Camino Quote #1

Uttered last night at dinner in regards to the communal albergue living...

"I went on vacation and slept with hundreds of strangers." - Rick Mitchell

To which was added...

"And often 20 or 30 at the same time." - Tess Ward

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Spanish maffia. Take notice of who doesn't belong in this pic.





Grafoodi at its most magnificent.





Logrono stroll.

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Location:Calle de la Mina,Nájera,Spain

Tapas of Happiness

Warning: This blog contains Tess' meager attempts to wax philosophical.

There are times in each of our lives (such a cliche intro, no?) when we find ourselves consumed by happiness. I'm not talking about the big enchiladas of life - not weddings or babies being born or passing your driving test - but, rather, the tapas of happiness that catch you off guard. Those little, bite-sized morsels of joy you know are fleeting, but you savor just the same.

Today, after a long humid hike to Najera, I was standing looking out the wall of open windows in our hotel room, enjoying the peace and quiet you can't find in the crowded albergues, thinking about the soft bed that awaited my tired body that night, feeling the cool wind on my skin that a thunder storm had swept in, watching the swallows as they enacted their evening dance through the rooftops, feeling the relief of my sore muscles as I stretched, listening to Adele sing her soul out on my iPad and finding myself mesmerized by a patch of blue in the grey sea of clouds fight to shed light on the darkened village streets, when I actually heard come out of my mouth the phrase, "I've never been so happy". It took me aback and startled even my mother. It's not like me to let sentimentality overtake me in such a blatant way, but in that small delicious tapas moment I meant every word.

The Camino is like that. It's not about one grand eureka epiphany where everything in your life suddenly comes together and makes sense. It's about that ice cold Coke enjoyed while looking out at an endless sea of green leafy vineyards. It's the crisp, clean sheets on your bed that still smell like soap. It's smearing chocolate frosting on a baguette as the sun rises and laughing as Lizzie exclaims, "I feel like a kid who got into the cupboard and hasn't been discovered yet!" It's fresh mint leaves for your water bottle. Finding a miniature sized shampoo in the mercado. Discovering that, finally, YES! your pants now need a belt to keep them up. And hearing "Buen Camino" from a jubilant stranger, just when you feel like giving up.

The Camino isn't a buffet of oversized portions. It's a tapas bar I get to discover for three months and 1,000 miles. And so far, I have loved every last bite.

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Mom and I walked separately for awhile today, so I didn't take my usual overload of pics, but a few gems from Najera.





And I thought the top bunk in the albergue was a precarious place to perch.





The cliffs above our hotel lined with majestic cranes contemplating the night.

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Location:Calle de la Mina,Nájera,Spain

Bird's-eye View

Right now I am sitting on the top, corner bunk in a large, clean and modern room sheltering 30 people in the Puerta del Revelin Albergue. From this vantage point I can see many the personal story unfold as pilgrims - both walkers and cyclists - rest and recover from the day's 16.6-mile hike. Perhaps it could be construed as spying, but as a writer, I consider it research. If I were drinking a cold cerveza in my bunk as I did said 'research' it would no doubt be a tax write off... Hold on...

...Okay I'm back with my write off.

To the far left of the room a Canadian couple have been scream-whispering to one another for the last twenty minutes, arguing back and forth about who will get the bottom bunk (the treasured bunk) that night. The air between them is tense and bitter. I feel for both of them. Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt. By contrast, on the right side of the room are a Spanish couple, Paolo and Esperanza. We've spent the last several nights in the same albergue, and today on the Camino we snapped a picture of them holding hands as they walked. This couple (in their 40s) do yoga together by their bunks and then trade off massaging peppermint cream into each others exhausted leg muscles. (The aroma of the cream, thankfully, masks a lot of other pilgrim odors.) They are the Camino poster couple - loving, supportive, joyful and quick to laugh.

In the middle of the room are two young, gorgeous Spanish cyclists (with a penchant for going shirtless in the coed bathroom, might I add) busy checking emails on their phones and memorizing tomorrow's route. There are the New Zealand couple uploading pics to their blog. The young Canadian folding his laundry while getting to know an American woman who is eager for the company. The group of Germans assessing and mending their feet. The female Brazilian cyclist who stayed behind today because of a bum knee is perusing maps. And then there's our little group. Mom is sleeping in between checking on our dryer. Emily has her eye mask on - out like a light. Lizzie is shutting her eyes, happy for this snore-free period of the communal living day. Rick has hit the showers. And myself, while typing this blog, am thinking of a heaping plate of Mexican food that I know, sadly, is a long time out of reach.

