Life's a Stitch

It's our 33rd anniversary, our longevity as a couple lasting more than half our lives, as C pointed out. We agree that a sense of commitment to get through life's hurdles is a given, but I wanted to think beyond that. If we knew what we know now, 33 years and 1 day ago, what would be our advice to ourselves? I would tell us to remember to have fun together. It is easy to find fun in other parts life, but as long as you are married and have to share all that seriousness, remember to create some balance by having fun together. C, in his way of wry humour, responded, " What fun?," as if we don't have any, which cracked me up, which ends up qualifying as fun because he can still make me laugh.

And about that sense of humour:

 

Upon arriving in Santiago I mentioned that I'd post about our souvenirs later, the criteria being an item light in weight and unbreakable. I gave another hint in this post where the photo of the Camino symbol of the city of Navarette appeared, our favourite symbol on the Way.

So, we took the big step to commemorate our experience together and after an acceptable amount of consideration and research, we visited Dr. Mortiis in Santiago for our Camino tattoos. The pictures make them look larger than their size of 3cms, about 1.25". It was something we never thought we'd do, but agreed it was an appropriate gesture of solidarity. If you know us, I should probably have told you to sit down first, this being so out of character.

Coincidentally Chuck is now reading a book which refers to "those turning points in people's lives that inspire a tattoo – almost any pilgrim experience will do." (J. Irving)

It was something very different for us, but I can confidently say we've had not a smidge of regret. 

We're out of data and by the time you read this we'll be close to arriving back home in Vancouver, having cruised across the Atlantic with 20 friends and family, who met us in Barcelona to celebrate and help us sail into retirement.

Our Camino dream came true and that's how it seems now, a dream. Did it really happen? It's the kind, though, that after awakening stays with you like the best book you've ever read. You keep going back to it in your mind, reliving certain parts, until you finally incorporate it into your life, its influence staying with you forever.

I'll be back soon. Buen Camino.

As our children were born we established some new traditions. Each Christmas I bought a Time Magazine Year in Review, presenting each child when in their 20's a stack of world history since their birth.

When I turned 30, C and I celebrated with a bottle of wine from the year of my birth from our favourite Spanish winery, Torres. We've continued that tradition by buying a bottle of the same wine in each of our children's birth years, to be opened with them on their 30th birthdays. Two down, one to go, each bottle of Torres Gran Coronas living up to our expectations.

Today we had the privilege of visiting the Torres winery in the Penedes region Spain. Having booked a walking tour, we were pleasantly surprised to find it was a private tour as it was a weekday in the off season. What a treat, a private tasting that included the same wine we've been saving for the kids.

In the museum there was an actual bottle of the wine we drank on my 30th birthday. So long ago it was in a museum!

Thank you to our guide, Stephania from Italy, a 25 year old wine expert who has studied seven languages, for adding to a wonderful experience.

The budget question is probably the most common question asked of us, followed by the weight loss question. As for the latter C lost 3lbs and I'm not weighing myself. The bottom line is you eat like a horse on the Camino in order to keep up your energy.

Another woman from Vancouver said that if you want to weigh less after the Camino, loose it prior to starting. It's the bread and all that wine. A pilgrim from Rhode Island asked me if I thought people would need counselling after their experience. Hell no, I said, it's more likely that they'd need rehab after days of Spanish wine at lunch and dinner.

As for money, two of us staying in a range private rooms, some with shared bathroom which was never a problem, ranged from 30-55e per night. A three course pilgrim meal each per day came to 18-24e. A shared omelet (tortilla con patates) sandwich brekkie and two drinks came to 4-6e daily, and a sandwich lunch with beer was around 10e for two. Bag transport for our one support pack ranged from 3-7e per day depending upon the region.

Then there's the rest of it: SIM cards, laundry, haircuts, transportation for errands and touring, museum admissions and snacks… Once in Spain, for the two of us keeping in mind that larger cities are more expensive, we were fine with 100e per day. Of course our trip became more expensive as the value of the CDN dollar declined. Then there were the unbudgeted items like replacement of lost belongings, a clinic visit and souvenirs.

