together before Victor and I headed to the cafe for breakfast. It wasn’t open yet, but there was a man moving around inside.

“Hola. They told us you open at 7 this morning? Are yall open.” Victor asks.

Liendo, Spain - View from trail

“Joder! Who told you that? We always open at 7:30,” the man yells back grumpily. Maybe he hadn’t had his coffee yet. Victor and I waited out on the patio. I smoked cigarettes and Victor laughed at how rude the man had been. I was glad to be with a Spanish guy cause then I was sure they weren’t being rude because I was an American. We heard the man moving around a little more and then at about 7:25am the espresso machine fired up and brewed four or five successive charges. At 7:31 the man opened the doors. Victor and I went in and stood at the bar without being attended. The barman finished up the three cafes he was making and as soon as he turned to put them on the bar top, three municipal workers came walking up to scoop the small cups to their lips for their ritual morning coffee.

The barista asked each their food order and after finally setting down the last plate, turn to Victor and I and asked, “Have you two sirs been attended to yet?”

I let Victor lead, although in the middle of nowhere Liendo, Cantabria, he was just as much a foreigner as I was. Victor looked at me, then behind us. He had a great sense of humor, and with a kind face and soft tone said, “Oh, no sir. We’ve not been attended to yet,” I exploded inside with laughter and pride to be with this guy. He is a P.E. teacher, but from then I referred to him as the fireman. He let it all roll down his back. Nothing got to him. He smiled and waited patiently for the barman to ask his order, and he starts to realize we are at least both educated individuals capable of carrying on in a decent manner through this world. You could feel him ease up on us the more he conversated and the more social clues he gathered. By this time, he was certain Victor was from Spain, and although he wasn’t sure yet about me, finally put his hands on the counter and asked, “Okay, gentleman, what’ll it be?” Wednesdays. Am I right?

I ordered toast with tomato and olive oil with an orange juice and cafe con leche. Pretty standard for me at this point. My body enjoyed the light and nutritious breakfasts and I looked forward to setting off for 20 miles after eating, something that could never happen over an American breakfast, and I wouldn’t even attempt walking home after an English breakfast, they are so heavy. It’s insane that people go in and sit at their computers and “work” on a all that food. A nap is the only place I’m going after bacon, eggs, biscuits, gravy, grits, cheese, sausage, and beans. Beans! The English eat baked beans for breakfast. I’m still saying the Spanish really have it down. Something light with a little sugar, just enough to get the body going. Then a big meal at lunch, with the nap afterward.

Feeling generous, I invited Victor to his breakfast. He smiled and replied, “I’ve got two beers in my bag for the midday break. I’ll give you one.”

Leaving Liendo with Victor

Victor is a P.E. instructor; he likes to do physical fitness stuff and had started back in Irun a few days prior. His friend Started in Bilbao and now he was about to catch him. He’d been walking 30+ miles a day and welcomed my company for a short (for him) 20-mile day to Noja to catch his friend. The scenery was gorgeous, and I fell into Victor’s slipstream like water down a mountain. My hangover vanished as we caught rhythm on the trail. In Santona we caught a little ferry across the bay, and I had Victor snap a picture of me in the same spot I was in 2019. I remembered back that it took me three weeks to get to this point and here I was on day 12. I was proud that I’d maintained some of the habits and healthy benefits of walking during the three years it had been between Caminos. Victor and I had our beers and kept going down the trail with small talk and jokes about life, love and happiness.

Ferry to from Noja to Santona

We stopped in the city center for a snack, and I ordered a plate of Boquerones. Turns out they are really expensive now. 10 euros for a plate. I ate them gladly, as they are light but nutritious and would get me back on the Camino with plenty of energy and without a heavy stomach.

“Man, the people here are totally fucked,” Victor says looking around.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, look at them, they are fucked up, drugged out, crippled, depressed, injured and destroyed - jodido, tio. I don’t know what’s going on here.”

“Maybe the pandemic?”

“Clearly, but damn. This is depression. Let’s get out of here.”