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Los Arcos to Logrono.





Pilgrim oasis.


Chicken crossing.


Sunday afternoon bike riding lesson from dad.


This place, 150meters down the road, was an old woman standing behind a tiny wooden stand stamping pilgrim credentials and selling cold drinks which her son ran inside the house to fetch. A family business. And probably making a killing.


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Location:Calle del Teniente Coronel Santos Ascarza,Logroño,Spain

Saint Francis of Assisi in Spain; The Knights Templar

Kay's Slideshow:



Fountain outside of Sanguesa, Spain dedicated to St. Francis where he is believed to have stopped on his pilgrimage. Ironically, a sign indicates that animals are not permitted.


Across the Valley from the fountain is the first Franciscan Monastery in Spain also founded by him on the pilgrimage.


Mysterious in origin, this octagonal church outside of Obados is believed to have been founded by the Knights Templar.


Beautifully maintained church of Santa Maria in Sanguesa with art dating from the 9th to 15th century. I lit candles for all of those on the "Camino" prayer list and for all of you who put them there.


Church in Torres del Rio with octagonal layout and lantern, which may also have also been founded by the Knights.

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Location:Logronos, Spain

More Lost Nikon Pics

Breakfast.





Pyrenees antelope does 'Blue Steel'.









Dark bar pic taken with our Spanish pilgrim buddies Carlos, Martin and a precious guy whose name we don't remember but who had a heart of gold.


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Location:Arcos, Spain

Long Lost Nikon Pictures!

Just a sampling of what you've been missing with the iPhone.








Our gite in Maubourguet where Gigi the dog peed under my bed.





Evening olive break.


Oloron-Sainte-Marie


Pyrenees beginnings.





2 Pyrenees sunrises.


Gite the day mom and I lost each other.





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Location:Arcos, Spain

Day and Night

The difference between the Voie d'Arles/Camino Aragones routes that took us through the Pyrenees to Puente la Reina and the Camino Frances, of which we now walk upon, is night and day. Like comparing a Sunday jog to the Boston Marathon. Or Amy Grant to Lady Gaga. The first was a quiet pensive time where days flew by without seeing a single other human being on the trail, let alone another pilgrim. You could pee freely in a bush by the side of the road without fear of mooning someone. Communal gites were often entirely empty. On the trail you felt like a discoverer - following a path that few others chose (the Voie d'Arles is one of the least trafficked Caminos) and proud of yourself for finding the next town without getting lost.

But as soon as we stepped foot in Puente la Reina where we intersected with the popular Camino Frances, we knew things would be different. Not only is the trail pilgrim-friendly with an abundance of Pilgrim Albergues, food, bars, water stops, shops selling plastic scallop shells for backpacks and Camino 2011 t-shirts and other pilgrim-centric facilities, but pilgrims are EVERYWHERE, like an endless stream of ants snaking down the trail. You look in front of you - pilgrims. You look behind you - pilgrims. You look next to you - pilgrims. Hundreds of us descend upon these villages at the same time for lunch or a bed like a plague of soul-searching locusts. And peeing on the trail has become a game of 'how much dignity can I afford to lose?'

From mainly French and Spanish pilgrims, we now meet a new country daily. Pilgrims from Japan, Holland, Australia, Germany, Brazil, Italy, Hungary and Canada. Just last night we had Pacharan (a local liquor) with a chef from Noe Valley in San Francisco! A big world has been compacted into a few miles of road. In the albergues we cook together, compare blisters together, dance to Bob Marley together and complain together about the morning's pilgrim breakfast of dried packaged toast and watered down coffee, often times without knowing a word of one another's language. On the wall outside tonight's albergue (where we opted for a private room after Lizzie spent the night on a wooden bench in the lobby to avoid the snorers) are written scribbles in every language of life epiphanies uncovered on the trail. The English one reads, "We are all looking for the same things, on the same road, but in different ways."

The age range has undergone a drastic change, as well. When mom and I would sign into the gites and albergues, I was always the youngest on the list by about 30 years. Now the trail is filled with young people. Like Joe from Liverpool who is walking the Camino on 10 Euros a day, eating throwaway food from the bar and relying on the kindness of villagers for a blanket to keep him warm on the streets he calls a bed. Or the three young women who sang a Catalan lullaby for Rick as they walked together under the hot Spanish sun. Or the Australian girl who I heard exclaim to her new hippy German friend under my bedroom window, "Today was a game-changer. It hit me for the very first time, that man I'm on the freakin' Camino!"