Some spending tips:
– weekend menus at restaurants are more expensive for the same items you order on weekdays.
– a can of diet coke in the grocery store, where you can detach a couple of cans from the six pack, costs about .55e each. In a bar, with a glass and ice, the cost goes up to 2e and sometimes the bottle is as little as 200mls. Cute bottle, high price. Beer can be cheaper than coke or water.
– if you are looking for eggs in the grocery store, they are in a regular aisle, unrefrigerated. And don't forget to use the plastic gloves provided and weigh and tag your produce and bakery items, prior to checking out, in the supermarket.
– if you order from a menu in a restaurant, instead of the pilgrim meal or menu del dia, you will be brought bread and charged for it.
– there is a small service charge for sitting at a table on a restaurant's terrace.
– there can be a huge difference in the quality of a meal with a price difference of 2e. Stay away from the places that display commercially produced menus for paella, pasta or pizza. These are reheated factory made items, think microwaved frozen dinner.

Overall I was glad we saved enough and waited for retirement, so we could do the Camino in one go with the ability to stay in private rooms. And it was an excellent opportunity, as one of my daughter's coworkers said, to spend our kid's inheritance 😉 Thank you, children.

Next post: the trip home.

We continue to shed the cocoon of our Camino experience. Chuck in Santiago:

Chuck now:

He concedes that he's more comfortable this way.

We did a 12k day yesterday to enjoy the beach and the Pablo Casals museum in Sant Salvador.

My mother was a huge fan as cellist/conductor Casals had strong ties to Puerto Rico. His mother was from Rio Piedres, and he lived his last years there in exile with his Puerto Rican wife, protesting the civil unrest in Spain. I have vivid childhood memories of listening to his music. We walked clear across Spain and this was the best museum we visited.

View from his house on the sea:

At his birthplace in El Vendrell:

More from Spain to come, the last of the Camino posts.

So, you're thinking about doing the Camino de Santiago, or you don't want to do it but you're curious. Here are some suggestions and what I wish I'd have known ahead of time:

1. Almost everyone I talked to on the Way agreed with me – it's harder than they were expecting terrain-wise. The only exception being C, who for some reason, had an easier time than the rest of us. Expectations? The power of positive thinking? Ahead of time he told me he would not suffer from blisters and guess what? Not a one, no blisters for C. That alone is a Camino exception worth noting.

2. Pain control: walking 20k+ per day you can count on pain. Bring whatever drugs you need. If I had known that bursitis and tendinitis we're going to be significant I would have brought my tens unit along to place on relevant trigger points. Voltarin gel and Ibuprofen, AKA Vitamin I, are available in Spain.

3. Foot care: as soon as you feel the slightest discomfort, attend to your feet. The pebble in your shoe or that hotspot of pain can cause bruises and blisters that take days to heal. Some people swear by applying little pieces of duct tape to the painful spot to avoid the b word.

4. Allow yourself a slow start. Get over the jetlag prior to beginning and take the first few days slowly. If you're limited for time start farther down the route.

St Jean Pied de Port, the French starting point, which became particularly popular due to the movie "the Way," does not allow a gentle and gradual start. Even if you taken the break in Orrison, the second day, particularly the decent, can have a negative impact on your Camino if you are prone to knee and ankle issues. If those areas of your body are in good shape, have at it.

5. Make sure you take breaks even if you don't feel like it. It makes a difference to the wear and tear on your feet and exhaustion level.

6. Phone service. This is a long one, but not Camino specific. It applies to any phone service from Europe.

If your phone is unlocked it's easy to find SIM cards in Spain. If you are starting across the border in France, keep in mind that your reasonably priced Spanish service won't work there. You can buy SIM cards that reach farther than Spain at a higher price.

We bought Vodaphone cards for 15e for an hour of worldwide calling, 60 texts and 1.5 gigs of data, good for 30 days with the ability to carry forward the unused portion. Good in theory, but the online/call-in recharge feature didn't work with foreign credit cards. Instead we recharged at Vodaphone stores, which always wiped out our carry forward credits, necessitating a call to customer "service." The quotes indicate the level of service to expect. Next time I'd get the lower 10e card and recharge when necessary without concern for carrying forward the unused portion. If you run out of phone minutes you can always use data to call on Skype.

