"Love In The Mud" Part 6 - A Camino Love Story

Leon dinner the night of the kiss(es). Red, myself and Hannes.

Ahhh, the first kiss...

My very first kiss of all time was also the worst.  Not only were my palms and pits sweaty, the guy kissed me like a snake; his tongue darting in and out of my mouth as if to catch flies.  I remember thinking to myself, 'Is this it?!  It can't be.  Had all those romantic movies lied to me?  Wasn't this supposed to be a pleasant past time?  Where were the stars and birds floating around his head?  The butterflies wreaking havoc in my stomach?  Who had let the Frog Prince into this fantasy?  Yuck!'  Needless to say, I've had both good and bad kisses since (I won't even get into the infamous 'Teeth Masher' of 2000).  But none as perfect and breathtakingly life-changing as the one on that little wooden bench under the stars by the river in Leon. 

Earlier that day the gang and I stopped into the cathedral to take a look at its stained glass windows.  Hannes had already been inside, so he told me to walk around and explore while he took a moment to sit and ponder.  Look, by this point in my travels I'd seen nearly 1,000 churches and had no longing desire to add another to the list.  I'd been to big ones, small ones, ornate ones, plain ones, ones hanging on cliffs and those nestled in the prairie.  There are as many styles of churches as there are kisses.  And frankly, once you've seen La Sagrada Familia are there really any other churches worth seeing? 

But the stained glass was gorgeous, as Hannes had promised, and that musty smell of aging stone always holds a certain intriguing air of mystery for me, so I went along with his plan and began to walk alone through its kaleidoscope passageways.  Secretly inside, however, I was wishing he would walk beside me.  I didn't know if this would be my last day with him, and I wanted to savor every second.  But clingy I would not be.  So I explored solo for as long as I could muster and then took a seat beside him.  We sat in silence staring up at the light pouring in through rose and moss colored glass.  It felt good to be near him.  Even in the quiet on ancient pews so hard they put my butt to sleep.

After a dinner with friends that evening (and a meal that sent Red into vegetarian hog heaven... is that an oxymoron?), my cousin once again led the rebellion to ditch Hannes and I while our backs were turned so that we could be alone together.  Earlier she had pulled me aside and confessed she'd politely commanded Hannes to kiss me.  He had told her that he was afraid to.  That it would only make separating harder.  'Great,' I thought.  'Over before it had begun.'  At dinner I had tried to read his body language.  He flirted, alright, but didn't attempt to hold my hand or brush a piece of hair from my face like a man in love.  Could I have read him all wrong?  As we walked later alone toward the river, I told myself, 'Ah what the hell?' and put my arm through his.  What did I have to lose?  As a pilgrim you leave your pride aside the first time you wash your girlie underwear in the sink next to a hairy Spaniard's dirty Euro banana hammock.  

As the stars began to peak through the dusky sky, Hannes and I sat on a stone bench by the water, laughing and pouring our hearts out.  I led the topic to dating, first kisses, love affairs...  I didn't know how else to be obvious!  For the love of St. Jacques, was he ever going to make a move?  That quote from "Clueless" kept running through my head: "I don't get it.  Did my hair get flat?  Did I stumble into some bad lighting?"

We moved later to a little wooden bench still next to the river but now in front of a children's sand box littered with lost toys and what was most likely dog crap.  Romance at its finest.  It was more guarded, though, from the wind, and I was starting to get chilly, so it would have to do.  I wondered how much longer I could hold out here in the cold.  I wanted to be with him.  To talk to him.  Make him laugh at my California witticisms.  Bond over our gypsy stories.  But how long could a girl wait?  A few times I even thought he was starting to lean in... but then he'd bend down to tie his shoe or flick a bug from my shoulder, and my heart would sigh a long forlorn sigh.  I almost threw in the towel completely when a cockroach scurried by my feet, but something told me, 'Stick with it just a bit longer.'

Come 2am, though, I had the sinking feeling that I, Blackheart, would have to be the one to make the move.  Dread sank in.  I had been a grimy pilgrim so long, I didn't know if I had it in me to play the breathless ingenue.  But I inhaled deeplly, gathered my courage and leapt.  "Hannes?  Do you think..."  I paused.  "Never mind."  I had choked.  I couldn't do it.  But curious, Hannes started prodding me to continue and eventually I tried again.  "Do you think you could kiss me?"  Oh lord, I sounded like some Twihard preteen (not knocking it - I read all four books in the series with gusto) and not the sexy, self-confident woman of the new millennium I thought myself to be at home.  I turned to face him.  Ready for Hannes to laugh or tell me exactly what he'd told my cousin hours earlier.  But no.  All I saw was a smile.  A sparkle.  A look that said, 'Thank goodness.'  "Yes," he told me, grinning ear to ear.