Yesterday felt like a culture shock as mom and I realized how greatly our Camino lives have changed. At first, I didn't know if this Disneyland Camino was something I could get used to. All the people. All the noise. All the yellow arrows leading you every few feet in the right direction. But something changed in me today as everyone we passed gave a "Buen Camino," as we began to gather a tableau of people's goals and desires for their Camino experience, as we shared shady patches with smiling strangers, as we ate omelette sandwiches in a sunny plaza filled with excitement and laughter and bare feet and as we watched fellow pilgrims with teary eyes as they took in the beauty of the landscape. Being alone isn't more noble. Nor does it make the journey more profound. Or you a greater discoverer. It's simply different. And after a month and a half of hearing our sole voices echo in empty gites, pilgrim Disneyland and the excitement and camaraderie it brings sounds pretty darn good.

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Pics from Puente la Reina to Estella to Arcos...








Albergue kitchen at breakfast.


My evening snack. Mom brought the cerveza. A random German man provided the loquat.


Steady stream of peregrinos.


We pony up to the free wine fountain at 7:30am. This vino tinto makes 'Two- Buck Chuck' taste like a La Crema.


Monastery turned vineyard.


Lizzie and Red with their GoLite solar umbrellas amongst a crowd of hungry pilgrims.

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Location:Estella, Spain

Sleepytime Symphony In S*** Major

If I were a famous composer and wanted to WOW the world with the greatest symphony of all time, the piece would sound exactly like our night spent in the Monreal albergue. I should mention, though, before I go on that in this hypothetical scenario I am not just any celebrated composer, but am the musical director for the Orchestra For The Damned in HELL.

Now, I'm no connoisseur of classical music, but if I were to substitute certain sections of the orchestra with what mom and I suffered through Tuesday night in a small room filled with 20 other pilgrims, here's what they would be:

Brass - From exclamatory trumpet snores to nasally horn snores to deep, rumbling tuba snores, I believe there was at one time approximately seven different layers of snoring wafting through the air like the smell of sulfur in Hades.

Woodwind - Three French women (mom and I have another name for them, but I'll leave that to your imagination) decided that they would overlook the fact that there were others in the room trying to sleep and would giggle and gossip like teenagers the entire night. "Tee-hee tee-hee tee-hee" went their piccolos and flutes. Then there was the cougher filling in for the bassoon. The farting - or 'breaking wind' - of the man in the bunk next to mine falls in this section, as well.

Percussion - The Wood Block role went to the intermittent tapping of trekking poles against the wooden bunk beds as the aforementioned French women attempted to wake up the worst snoring offenders. The more delicate brushes of the snare drum were replaced by the constant shushing by others in an attempt to silence the French women. The bass drum is most certainly the sound of people from the upper bunks landing with a thud as they got up for bathroom runs. The cymbal was taken up by the loud crash of glass as someone at about midnight broke a wine bottle in the kitchen.

Keyboard - The three women didn't stop there. They also decided another good way to wake up a snorer is with a 'click click click' of their tongues, which I'm pretty positive if I had examined them would have been found to be forked.

Vocals - Should the orchestra be accompanying a duet, the soprano and tenor would be the bicyclist couple who woke up about 3:30am and decided to have a full blown and extremely audible conversation as they packed up their gear. Should this be an opera, the villain - bass singer - ushering in the melodrama would be the Spanish gentleman having nightmares resulting in his screaming out broken sentences periodically throughout the night (which, of course, caused the French women to giggle some more.)

Audience - The restless audience readjusting and squirming in their seats would be the constant creaking of the bunk beds as people tossed and turned in their sleep or, as in my case, in their state of sleepLESSness.

Strings - No string section, because if there were, I would have tied said strings into a noose and would not be writing to you now.

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iPhone pics from Monreal to Puente la Reina.


From a French "Bon Courage!" to a Spanish "Buen Camino".


On this grueling 19-mile, 90-degree heat day with barely a shade tree in sight, I focused on the water just to mentally cool myself down for a few yards.





Barren times.


Rewarded at the end of our hardest day with... PRODUCTS! A pilgrim's treasure trove.

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Location:Hotel Jakue, Puente La Reina,Spain