Anchovies in vinegar

We get back on the trail and head up a small mountain. The views are incredible, and the trail led through a small forest right there on a seaside cliff. You go up, through the tree cover on a winding trail of compressed beach sand and rock. there are places where if you misstep, you could be falling 100s of feet down. People had warned us as we approached the beginning of this trail that the only way to be rescued from there if something happens is by CareFlite.

Like two schoolboys out on a new adventure, our eyes sort of lit up at each other hearing this. It was a delight to have such a challenge right here on the Camino, a challenge that surely thousands of pilgrims completed every year. It was only once every few years someone hurt themselves. Victor curious to be sure we were going the right way, he asked an older woman standing in front of her door, “Excuse me maam, Is this the way on to the way?”

“Ah, my child, my child Good day. What did you say?” she steps down off the small porch step with her hand cupped behind her ear.

“If we are going the right way. Some others told us this way is really dangerous and maybe we should go around.”

“Yall are walking the Camino? Marvelous. Oh, it’s just beautiful up there. I make the walk every day,” she’s staggering toward us with her small waist high privacy fence covered in trailing ivy between us. Her white hair shines in the sunlight. She must be at least 90 years old. I look over at Victor and he smiles back at me with a quizzical laugh of disbelief. The woman, almost stumbling over as she reached out to brace herself on the fence continued, “Oh you must go that way. It’s absolutely beautiful. My husband and I walk it every day. The trees hug you and bring you in close. You breathe with them. It’s a world apart.”

“Muchas gracias,” Victor claps his hands together in front of him and does a small bow. The old woman was distinguished.

We head up the trail and suddenly Victor asks me, “How long do you think it’s been since her husband died? There’s no way that lady is walking up this hill every day. Did you see her almost fall over? Oh, the shame! I wish I’d not asked her. She was doing just fine on her porch there alone.”

2022

On the way in Santona

2019

Same place 3 years earlier

“You think it’s Alzheimer’s, then?” I ask following his deduction.

“Yeah man. And I wonder if anyone knows she’s out here alone like that. What if she actually tried to go up the hill again? It’s gotta be weird to not know what part of your life your in.”

“Hey, it can’t be all bad,” I say. “At least she’s remembering and talking about the things she loves. Must be a good day for her to think that she’s still returning with her husband back home after their walks.”

“But isn’t that denial? Will she even be able to get back up to the porch?” Victor asks. “I’d want to be put out of my misery if I was that lost and confused. I guess she’s better off than being in one of those nursing homes left to die, surrounded by nothing that belongs to you, no possessions to remind you, just sterile beige-colored walls and empty smells of rubbing alcohol. Man, I couldn’t do that. Kill me first, ya know?”

After a little walking I chimed in, “There might be something to it after all. Ya know, believing the reality you want to live in. Maybe Alzheimer’s is partly a disease of not being able to control some sort of reality filter. Some sort of brain mechanism that controls memory and time. Could even be a sort of coping mechanism to help with a detox and withdrawal from living in this world as we get ready to pass to the next. Her body is old, and she hasn’t been up this hill with her husband in years, but she thinks she did it just today.”

“What do you mean ‘the next life’. You sound so certain,” he laughs at me a little in jest. “You don’t believe in God do you? Some old man in the sky. Maybe he’s the one keeping an eye on that old woman. I don’ t know who’s crazier her or you!” Victor laughs and looks back to make sure he knows he’s only having a little fun at my expense. All in good nature assuredly. “I guess it really wouldn’t matter if I lived like that. I wouldn’t really know it. It would be like a goldfish swimming around in the same old bowl with a new thought process every few seconds. I guess in that respect it doesn’t really matter where you live if you’re basically braindead. That’s why I love physical fitness, I don’t want to go out that way. Gotta keep this brain and body healthy.”

We settle into our own rhythms, and we separate heading down the trail. Victor’s friends and their group were hanging out on the beach and pretty much done walking for the day. We’d already gone 15 miles and I’d wait to check out the situation before deciding where to book my room for the night. There wasn’t an albergue in Noja. It is a quaint seaside town mainly thriving on tourism, and this is the first week they are back open for business. Victor says he’s heard of a fiesta tonight in the main plaza.