7. Bank Machines: if you are a Scotiabank or Bank of America customer, there is an agreement with Deutsche Bank in Spain, allowing you to use the ATMs without fees, however they are located mostly in the big cities. Deutsche Bank has a partnership with the Spanish postal system, Correos, and occasionally there are ATMs outside of post offices. The withdrawal limit is 600e per day, so planning is required. Avoid bank machines on the weekends. If your card is kept, you won't be able to recover it until Monday.

Plan carefully, there are multi day stretches on the Camino without access to ATMs and some of the Spanish banks will not honour foreign cards although their sign indicates they are on your bank's debit system.

8. We found we could purchase bus tickets onboard and bus drivers can give change. Sometimes, on city buses, there's a limit of 10e in change.

9. Business hours: most stores are on the siesta system, closing roughly between 2 and 5:00pm. The larger grocery stores (Mercadona, Dia Max, Eroski, Frioz) didn't close. Most restaurants open for dinner at 8:00pm, some catering to pilgrims, a bit earlier. Museums are generally closed on Mondays.

I'll be doing a separate post on the budget.

The relationship is a little complicated. Stay with me. We're staying in a house that belongs to a former coworker, whose family were from El Vendrell, a Catalonian town with a population of 36,000. Family members still live here and one cousin recently spent some time in Vancouver.

We were invited to that cousin's parent's home for lunch where we were treated like royalty with a lovely paella dinner followed by a drive out to their country home complete with vineyard and olive grove. They generously thanked us for their daughter's Vancouver experience although we were not directly involved. It was a case of gratitude by association.

The parents speak Catalan and Spanish, we English, but the conversation was lively with the translation help of their daughter and her their efforts to speak slowly enough for us to follow along.

It put me in the mood for cooking, considering in the past almost two months I've only cooked twice. Imagine that!

On the way back from today's hike we discovered a new grocery store akin to the Real Canadian Superstore without the headache provoking bright colours. Walking by the fish counter they had them! The percebes (per-thay-vase), AKA the goose barnacles, we missed in Gallicia. At 30e/kilo I bought 350gms just to have a taste. Don't they look like dinosaur toes?

In case you have the opportunity to cook them, you bring salt water to a rolling boil, throw in the creatures and as soon as the water boils again, they're done.

To eat them, you forget the biological fact I shared in last week's post from Finisterre, perforate the black leathery skin near the claw, pull it off and eat the remaining meat. It was all that it was cracked up to be. A moist delicately flavoured tender meat, not slimey, with more substance than clam meat but a similar flavour. This is the peeled percebe:

On a roll I started the veggies and chorizo for some lentil soup.

A cloudy Sunday afternoon in Spain, everything is shut up tight. What better way to spend it?

We've had the luxury of a slow re-entry back to regular life. We've arrived in El Vendrell, Spain, where we recovered from jetlag prior to the Camino, in a house generously loaned to us by a former coworker. The familiarity was comforting after almost two months.

Coming back to our two suitcases filled with stuff was like Christmas, but so much stuff when all we've had with us were a change of clothing and the essentials!

I'll admit joy at finding my knitting, electric toothbrush, a reusable ice pack (and having access to a freezer in which to cool it) and my camera. C said if I had had the camera on the trek we'd still be walking. He claimed that each picture put me back 100 yards.

I'll be taking a long hard look at each item, maybe there are things I can live without. I can't believe the weight I carry in health and beauty supplies. Here's an example: do I really need separate creams for face, hands, feet and body? For six weeks I only used only one for all parts without disaster. Have I fallen prey to cosmetic marketing? On the Camino most women wear no makeup and do without hair colour. It's a chance for everyone to be their basic selves and we all did just fine. It will be interesting to see what happens when we return to our real worlds.

