So, we decided to go the mountain route. I convinced my friend James who was considering it, and then learned that Heather, a girl from England who I have hung out with before but haven’t hiked with, was planning to do the same route with 2 more people she had convinced. So at 7:30 am as the sun was coming up, we set off. At first we walked up a steep mountain road to the town of Dragonte before turning off the asphalt. We climbed the first 900 meters in an hour! I’m a slow and steady walker but Heather is nicknamed “Rocket” and she sets a mean pace (and she’s shorter than I am; I literally can not move my feet as fast as her).

We walked the green route to the left

I had a nice breakfast at my albergue before leaving but the rest didn’t get any coffee. So I taught James how to ask “Is there any coffee in this town,” and the next little mountain pueblo we came to he starts asking. One woman said yes, sent her son ahead to open up their little public building and made us some coffee. We played on an ancient table soccer table and admired the deer skulls on the wall as we waited. I started talking to her and found out there are only 20 residents in the town! Then she pulls out something that looks like an old tree limb, gets out a knife, and says we need to try this. It turned out to be a smoked leg of boar! She kept giving us more and more strips (most of us ended up walking away with some in our pockets), saying that her son had shot it, and he could go out and get another one anytime!

After our fortifying snack we passed through a deep valley and then up the next mountain. We walked through a deep winding stream and through very old chestnut orchards. We ate lunch outside of a closed cantina and then continued on up the mountain and down the otherside. The views were absolutely breathtaking. The weather was perfect. My knees were feeling the steep descents but my friends always waited for me.

On our way up the third mountain we stopped in at Celia’s bar for a beer. I made friends with their “guard dog” Lucky, and talked to her about the past. She said that 15 years ago most pilgrims took that high route, but now somedays there are no pilgrims, and somedays as many as 15 or 20. There were only two other people on the trail besides us that day.

Around 6:30 pm we made it to Herrerias, a town on the main Camino route where the rest of Heather’s group was spending the night. We learned that they had reserved space for us at their albergue, but James and I decided to press on. We had planned to go another 8 km up O Cebreira to meet our friends and our legs still felt pretty good. I was dreaming of the surprised looks on our friends faces as we showed up, and a big pot of spaghetti that they would have ready.

We were told that the walk up to Cebreira, although only 8 km horizontal, takes 3 hours because it is over a 1,000 meter climb. James and I did it in 2 hours flat. I have never been so exhausted in my life, never pushed my body to its limit before. Nothing was hurting but I just had no fuel left in my tank. Every step was an enormous effort. But as we neared the top, chasing the sun as it went down, we stopped and looked back. We could trace where we had walked that day, back farther than we could even see. We had conquered those mountains.

When we finally got to town around 8:30 pm we were shocked to see tour buses and lots of fancy-dressed tourists. This was not a pilgrim’s town and as we walked through looking for the albergue I started to get a bad feeling. We walked in the door and saw a sign that said “completo.” Full. I asked the woman at the desk anyway. This is how the conversation went.
Woman: It’s full.
Me: Can we sleep on the floor?
Woman: No.
Me: Is the church open? Can we sleep there?
Woman: No.
Me: Then where will we sleep?
Woman: Ask around town, or keep walking.

We stood there in the entrance a good two minutes without moving. We had just walked for 13 hours. We had covered around 36 kilometers as the crow flies, and my book lists the actual distance including elevation changes as 44 km (thats 27 miles, more than a marathon). The sun had set. We were not walking to the next town.

Eventually James and I looked at each other and started walking back to town. I started crying. We walked past a Spanish man who is walking with his dog and sleeping outside in a tent every night. He saw me and after hearing my story immediately offered his tent. He would sleep outside, he said. He is accustomed to it. I said thank you thank you, we just need to get something to eat so we could think straight. We thought to try the one hotel in town and were on our way when we heard our names called and turned to see our friends in the doorway of a bar, calling us over. “We can’t believe you made it!” they were saying. Then they saw my face, I managed to get out “there is no where for us to sleep,” and they ushered us inside, saying something about sneaking us in the side door of the albergue and letting us sleep on couches in the back room. We let ourselves be ushered in and then I was immediately surrounded by 4 older men that I have spent various time with over the last month. I was crying uncontrollably at this point, and saying something like “we’ll be alright, I’m just so tired and hungry, we’ll figure out something, I just need to eat.” I don’t cry very often, and definitely not in public, so their reaction was incredible to me. All of a sudden everyone wanted to do whatever they could to help me. One gave me a huge hug and said he would try to sneak me into his room at the albergue and give me his bed if they were ‘t so strict. Another just said “hang on” and went across the road to his hotel. He came back and said he had a two bed room at the hotel and he just got permission from his other friend to let me and James I sleep on their floor. Apparently I look just like one of his daughters and he said his heart just broke seeing me. The only catch was that the hotel would charge us 14 Euro each just to sleep on their floor.

Where was the spirit of the Camino that we had enjoyed so much? The pilgrim refuge wouldn’t let us sleep on their floor, the town wouldn’t open the church, and the only hotel would charge extra on top of their regular room rate just to allow us to sleep in a room that had already been paid for. But it was a solution, we wouldn’t be stuck outside, and so still crying but very consoled I set my mind to ordering dinner at the bar. I had been dreaming of pasta (a mainstay on all pilgrim’s menus up to that point) for hours, or at least some fried chicken and french fries. But this was their menu:
First course: Galician Soup (which often has pork), or salad.
Second course: pork chop, ham, eggs and sausage, or fish.
I don’t eat pork (unless it’s unavoidable) and fish wasn’t going to cut it. The two sweet women behind the bar had been watching this whole scene play out and were very patient with me as I choked out an order for an egg sandwich with cheese and tomato. As I was talking over the shared hotel plan with James, who was in an equal stupor but tear-free, the women were talking to each other and kept interjecting questions to me like “how far did you walk today? What did the albergue say? The hotel is going to charge you how much for sleeping on their floor?” And eventually they fully got my attention and very carefully and quietky communicated that they had 3 rooms there in the back. They were not rooms for rent, they were for the three employees to sleep when they worked a late night. But one of the rooms was free that night, and I could stay there if I wanted.

I didn’t really know what to say except “yes! Thank you!” I asked if James could stay there too and after a little dance about whether we were married and if he should sleep on the floor they said it was fine. (We’re just friends, no funny business!) Then they brought our food, which we ate with our hands while trying to tell our friends a little about our day until it was 10:00 and they had to go back for curfew. So after everything we had an amazing day, experienced so much generosity from practical strangers, slept in a bar (sober) and slept like babies.

Today we had an easy day of 21 km which we walked as quickly as we could, and we’ve just spent the afternoon stuffing ourselves with pasta, potato chips, chocolate, and beer. My body is obviously exhausted but all considering feels very good. Just out of energy. This morning James kept saying “I can’t believe we’re walking again.” The body is an incredible machine.

We have less than a week left until Santiago and as I look at the map and see how far we’ve come, and experience what my body and mind are capable of, I start thinking about what I should walk next?!

Postscript:
Apparently this morning my friends who were in the albergue that we got shut out of saw a man roll his suitcase out the door and get into a rented car. It is officially against the rules to stay in the albergues unless you are walking or cycling, but it seems these rules are not enforced. And it will be getting worse the closer we get to Santiago. I don’t think I will be having many more spiritual experiences; after yesterday the goal is just to get to Santiago. It’s a shame really, but I’m so glad that yesterday we got a taste of what I imagine the Camino used to be. And it was magical!