Roman bridge on the trail between Liendo and Noja

Coming out of the small beach front forest, the trail deposits you out onto a mile long sandy swath with boulders strewn about. I hate walking on the sand. It gets everywhere, and apparently Victor’s friends are holed up in a little boulder-created-alcove, beaching it for the rest of the afternoon. When we arrive, they are all pretty happy to see us. Victor introduced me to Marcos, his buddy, and Marco introduced us to his crew he’d met along the way. It’s a group of two more Spanish people (a couple named Ivan and Patricia) and a couple of British friends named Denise and Richard.

There is a slight bit of uneasiness as we all make our greetings. I realize that not only does Victor prefer to speak in Castellano, he also doesn’t like to speak in English. Marcos’ group has been predominantly speaking together in English, and I’m proud to see a few Spanish people making the effort. For them it is very hard to speak in English despite years of classes in public education. They are the same as all us Texans coming out of high school and never speaking another word of Spanish.

It may not seem like a big deal but deciding on a common language with group is a sensitive matter and one that can split up travel companions pretty easily. The reason Marco’s group was speaking in only English is because the British people didn’t speak or understand Spanish. They’d formed their Camino family around this and so with all the care in the world to make sure his new friends were continued to be included in the group, Marcos would only talk to Victor in English. Patricia and Ivan followed suit, and even when I attempted to speak in Spanish with the group, they retorted in English. It was set, after a full day of speaking in Spanish with Victor, I was thinking in Spanish and my English had reverted to some sort of mimicked European version of an accent. I spoke slower and with many more pauses and threw out using phrasal verbs all together and kept the endings to my words clear and pronounced. To talk like a Texan with European speakers is impossible. I only ended up repeating myself, so I adopted a new European dialect, but I hated it. I preferred speaking in Spanish to the bastardized English I was accustomed to using while traveling Europe.

Needless-to-say, I sounded pretty stupid talking to the Brits that way and found myself code-switching between talking really slow and simple to the Spanish people and then turning and trying to get back to my Texas accent to show some genuineness to my new English-speaking friends. It was a kind of nightmare, but I was happy to be hanging out and meeting some new people. They really did have their groove going though, and it was hard for Victor and I to find a place in their group at first.

I sat up on a high bolder and aired out my feet and socks, safe that no sand would get anywhere. I sang a few songs for them and passed the guitar to Diane. She played a couple beautiful instrumentals to applause before passing it back. Getting bored started to hurry the group along a little to get moving. They had found a surf hostel about a mile or two up the way and would be staying there. I was getting antsy and so got my boots back on and loaded up and started off down the beach. Noticing the time, the others soon followed behind. Victor was a little thrown off at Marcos’ insistence that they speak English. They had different reasons for being out on the Camino that’s for sure. For Marcos it was all about getting better in English, and the only way to do that is to conversate constantly. The group had made a silent pact to all get better at English together and not let anything stop them. It was beautiful to watch their dedication. I’d also had to go through this while living in Barcelona in 2006. At first there is a large group effort to embrace the foreign culture and language, but it can quickly devolve into a hanging with solidified groups of ex-pats who have no desire to learn the language anymore and go about their lives only speaking in English.

The surf hostel is all blue in chipped paint and made of metal. It doesn’t seem very nice and cost 18 euros per person. I looked on Booking and found a private room on the other side of the city for 25 euros. I said I’d see the group later that night in the main plaza for the fiesta and headed off to my hotel. It was another hour or so walk across the town and on the way, I notice a hippy lady in front of me. Her dreadlocks sticking out the back of her bandana tied around her head. She’s walking super slow and I can’t tell if she’s a pilgrim as she has no backpack. I try to keep a slow pace to not come running up on her, but she keeps slowing and finally I go to pass her,

”Are you looking for the hostel?” I hear her ask me just before I am completely out of sight. She’s in her early 20s, sounds German and has some really cool tattoos sporadically covering her legs and arms. I was a little throwed to hear her speak to me. Most women who don’t know me are not too willing to approach me or speak with me when alone and we’ve never met, I’m a large guy and have been told I look a little ‘hardened’.

”Oh, no. I’m going to a hotel up this way. What are you doing? Walking the camino?”

“Yes. but I’m injured. My foot is hurt very badly, and I have blisters. I am going to rest in Santander a few days and then go leave the Camino Norte for the Camino Frances. I have a friend on that one and she says the trail is much flatter and enjoyable.”

“Oh my, that’s terrible about your foot,” I say. She’s young and impressionable and looks tired and it’s very hot out today. I invite her for a small beer, and we head over to a little bar cafe just up the way. I order us a couple of Shandy’s and some olives to pick at. The waitress brings us out a free tapa, two croquettes of some type.

“We are finally in the land of the free tapa,” I say to her trying to gauge how much she knows about Spain and all.

“What do you mean? There have been so many tapas already. The whole Basque Country is so proud of their creations.”

“Well, those are pinchos, actually, and they cost you around 2 euro each. In most of Spain you get a little something like this croquette with each beer or drink you order. I’m just so happy to see the hospitality again. Eat one,” I motion for her to take.

“Oh, no, I can’t I’m vegetarian. It probably has meat of some kind."

I laugh nodding my head and taking a bite of one of the croquettes. “It’s hard to be vegetarian in Spain, huh? Oh, but this tastes like squash. Maybe it’s vegetarian. Let’s ask her.”

I flag the waitress and get the ingredients, sure enough it was a vegetarian croquette made with squash, zucchini, and a few other veggies and milk. It was my first ever vegetarian croquette. I was overjoyed as I watch Beccy enjoy her first Spanish croquette, a rite of passage some would say.

The best sparkling mineral water

Beccy is so young and beautiful and full of hope and youthful curiosity. You can tell the North Way had been killing her though. The mountains really are no joke. She felt a little defeated. I noticed a butterfly tattoo on her arm and gave her over one of my new stickers. We were both so excited to see the signs of the universe leading the way. Beccy tells me she has a boyfriend, but they are in an open relationship.

“I just can’t justify missing out on parts of life in order to maintain a relationship with someone. If they love me, then they will be supportive of my growth and new experiences,” she explains, “Once a few years ago, I had a boyfriend. I went on a trip and met this amazing guy who I felt like was supposed to be a very important part of my life, but I didn’t act on it out of loyalty to my boyfriend. I regret that so much now. I wonder what could have happened between me and this boy. So now I have it as a condition to date me. The relationship must be open. I must have the freedom to explore and experience this life with other people, without jealousy and possessiveness and judgement, you know? And that includes going with women too.”

She’s proud of who she is. There are so many mixed messages coming at me as I process all she’s saying. It’s like she is inviting me to know her, setting boundaries and laying out her expectations all at once. Such a determined young woman. She’s an artist as well and shows me some of her drawings. I try my best to listen and practice my true-listening techniques, but also interject with little nuggets of wisdom when I can. I’m nearly 20 years older than her. I wonder if I will ever have the privilege to love a young woman again. To be a part of that magical formation as they truly blossom and become independent beings of this earth. The tinder nature of limitless possibilities causes me to feel a little smitten but know I don’t have anything but encouragement to really offer this woman, and she gladly soaks up every morsal I dish out. It’s innocent and I’m enjoying being the older wise man for once.

After our couple of Shandys we head over to a bench looking out over the bay and talk some more about butterflies.

“I grow the passion vine back home,” I tell her. “Every year it brings a ton of butterflies to feast on the foliage. It’s beautiful. My favorite lyric in my new song, the one that goes with that sticker I gave you, is “what goes in/never comes out of the cocoon.”

“Oh, that’s beautiful,” she butts in. “Aren’t we all just trying to transform ourselves? I wish I could find my cocoon,” she says.

I tell her about Hope For The Flowers, one of my favorite illustrated books and show her a couple of the drawings. It’s a book about transformation and the miracle of the butterfly. I tell her I’d love to hire her to draw some stuff for my music-art sometime and she agrees. We exchange our Instagram handles and agree to try and meet up for another beer in Santander and say goodbye, “Send me the songs so I can draw you something,” she yells as I’m almost out of ear shot.