I carried only an iPhone for the trip. It served as my camera, books, maps, GPS, phone, and notebook. I came back to find I also have in my suitcase my kindle, iPad, Garmin, camera and a large container of their respective chargers. I think I've learned further lessons in travelling lightly.

The largest lesson for me was one of gratitude, to have the ability to live this dream, to have successfully done it together with the support of those who walked with us physically and in spirit. I am thankful that other than foot pain we stayed healthy, no colds, serious injuries or GI issues typical of travel.

I understand those who hunger to return and repeat the same route many times over. It is a respectful place protected from harsh words and the realities of life. Maybe a safe escape for some.

Me? Would I do it again? I would certainly entertain the concept of pilgrimage again, but on a different route. Realistically I see Canada's Chemin des Sanctuaires as a possibility, 18 days between Montreal and Quebec (http://www.chemindessanctuaires.org/en/)
If I were to have the opportunity to walk the Camino de Santiago again, I'd probably choose the shorter Portuguese route, from Porto to Santiago and add on the days to Finisterre.

I'll be posting more of our journey and the more practical aspects in the days to come.

And how about some Camino outtakes?
Not his best angle:

C practicing the art of photobombing:

Lookalike?

Fully loaded, starting the Camino or dressed for a moonwalk?

Grumpy peregrino:

Yes, we ate here:

I'll be posting on the practical aspects like SIM cards and expenses, but first basic reflections with some pretty pictures of Mallorca. Large touristy cities are not for me, but thanks to a good public transit system we explored the Cueves del Drach (Dragon Caves) and pretty pockets of beaches. It never occurred to us to have included driver's licenses on the Camino so a car rental was not an option.

So different, the farther we get from the Camino routine. We are no longer amongst lots of people with whom we have so much in common, similar motivations and values despite the fact that those we met were from 31 different countries. The Camino is a nearly perfect insulated world. The locals have had practice meeting the needs of pilgrims for centuries.

In retrospect it's hard to believe we walked for so long. It just became incorporated into daily life to a point that we didn't think about it, sort of like breathing, putting one foot in front of the other.

I get a chuckle when I think of how clueless we were at the start, but then you find a rhythm that works. It was a time of working together to solve daily puzzles.

People ask what we talked about walking five or six hours together. There was mostly silence when we walked together in peaceful reflection. Many times C was ahead of me, in sight, making new friends. I found it easier, especially in the beginning, just to walk. Walking and talking didn't want to go together.

People undertake the Camino for different reasons, primarily religious, spiritual and/or physical. Your motivation might begin in one category and bleed into the others. It would be difficult to walk for 765k without some shifts in motivation and thought.

What did I get out of the Camino? The parallels to life primarily. When you are on foot you are forced to take things as they come, there are no quick fixes. Pain and obstacle are necessary parts of pilgrimage. The physical aspects did not get better with time but you learn to deal with what you've been given in order to get to your goal.

The intent of the visit to the Cruce de Ferro helped sort through a couple of things that I have the ability to change and those I don't; maybe resolutions aren't possibilities in this lifetime. That's big for a save the world counsellor/social worker type who has spent her entire career mending issues.

There are Camino disappointments. Having been so wrapped up in walking I missed a must see cathedral not realizing I was in the town where it was located. Once I discovered it there was no going back. I was disappointed that so many churches were locked tight, having looked forward to visiting the earlier Christian examples. The reasons given were too much stealing to it being off season. Imagine a church being out of season.

… to be continued tomorrow.

Our last day in Mallorca, I'll share some photos and then we're headed from whence we came, El Vendrell, an hour from Barcelona.

Sunrise over the cruise terminal:

Stormy skies from our room:

The beach at Porto Christo:

These look like fun:

The Cueves del Drach, 1200 meters in length, up to 25 meters high, its existence was documented in the Middle Ages. At the end of the walk a classical quartet plays a mini concert from a rowboat on the underground lake. Breathtaking.

On the bus home we witnessed a rare cumulonimbus cloud with pileus, a type of lenticular cloud that caps the severe storm cloud. I've always been a cloud nut: