So here in Espinosa Manolo and I are bachin´ it. Montse set off for Valladolid yesterday afternoon, to take care of Sara while Maite is at work. She left us a tortilla for dinner, which we ate late after Manolo came in from mowing hay. During the meal his mother came over from next door and offered to clean up after us, but Manolo told her we had it covered.
After dinner we sat in the living room with the tv and talked man topics, like home improvement projects and the weather. Earlier in the day I had followed Manolo out to the big field he was cutting, driving the Suzuki Santana behind his large green tractor. It has been many years since I´ve driven a vehicle that lacks power steering. When we reached the field I parked the Suzuki and squeezed in the tractor cab with Manolo. We went around the edge of the sloping field, in and out of bays, and for a stretch right along a deep gully that put me in mind of tractors tipping over on Homer Simpson. When we got back around to the start, Manolo stopped, I thought to let me out. But instead he rose from his seat and gestured for me to take it. I did so, though with some trepidation. I carefully drove a couple circuits, cutting the high grass and leaving long green heaps in my wake—and thinking, Winston, you are jealous. The various corners were tricky, but Manolo helped me with the controls, lifting the mower attachment, finding reverse, manipulating the various petals.
When my stint was done, I took the Suzuki back to the village, bouncing over the rutted red dirt roads. I spent the afternoon alone at the house, reading, and writing the next part of my walking tale, which I pick up from where I left off a couple days ago--
On the third day on the Camino I set off in the company of Lino and Christoph. We walked through Arre in the cool and sunny morning, and through the outskirts of Pamplona, to a lovely city park with huge, leafy sycamores, and across the rio Arga, and up to a stone portal and into the narrow streets of the old town perched on a hill.
I had planned to spend some time wandering around Pamplona, but I gave this up, with some reluctance, in order to stay with Lino and Christoph. We went through the city following the yellow arrows without digression. We did pause at a sidewalk café for breakfast, but it would be many hours before Lino would brook any further delay. A reminder here, that Lino (aged 69, whippet thin, his face unlined, his smooth, tan head uncluttered by hair) intended to walk the Camino in twenty days—the night before at dinner he had shown me a piece of paper outlining each day´s distance, each night´s stop. He clearly wished to enlist Christoph and myself in his endeavor, but he would not compromise his plan if we were to fall behind. He never said as much—he was always friendly and often quite helpful (later he would gently doctor my blisters, running needle and thread through the white bulges)—but I knew that either I kept up or I wouldn´t see him again.
Why exactly it was important for me to keep up, I´m not sure I can say in retrospect—or could have explained at the time. I liked Lino, and appreciated his knowledge of the Camino. I also liked the idea of long stages, at least theortically. And I enjoyed Christoph´s company, our English-speaking conversations—and Christoph was staying with Lino, at least for a couple more days. Still, I don´t know that all this adds up to a sufficient explanation.
I did briefly fall behind in Pamplona, when a frazzled American girl stopped me and asked if I knew a place where she could use the internet. She was not on the Camino, but had arrived in town by train that morning. “And if I can´t check my email I can´t figure out my hotel or anything and I´m fucked, and the people at the train station, who I couldn´t even understand, gave me directions to a place but they were fucked up, and I don´t know where anything is, and nothing´s open yet, and I don´t know what to do.” I had to tell her that I had just arrived myself and knew the city no better than she did, but I did suggest she try the tourist office, though added it probably wasn´t open so early. She gave a big sigh. “Yeah, I guess so,” she said. “Well, thanks at least for speaking English with me.” That I understood.
After our sidewalk breakfast, we passed through a couple city parks, then, on the far side of town, through the lovely, grassy grounds of the University of Navarre. Up a long hill to the suburb of Cizur Menor, then up more steeply for five kilometers to Alto del Perdon. On top I put my pack down for a moment, but Lino surged right on and over and down the rocky descent.
In the next village, Uterga, Lino asked several old people—there are always a few out, sweeping the gutters, carrying bread, or simply ambling slowly with canes and/or small dogs—about the location of the fuente. Usually these village fountains (one or several spigots running into a stone trough) are obvious, a center piece of the small plaza. Lino always paused for a drink at the fuentes because he didn´t carry a water bottle (did I mention that his small pack weighed six kilos? Mine was ten, which he considered excessive and unfortunate). We came to the far edge of the village and still no fountain, so Lino went to the small, dark window of a house, from which the sound of dogs barking was emanating, and shouted something in Italian. After a moment an old man smelling of cigars and with one clamped in his mouth came out, along with several dogs. He and Lino talked at but not with each other, but finally the old man understood “agua.” He went back inside then returned with a large plastic coke bottle filled with water. Lino took a long drink then passed the bottle to me.
After another three miles or so we came to the beautiful village of Obanos, and Christoph and I threw ourselves down in the grassy shade of a church. The day had grown quite hot. Lino glanced at us and kept moving. We said we´d catch up. It was something of a relief to see him go, I must admit. The man´s pace was amazing—almost a jog, it seemed to me at times.
He was waiting for us at the edge of the next town, a largish one, Puente La Reina. This was the only time I saw Lino show any sort of annoyance. Apparently, we had reached the town a little too late—the stores close at two and don´t open again until four or five. Lino´s practice was to go to a small grocery (what the Spanish grandiosely call a “supermercado”) and buy the makings—bread and slices of ham—for a bocadillo. Arriving shortly after two, we had screwed up his lunch plans. But we salvaged a meal by going into a bar, where, after Christoph helped translate Lino´s Italian, Lino got his ham sandwich. I had a slice of tortilla, which was excellent. Lino said I didn´t eat enough.
Though we had walked thirty kilometers, or eighteen miles, our day was far from done. In the rolling countryside beyond Puente La Reina, among wheat and barley fields and occasionally a few rows of grape vines, Lino soon outdistanced Christoph and me. We, slowed by the heat and fatigue, let him go. Free of his “no stooping” mantra, we paused at each village for a short rest at the fuente—in Mañeru, Ciraqui, Lorca (the last two had comfy looking albergues)—and doused our heads and arms with the cool water.
We finally reached the town of Estella about 7:30, and found the large albergue, near the rio Ega. Lino stepped into the street to greet us. He had showered and changed and looked quite fresh. Fifty kilometers? Thirty miles? And what´s your point?
Christoph and I got the last two beds in the busy albergue. Then we went to a nearby restaurant with Lino, where we sat out front at a green plastic table. I ordered plato #2: first ensalada mixta, then, together, meatballs, french fries, two fried eggs, and lomo. Everything tasted wonderful, and I ate every bite.
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