As I made my way over to my hotel to check in, I couldn’t help but wonder if I should have been more forward with this beautiful young woman, but then decided that everyone deserves to be spoken to and treated nicely without expectations. It’s hard for me to get to know women at times, because they, and I, are so conditioned to assume what the other wants. I grow tired of only talking with guys my whole life. All my friendships have been with men, and a woman has almost always been something to conquer. Someone to possess as my own, who will worship and love me, and my actions are always, albeit subconscious, aimed at this one and only holy goal that naively culminates immaturely into one-night stands of dissatisfaction. It’s taken a lot of will power over the years to refrain from taking what is so innocently offered. I was proud to have acted honorably, without expectation and without pressuring the woman into anything. Drinking and talking with her about life as two ships passing in the night.

Walking the city of Noja

I doubted I would see her again but hoped maybe for a beer and a romance in Santander in a few days. Could I deal with the fleeting nature of a love affair with a woman already in a relationship? How long until I began to rid myself of the other man? Maybe I could pay Beccy to draw me some art and that would be that. I looked down at my crotch, “Keep it together you selfish piece of shit! You don’t deserve her beauty. I don’t like you anymore.” It’s hilarious to me that man was made with enough blood to properly support either his brain or penis, but not both at the same time. Was my penis another brain? I laughed out loud to myself. If it was, it was at least getting older and tiring out some. I laughed some more to myself remembering a poem Willie Nelson wrote on his 75th birthday titled I’ve Outlived My Pecker:

My nookie days are over, my pilot light is out.

What used to be my sex appeal, Is now my waterspout.

Time was when, on its own accord, from my trousers it would spring.

But now I’ve got a full-time job to find the fucking thing.

It used to be embarrassing, the way it would behave.

For every single morning, it would stand and watch me shave.

Now as old age approaches, it sure gives me the blues.

To see it hang its little head and watch me tie my shoes!!

I wondered if I’d ever get to this point in life. Jesus said if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. For it is better to enter the kingdom of heaven missing body parts than to have your whole body burn in hell. Man, these days every man around would be blind. Some men are insanely cutting their penises off. I pulled out my pocket-sized notebook I kept in the front zipper of my pack and scribbled a new monster to the list. #5 The Insatiable Worm.

Victor was the 7th to check in with his group and because the rooms where 6 bunks in each, he’d be the odd man out and decided to book a private room at the same place I was. When I got there he was outside smoking a cigarette.

“Where you been, Pepe?” he asked me. “I thought maybe you weren’t coming.”

“No, no. I met another pilgrim on the way over here and we stopped and had a couple beers. Might meet back up with her tonight if there is a fiesta,” I replied setting my pack down and getting my credentials out to approach the front desk.

“Her? You have been with una chica?” he asks surprisingly.

“Yeah, but it’s nothing like that. We just talked,” I said, walking away and toward the clerk who was now waiting on me.

“It’s never not like that, dude. You can’t fool me,” he shouts as I move out of earshot.

The Plaza in Noja

Standing there waiting for the clerk to collect my information I thought about Beccy. Maybe I should send her a message that was little more forward. I guess that’s how people are hooking up these days. The few times over the last couple years I’ve ask a woman for her number or out on a date, they looked and acted like I was their dad asking them if everything was going okay with their period. I didn’t even know where to begin. Years ago, I resolved to just let it happen. If a woman wants something bad enough, she’ll either ask for it or take it. They also know the man can only run one brain at a time.

I took a nice hot shower and changed into a clean set of clothes and met Victor out front to go explore the city before meeting back with Marcos and his group. We’d walked about 18 miles for the day, but my body felt good. I was a little tired, but after a while, you just kind of go on walking and doing your life. The human being can accustom itself to anything. “Except maybe stepping in the dirty shower water of the other pilgrims at the albergues,” I thought to myself, “That, I am unwilling to do at this point”

Victor and I hit a grocery store and then walk the entire city adding another three miles to our journey. Marcos and his group had to walk at least a mile from the surf hostel to the city center and I had my doubts they’d actually show up. We got some quintos (a fifth of a liter bottle of beer) and some papas bravas while chilling and waiting for the group. Our tab for four small beers and the potatoes was around 15 euros.

“Is this right?” I asked Victor

“This shit is fucked,” he replies, “I can’t believe these prices. The people are ripping us off. The potatoes were shit also. And 2.50 for a quinto, unbelievable.”

I was right to suspect something off. I remember when quintos were 80 cents just a few years ago. For 80 cents you could have 200ml of beer and a tapa and be satisfied for a few hours. Do those 5 times a day and you survive on very little money.

“I guess they gotta make their money after being shut down for two years,” I say finishing the last potatoes and swig off my beer. “I thought for a minute these prices were just for the foreign pilgrims, but now that I’ve been traveling with you all day, I see it’s for everyone.”

“Yeah, the people got to make their money, but Spanish salaries can’t support this,” he says shaking his head, “But fuck it, tio. I’m on vacation. I gotta enjoy. I saved up the money and I don’t really care what it costs. No sense worrying about it.” He invited me to this round. I loved that about the Spanish. Taking turns paying the whole bill instead of splitting it up is always the way to go. It’s just money, after all.

On our way to finally meet the group, I was able to catch a grocery store and buy a couple of canned Shandys. Realizing I had exactly five minutes to get to the tobacco shop before it would be closed for a few days for holiday, I gave Victor my groceries and sprinted across the plaza. I got to the door of the tobacco shop and before I could even set one foot inside I hear yelling,

“Eh! Mask! Mask! You have to put a mask on before you enter here.”

I stop and check my pockets for my mask. I’d left it in the grocery bags with Victor. There was no time. “Do you sell masks here?”

“No. You need to go to the pharmacy.”

“But they closed a few hours ago,” I say with a pleading tone.

“I’m sorry. You must wear a mask to come in here.”

“What if I just toss you the money,” I ask condescendingly and a bit defeated. The tobacco shops are small little stores with barely enough room to stand in them to order anything. This was just rediculous. Why was she acting this way? I stood outside and played “hey mister” for the remaining 3 minutes the store would be open. An older man with a cane took pity on me and asked me what I wanted.

“Pueblo Blue,” I said and quickly gave him a 10 euro bill.

He entered the store without putting his mask on, bought his and my tobacco, came back and gave me the goods along with the change, that he insisted I take, and moseyed along his way. I looked back in the shop as the clerk pulled the chain linked store shop shutter to a close and we locked eyes. A beam of hatred, fear and disgust came from her pupils and penetrated my body. I looked away hastily, and then back again. She’d turned her back and was locking the last lock. How strange. “Fucking pilgrims,” I thought and walked back over to Victor who was now sitting around a table with Marcos and everyone else.

Beach in Noja

As the group sat around a table in the nighttime plaza of Noja, paying out the ass for liquor drinks I said I was going to call my mother and sat over to the side on the steps to an Ampitheater, smoke a spliff and drank my beers. There wasn’t a party tonight. It was Wednesday. It was the first official day of the Spanish Holiday. Schools were out, all jobs were off. This is the first big festival in over 2 years, since March 2020.

I joined the group for chit-chat around the table for a while before we wondered off to find something to eat. Victor and I had seen a kebab place on our walk around the city and so tried to get the group back over there. Without shame, Victor would ask anyone along the way for directions and so we see a teenager smoking a cig in front of a building and ask him where the kebab place is.

He goes on giving elaborate directions in order to get to the best place in the city and while he’s gesturing with big hand motions that we walk what seemed miles and miles, the group all but turning around and giving up, I see a Kebab place right next to us across the street.

“Hey, what about that place, though,'“I ask?

“Oh, that place,” the kid coolly looks to where I’m pointing trying to shield the fact, he hadn’t seen the place either. His cover was blown. He was fucking with us. Probably not even from here. He pulled down his hoody off his head and took a mean drag on his cigarette, “That place there. That place sucks. The worst food in town. You don’t want to go there.” He stomps his cigarette out and walks off.

“What you think man?” Victor asks me.

“I say let’s go. It’s right there and the group is tired.”

“Yea, but he just told us it sucks.” Victor says and looks over at Marcos who is a little ways back on the hill and his friends even another little ways back from that.

“Victor, we gotta go home. To sleep man. We are beat.” Marcos says defeated from walking.

“Come on it’s right here. Just a few more steps,” Victor resolves to disregard the rating of the young Spanish kid and we all go in to eat.

To our surprise the kebabs are only 2 euros each on Wednesdays. It was a celebration of epic proportions. We ate the delicious food with silent satisfaction. The whole group ordered one round, and then in sequence we all went back to the bar and ordered another. They usually cost 4-6 euros.