As he began to lean toward me, I was consumed with nerves.  Now, I'm an old kissing pro, and I don't mind telling you that I've been told on many an occasion that I'm top notch.  No, the fear was that we wouldn't be good kissers together.  You know what I mean.  A bad kiss with even the dreamiest of a partner can be a deal breaker.  I silently hoped it would be magic.  Or at least good enough to work with...  But it was more than I could have ever expected.  It was that one perfect kiss you get in a lifetime.  A kiss that sends chills down your spine and sets off fireworks in your stomach and a dull ache in your heart.  A kiss that makes all others fade away into forgotten mediocrity.  And that tells you, at last, here he is.  Your soul mate. 

We pulled away and looked at each other in astonishment.  I knew he was thinking and feeling exactly as I was.  We giggled like nerds at Comic-Con.  WHAT WAS THAT?!  We decided to give it another shot.  Test our luck.  And then another.  And another.  And by 4am with our lips chapped and throats dry and a creepy street cleaner watching us from afar as he sprayed the sidewalks, we decided it was time to part.  I felt like a teenager.  I hadn't made out with someone on a park bench... well, ever.  But I did remember that feeling when you were young and kissing was the coolest thing you'd ever experienced and you could do it for hours.  All night if you got the chance.  I just never thought I would feel that again.  Yet with Hannes everything was new.  Love was as it should be.  Innocent.  Vulnerable.  Full of promise.  And, well, totally hot!!!!

He walked me to my parador, now awash in the shadows of night like a sleeping giant.  The enormous courtyard was empty.  The massive doors shut tight.  The gargoyles on full alert.  I was a maiden in a fairy tale returned to her castle by the prince.  We hugged and said our goodbyes.  "We have to see each other again.  We don't have a choice now," he told me, my face cupped in his callused pilgrim hands.  "No choice," I agreed, watching the stars and birds circle around his head.  (I knew they existed!)  As he began to walk away, and I tried desperately to pry open the 2-ton parador door, we turned back around to catch one more glimpse of each other.  "You're amazing!" he yelled, unable to contain his happiness.  "You're amazing!" I cried back without missing a beat.  "Amazing!"  And I meant it.  'I'm going to marry this man,' I thought.  The girl who never ever in a million years wanted to get married is going to tie the knot one day with this amazing Belgian mud walker.  I couldn't believe the change in me.  What was this Camino up to? 

Even in the dark at a distance I could see his smile and hear his racing heartbeat.  Even in the dark I could see love walking away.

To be continued...

A Halloween Word of Warning

Last week I went to see "The Way", a film about the Camino, which had everyone talking on our trip, months before it was even released.  Pilgrims wondered whether it would be good for the Camino.  Was this movie a blessing or a - gasp! - curse?  Was an influx of people wanting to follow in the steps of Martin Sheen really what an already crowded trail needed?  Would the true meaning of the pilgrimage diminish?  Would the movie do the journey justice?  Could it capture that spark of magic?  The camaraderie?  What it truly means to leave it all behind?...

Personally, I thought it was a great filmic adventure.  Funny.  Entertaining.  Beautiful and nostalgic.  A lovely piece of storytelling.  But what the film doesn't address (and I don't blame it, as an extended epilogue is movie-suicide) is what becomes of you after the Camino.  So, as a gypsy writer who attempted to be as brutally honest with you readers as possible all along her pilgrimage, I will tell you exactly what the film left out.  A word of warning for any of you thinking of making the trip:

LIFE AS YOU KNOW IT WILL NEVER BE THE SAME.

You like how I used all-caps to emphasize the above's importance?  If I could I would have carved it in a pumpkin and taken a picture.  But I didn't.  As spooky as it sounds, this warning, however, holds true.  So if you are content with your life, if you have everything you need, if you like exactly how your days play out, then please I warn you do not walk the Camino.  Because when you come home and you look around you and step through your days as before, nothing will look the same.  Nothing will feel the same.  Nothing will be the same.  I know of pilgrims who upon return went into retirement.  Pilgrims who moved to new cities for a fresh start.  Pilgrims who stepped into new careers.  Who got out of relationships that weren't working.  Who planned new adventures.  Some of the crazier ones even decided to marry the handsome Belgian they met on the trail.  (Real whack job, that one.) 