Like stuffed pigs we celebrated with a couple rounds of Orujo. Marcos and his group took the long walk back to their hostel and Victor and I stayed and drank more liquor and flirted with the waitress while I excused myself to step outside a few times to take puffs off a spliff.

Left to Right: Richard, Denise, Ivan, Marcos, I can’t remember, Patricia, Victor and Me

Having 2-euro Kebabs

She was a gypsy type from Romania. Black hair and dark eyes. She was loud and powerful and had a way of being just so sexy.

“What do you like to do when you’re not working here,” I finally ask her as she pours Victor and I another Orujo.

She smiles at both of us and says in all seriousness, “I like to eat, and I like to fuck. What about you?”

Not to be out done by provocation I quikly retorted, “And I suppose you sorta of like raising kids then, huh?”

“Yes, I love my kids.”

Victor chimes in, “How many kids do you have.”

“5.” she replies.

“Joder! 5 kids!” Victor exclaims, “That’s incredible.”

“What’s incredible is this ass,” she says while giving one of her cheeks a loud slap. That how I keep getting them.” she moved over toward Victor and started talking only with him. The alcohol magnified my rejection, even if it harmless and playful. “And you have the most beautiful blue eyes, baby. I love them. Way prettier than your friend’s here.”

She disappears around the back. Her mother, sitting at corner spot on the bar watches and smiles as her daughter works us over like the drunken tourists we are.

“Ah damn, Victor! Ain’t nobody ever said I didn’t have the prettiest eyes. You son of a bitch!” Even if neither of us were going to go home with her, it was still a small defeat for my pride to have her hypothetically choose another man over me. I said quietly to my dick realizing how bad the situation actually stung, “You’re a small minded, uncultured egotistical bastard who only thinks about yourself!”

Victor flutters his eye lids at me mockingly and laughs but doesn’t say anything. A new barman comes back in and says he’s just returned from taking our friends back to their hostel. He’d caught them outside just as they were beginning to walk off and he was coming back into work. He also waited tables on the square while managing this place in the night. He looked exhausted.

“That’s super kind of you. Thank you. They did not want to walk.” Victor says as we order two Pacharan as a night cap. We drink chatting with the barman. He’s Muslim and it’s Ramadan. He can finally eat, and cracks open a Coca-Cola and enjoys it with us while we sip our berry liquor.

“It makes you sometimes really dizzy to not eat all day. I feel nauseous and then when I can eat, I can’t because I don’t feel good. That’s why I start with the coke. I have to consume all I need before sunrise. It does help me to remember my God. When I get hunger pains, I ask the Lord to help me be strong.” He’s dedicated and I see the beauty in what he’s talking about.

“And he takes away your hunger?” I ask curiously.

“No, he helps me to deal with it in a better way,” he replies with solemn wisdom.

As Victor and I walked back to the hotel, he phones the woman from the Kebab place by looking up the number to the establishment on his phone.

“What was the name of that place?” he asked busting out laughing in vain at his last ditch effort for some action this evening. He’d been hoping for a huge party and celebration when he caught up with his buddy. A feat that should not go unnoticed. In the same time his buddy had done about 40 miles, Victor did over 120. This anti-climatic night was still being fought off by the alcohol coursing his veins. And the Camino will do you like that. As you walk, many fantasies and thoughts arise to keep you pushing on, promises and whispers of how great it will be just a few more miles up the trail. When you get there it’s just more of the same, though. But people keep coming back time after time and listening to the whispering promises of the way

The gypsy woman answers, and he drunkenly informs her of who he is and how he got the number and then awkwardly asks if she knows where any fiesta is. She gives him some directions to some clubs and after walking around for a little bit looking for some life to the city and finding none, we resolve to go back to the hotel and have one more beer from the vending machine and hit the sack. I’d ended the day with 23 miles.

Tomorrow I’d meet my contact in Ajo. Victor and his group would be going on to Guemes to a hippy commune there. I wondered if I’d see him again. It was late so I’d probably sleep in, and I had a call with Fort Worth Roots podcast to check in on my adventures and single releases at 10am.