A lot of this is to be celebrated.  But, let's be honest, suddenly realizing the person you were isn't the person you are now can be a frightening conclusion and undertaking.  The path isn't always so clear.  What do I do next?  Where do I go?  How do I get back that feeling of fulfillment and peace?  To keep on the Camino in your real life is not an easy journey.  It's as challenging at home as it was on the trail.  Only now there are no yellow arrows or red Xs to guide you.  Only your intuition and a foolish determination to keep walking.

I often find myself daydreaming.  Wishing myself back to that place.  Back to the cafes sipping my cafe con leche.  Back to typing away on my iPad in a bunk bed.  Back to dangling my feet over a river as mom handed me the bag of olives.  The Camino, my friends and future pilgrims, will haunt you.  My advice?  Let it.  Because it's a friendly ghost.  It's a reminder of the life we'd like to lead.  A reminder of the person the Camino turned us into.  There's a reason my mom has seen "The Way" four times and why I'll watch it again in Belgium snuggled in front of Hannes' laptop.  Because the film takes you back to that place, before you came home and realized the dream was over... and that it was time, and scarily so, to turn it into a reality.

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Happy Halloween my fellow gypsies... Don't let the bed bugs bite. Muahahahahaha!

"Love In The Mud" Part 5 - A Camino Love Story

The grand Parador de Leon.

The days leading up to Leon were anxiety producing.  The more Hannes and I texted, the more I wanted to see him again.  Wooing on the Camino is nothing like at home.  There's no car or Muni to quickly take you to see one another.  No "let's meet for coffee on my lunch break," or "how about a movie tonight?  I hear "Bridesmaids" is hilarious."  (A movie I wanted to see so badly on the trail!)  Hannes felt a million miles away, when in reality, there were only 24 kilometers of distance between us. 

Also, when on the trail, you have TOO MUCH TIME to think and daydream.  You start to second guess yourself or dramatize little moments that would normally seem entirely benign.  Okay, so when he said "I'm so happy to have met you" did he mean "because I could totally fall in love with you" or "because you're a really cool chick" or simply "because you made the endless, unchanging Meseta less tedious with your incessant talking"?  Did that look he gave me at dinner mean "I like you" or "you have a bit of parsley stuck between your two front teeth"?  It's excruciating, truly.  I felt like a teenager again.  If I'd had a notebook (too much weight in the backpack), I would be scribbling little hearts with 'H + T' with one hand propped under my chin and eyelashes batting like hummingbird wings. 

So you can imagine my glee when he texted me that he might be staying an extra day in Leon.  If I arrived early enough, we could spend a whole day together.  Of course, he used the word "might," which sent the teenager in me into angst-y tailspin, but nonetheless, I was hopeful.  Hope turned to happiness when he finally told me (after much teasing) that he was, in fact, staying.  Actually he put it something like "you never know.  I just might be there."  Ugh.  What was this guy trying to do to me?  But I knew, somehow, the Camino wasn't done writing our story yet.

In fact, the Camino decided to lend a hand in getting me to Leon early, giving me the opportunity to injure my foot on the way to the bathroom.  Yes, the bathroom.  My only injury on the trip occurred as I walked barefoot in my hotel room from the bed to the bathroom to grab a Kleenex.  This meant I was going by cab for a few days and would get me to Leon nice and early for our rendezvous.  "What was I going to wear?"... was not a question I had to worry about on our semi-date.  When you only have four items of clothing, the choice is easy.  You pick the one that stinks the least.  Black dress it is!

Nurse Red escorted me that day.  Leon would be the site of our Parador pampering - two days of 5 star luxury like no other.  As we pulled up in the taxi our eyes widened and our mouths dropped.  Could we really be staying here?  At Hogwarts?  The magnificent stone facade and towering double doors that led to the lobby looked as decadent as a chocolate mousse.  It was the start of a fairytale day and a fairytale love story.

After a few hours lounging in our rooms, Hannes called me from the lobby front desk (high security at Hogwarts), and I skipped out to meet him.  I wondered what I would feel seeing my Belgian mud walker again.  As I limped down the plushly carpeted hallway my stomach was in knots.  Then I saw him from a distance, seated in the lobby chatting with Juliano, looking as causally hunky as ever.  "Do not trip... do not trip...," I begged myself as I slowly limped down the stairs, gripping the banister to keep my balance.  He smiled when he saw me, and the knots tightened.  The boys followed me back to the room, admiring the life of luxury we ladies had embraced and simultaneously poking fun of us, the "parador princesses." 

In the room my mom popped open a bottle of Cava, and we toasted to reuniting with old trail friends. My foot was aching, but I fed them all a courageous lie of "It feels fine... almost totally healed," and Red, Hannes, J and I set off to explore Leon.  I'll save the juicy details of our "date" and subsequent first kiss/es for the next entry, but let's just say the night involved a seedy street cleaner with a staring problem, a cockroach, a moonlit park bench, a desperate search for water and two cries into the warm Spanish night breeze of "You're amazing!!!"  Yes, pilgrim love stories are not glamorous.  But they sure are entertaining.  And not for want of originality.

Until next time...

"Love In The Mud" Part 4 - A Camino Love Story

From Fromista I would like to skip ahead (in my dirty hiking boots) just a few kilometers to Carrion de los Condes.  Hannes and I didn't cross paths that day on the road, and the end result should have been a warning that walking with him really did bring good luck.  The Cali gang and I chose the shorter path along the freeway, as many did, and wound up with mouths full of gnats (oh, the gnats!) and screaming feet from walking at break neck speeds to get away from the winged plague.  I looked like a mad woman on the trail, swinging my poles wildly in a helpless attempt to ward them off.  Luckily, everyone was doing this crazy dance - an endless line of jerking, swatting and twitching hikers, which gave new meaning to the song "I Wave My Hair Back and Forth."  Hannes and Juliano had chosen wisely, walking leisurely and without bouts of epilepsy along the canal.

The sunny square in Carrion.

As I went through my usual routine in the hostel in Carrion, washing my gnat encrusted clothes in the sink (they had drowned in my sweat apparently) and massaging cream into my aching pups, I realized I actually missed Hannes that day.  His good humor.  His smile.  His chatter.  Our thinly veiled flirtations.  His accent (oh, the accent!)  Even Juliano's lessens to him on how to be a proper gentleman... All of it.  Just as I was wondering whether or not to text him, my beautiful new iPhone sang the loveliest tune.  He had texted me that he was in the square, which just so happened to be below our window.  I texted him to "look up," waving to him and his friends laying out in the afternoon sun, drinking beers and picking at a roasted chicken like the ravenous pilgrim animals we'd become.  He waved back, smiling and gesturing me to come down and join them.  Looking at him in his sleeveless t-shirt (if you need help picturing this, he's a lifeguard), I decided applying tea tree oil to my toe nails could wait...

The boys at the butcher.

A few minutes later I was sitting on the bench writing postcards to my girlfriends with lines like, "I am currently sitting across from a hot Belgian drinking San Miguel... jealous?"  Hannes made us all a grand pasta dinner that night (jealous?); about ten of us searching through the streets trying to find the right ingredients.  I looked at him across the table as we ate, and there was something in his eyes, a tiny gleam that told me he had been thinking of me that day, too. 

After dinner, Red talked everyone into ditching Hannes and I as we all strolled through town.  We looked behind us, and suddenly the crew had vanished like Spaniards during siesta.  I felt like a nervous high schooler - her friends trying to hook her up with the cute football player.  Only my football player was wearing a Quick Dry shirt and fanny pack, and this cheerleader was in a dress that she had now worn four consecutive nights with Euros tucked into her bra.  We kept walking despite their prank and sat on stone benches down by the river.  I got the sense mosquitoes were biting the hell out of me, but I didn't care.  Later, Red and I dropped the boys off at their convent dormitory, as the nuns had a strict pilgrim curfew of 10pm.  As I said goodbye to him through the gate, I couldn't help but think, "lucky nuns"... Definitely not a phrase that gets thrown around a lot.

We had decided that night that even though the boys were walking further than us the next day, we would meet in the morning for coffee and then walk together until our final farewell in some hellishly tiny village whose name I have purposely forgotten out of sheer post traumatic stress.  (Yes, I'm referring to the place where the urinals sat next to the sink - me brushing my teeth as a man peed beside me.)  It was a bitter sweet walk.  'So this is it...', I thought.  'The end.  Some good Facebook friends who you chat with time to time and that's it.' 

Once at the village, we cracked open a bottle of cheap wine and toasted to our time together over a picnic lunch.  (The infamous incident when Juliano, looking over at Red covered in and surrounded by crumbs with a huge hungry grin on her face, made the astute observation, "You eat like baby.")  In between bites of stale bread and olives, just when I had prepared myself to say 'so long' and suck it up, Hannes turned to me and said with those damn puppy dog eyes of his, "I'm so happy to have met you."  Like the chocolate bar I'd been carrying around in my backpack, I melted.  Because when he said it, you knew he meant it.  My cousin was so moved she even let out an "Ahhh," as if we were in the studio audience at a live "Full House" taping.  I smiled, made some awkward reply and realized that not seeing him again wasn't an option. 

The 'Adios' picture. Left to right: Juliano, Blackheart, Red, Hannes

We took pictures together, mumbled 'Buen Camino' and gave each other what Hannes said were not goodbyes but "see you later" hugs.  I hoped his words held truth.  Red and I watched the boys walk away down the road, their backpacks bumping along as their poles ticked away into the dusty earth and waved to them for what seemed like twenty minutes, like grandparents watching you pull away in the car.  I had no idea how we'd see each other again, but for now, texting would have to do.  "Did you get a text from your Camino boyfriend?" Red asked me with a sneaky smile later that evening over glasses of Four Roses bourbon.  I had.  About 10 of them since we parted ways.  I took it as a good sign of things to come.  Our conversations hadn't ended on the trail, after all.  They'd only just begun.

But no moment together on the Camino up to that point could have prepared Hannes and I for what happened days later in the city where my belief in magic was resurrected.  The city of the Hostel Pauper and Parador Princess.  The city of our first kiss.  My favorite city in Spain.  The city where we fell in love.  Leon...

To be continued...

Video - "Tenerife Pilot Whales"

A little video from my Camino love of our pilot whale watching experience in Tenerife (Canary Islands, Spain). About twenty whales surrounded our boat to say 'Hola'. My favorite moments, which aren't captured here, were when we glimpsed just their giant round heads poking out of the water like a bobbing for apples bucket.

Note: If you like reggae, turn it up.

Love in the Time of Cooties

Last Sunday I began to throw my life away.  Figuratively and literally.  Down an apartment trash shoot (and into a recycle bin, so don't call the green police) I dumped the contents of nearly my entire worldly existence - books, shoes, files, frames, letters from past loves, DVDs, paper towel rolls (hey, they cost money too), discolored photographs, yoga mat, even a toaster.  Luckily, Monday afternoon an entire new sparkling life came my way.  Not up a trash shoot but via Video Skype.  But more on that to come...  First, the deluge.

When I found out my apartment had a case of the bed bugs (let the screaming, itching and gagging begin), I went out of my freakin' mind.  Mainly because the final confirmation came only a handful of days before I left for Belgium.  I remember calling Hannes about 6am in the morning crying and insisting that if he didn't want me to come to visit I would understand.  I was the California plague, and I wasn't going to spread it abroad!  Thankfully he was in his right mind, unlike my panicking, sniffling, loathing self, and brushed the notion aside.  I was, however, going to buy all new luggage and have every stitch of clothing dry cleaned.  I wouldn't wish these devilish creatures on even my worst enemy, let alone my true love.

The worst part of this atrocity is that these creatures like to hide.  Even if you catch them early, as I did, you can never be sure one might be hitchhiking in your bedside alarm clock.  So as I pack up to move to San Francisco on the 1st, everything that can't be cooked in the newly purchased Cootie Cooker (not the copyrighted name), washed or dry cleaned must be tossed down the shoot or hauled away, including every last piece of furniture.  And let's face it, a cooker that takes nearly two hours per load means most stuff you say 'to hell with' and toss away.  I mean, what do you really need to get by?  If the Camino taught me anything (of which it actually taught quite a lot), it was that all you need can fit into a single stained and stinky backpack.

I won't lie, though; it's hard.  Saying goodbye to the old life in such a permanent way takes some guts.  When mom and I did the initial purging before I left for Belgium, we both - now keep in mind we were very unstable emotionally at this point as things were fresh - broke down in tears when we realized Bunny, whom I've had since I was five, had to be incinerated.  Bunny, you should know, is part of the family.  Twice my stepmother has made outfits for him when I was well into my 20s.  He even spent some time without me in Molokai enjoying the ocean view when dad asked for him to be shipped to his Hawaiian house to hang out.  I realize I'm making myself and my family sound crazy, but there you have it.  The end result is that mom and I couldn't bear the thought and tossed the rabbit (this is a stuffed animal I'm talking about, not a 25-year-old graying rabbit) into the hot wash with the rest of the danger zone clothing items and crossed our fingers he'd make it out alive.  My stepmom plans to make him a new outfit to cover the bald spots.

Yet, at the same time, getting rid of these things was freeing.  Every time I threw something away, I thought of Hannes leaving behind so much of his stuff to come to California to be with me.  If he could do it, so could I.  Sure we may end up with zero furniture and limited kitchen supplies (I asked him to spare his juicer), but slowly a new Ikea adorned life would eventually take shape.

Perhaps it was my acceptance (no matter how begrudging) of losing my old life that allowed the new one to knock on my virtual Skype door.  On Monday in my PJ's and glasses, my Camino love (in his bike jersey) gave a mischievous grin and invited me to a life of adventure, love, gypsy travel and lots of Belgian beer and waffles by becoming his wife.  As a girl who used to claim I would never marry, my exuberant 'Yes!' may come as a surprise.  But if you could have seen inside my heart and head the first time Hannes and I kissed on a bench by the river in Leon, you would know that this 'Yes!' appeared instantaneously and was already waiting there this Monday ready to be freed. 


At risk of sounding wise beyond my years (hehe), the beauty of living is that we are offered opportunities to reinvent ourselves all along the way.  Like the cat, nine lives are truly possible.  Living and embracing them all is simply a matter of being open to change and accepting the dualities of life... In my case, that true love in the form of a magical life-altering proposal, has come in the Time Of Cooties.  It wasn't just material things falling down that shoot, it was the girl who used to be.  The Camino changed me, and although I wish this newest lesson had come via something more mild mannered than bed bugs, like,say, a flood or armed robbery, I am so happy to be starting fresh with the man I met in the Meseta mud.  In the arms of Jay the Hauler went Ms. Gypsy.

Looking forward to meeting Mrs. Gypsy.  She may not have furniture but you can bet Sint Bernardus will be stocked in her fridge.

A Belgian Wedding

True love is busy. Ever since I stepped off the plane in Brussels, Hannes and I have been in a fervor of sightseeing, checking off a long list of must-dos in Belgium and Normandy. Hence, the utter lack of blogging. Rather than try to squeeze in all that's happened and all I've seen into one endless post, let's start at the beginning... the wedding of Hannes' mother Lieve and stepfather Frank.

As I write, Hannes is preparing me a signature Belgian side dish of mashed potatoes and spinach, so I can't take long (love is busy I tell ya!) before we leave for Gent to book his December flight to the US (and drink St. Bernardus and eat luikse waffles on the river.) The day I arrived we drove to the magical setting of the wedding to help set up decorations - a charming cafe/bar with open courtyard and converted barn. I cut tulle like a pro. I suspect, however, that we were more annoying than helpful, as we paused every 10 minutes to kiss like googly-eyed teenagers.

That night we feasted on a dinner of homemade Belgian stooverij at Lieve and Frank's spectacular house with its intoxicating garden dotted with apple trees and kittens chasing each other. We're talking a postcard property. Hannes' brother Brecht and girlfriend, Cynthia, joined in the pre-wedding festivities. We drank Duval by the outdoor fire pit after dinner - me wrapped in two blankets as supreme mosquito protection - and I felt like I belonged. Thanks to their hospitality and kindness, Belgium was quickly becoming a second home.


The following evening we awaited the surprised soon-to-be newlyweds, as they had no idea of the Indian theme of the wedding. Funny side note, EVERYONE was dressed in Indian garb except Hannes and I. Just what the sole American needs... to draw more attention to herself. Did get adorned in a bindi dot, though, which helped shave off a bit of the shame.

The rest of the night was filled with beauty, warmth, cold Duvall, spicy food, dancing, friendly conversation (some of which I actually understood!) and the repeated phrase said with a sly smile, "So you're the Compostela woman...?" News of our Camino Love had traveled fast. I hope these pictures taken on my iPhone and Hannes' Canon do it justice, as it's a night I'll never forget.








The courtyard nuptials.


The Bindi dot assortment.





We take turns passing around the sculpture of their united handprints, giving them our blessings.









Brecht and Cynthia.































The soul mates' first dance.


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Location:Stekene, Belgium