In which I learn about the leather tanning industry

Yesterday for the midday meal Manolo and I ate garbanzo beans and huevos lleno Montse had left for us. His mother appeared during the meal bearing a pan of lentajas and a plate of jamon serrano. Son and mother argued, Manolo opening the refrigerator and gesturing at the food, apparently trying to assure her we had enough. Nonetheless we later ate the lentajas and ham and I was happy to do so. During dinner his mother showed up again (she lives next door), this time with a dish of cooked mushrooms (which Manolo´s father had gathered earlier that day). Manolo expressed exasperation and then we ate the mushrooms.

After both lunch and dinner he and I sat together in the living room and looked at family photographs. He had brought down two drawer-fuls from upstairs. I looked at the souvenirs of dozens of weddings (including Manolo and Montse´s own), baptisms, and first communions. As for the last, the boys for some reason wear quasi-military get-ups, their jackets festooned with braid and epaulets, as if the young communicant were standing on the bridge of a destroyer.

For most of the day, though, I again had the house to myself, and a long stretch of uncluttered time. A sentence from Patrick Leigh Fermor´s Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese seemed apt: “One compensation of this kind of travel is the unchartable and unregimented leisure between the rigours of displacement.” Yes, but I function best with at least a mild work regime, and so I continued writing….

My fourth day on the Camino was Naomi´s birthday, and I thought of her and wished she was walking alongside of me. But instead I settled for Lino and Christoph once again. On this day Lino would require us to cover a shorter distance—just 24 miles—but at a faster pace. I think he´d been taken aback by the late arrival in Estella the previous day.

In the first village, Irache, a local wine maker provides a free wine fuente or tap for peregrinos. Eight in the morning is a bit early for me and wine to mix, but I had a sip for the novelty.

The sun burned off an early mist and soon the morning grew hot. We paused only briefly in the villages for water, in between traversing a rolling country of wheat and barley and more wheat and barley, and sometimes a vineyard. We reached the substantial town of Los Arcos about eleven. Lino asked women in the narrow streets about a tienda, and eventually chose a small one in the small Plaza de Santa Maria. Inside, he talked the storekeeper, a plump middle-aged woman, into slicing him some ham, cutting up a baguette, and making him a bocadillo. Christoph and I settled for the separate parts, though the friendly woman did go ahead without asking and cut our baguette lengthwise, spilling bread crumbs all over the counter.

Outside in the plaza in the cool shade of the church we sat down on the flagstones and Christoph made up sandwiches for the two of us, slicing a tomato to garnish the seranno ham. Such bocadillos are a mainstay on the Camnio, but I find them a little dry. The Spanish apparently don´t do condiments.

After lunch we made a hot four hour march to Viana. Lino and Christoph surged ahead, and I let them go. Eventually Christoph, tiring, dropped back with me. We talked quite a bit during the two days we were together on the Camino; he was gregarious, tall and social, and required conversation. At one particularly tiring point he had said to me, “I don´t care what we talk about, let´s just talk.” He´d been traveling about the world for nearly a year, after quitting an engineering job at Kimberly-Clark in Tucson (which involved substantial time in Mexico, where he´d learned his Spanish). He had also been—and still was—working on an MBA through the University of Phoenix. In a couple more months he would have to get a job again, but he was hoping to figure out something entrepreneurial that would allow him to continue to travel and have adventures.

Christoph was born in Switzerland but grew up mostly in Wisconsin near Madison. His grandfather had owned a tanning factory in Switzerland, and his father had adopted the work too. But when, for globalization-type reasons, tanning was no longer possible in Switzerland, the factory had closed and Christoph´s father had brought the family to Wisconsin, where he took up the same work (in which he is one of the world´s foremost experts). Now, though, tanning has moved to China, where Christoph´s parents are living, not quite contentedly. Over the course of our second morning together I learned much about the business and process of tanning, the different types and grades of leather and their different uses.

We reached Viana at four in the afternoon, only about a half hour behind Lino. All the beds at the albergue were taken, but the woman in charge assuaged my initial concern. She grabbed a thin mattress down from a stack in the laundry room and put it on the floor of the dining room. There was room for ten or so mattresses, and all were eventually put into use. Mine was set down next to a soda machine, with the head shoved under a table against the wall. Sounds a bit awkward, but it wasn´t, not really.

Christoph took a quick shower and then headed for the bus station. He´d decided that the speed with which we´d been moving would allow him to lever into his schedule a few days off from the Camino. He was heading for Pamplona, then Paris, and then Brussels and his Brazilian girlfriend.

I showered too, washed some clothes, and then settled for a sad dinner of muesli and banana, outside in a stone courtyard overlooking the lower part of town. A light rain began to fall as I spooned the goopy cereal into my mouth.

The next morning Lino and I set off together, though it wasn´t the same without Christoph´s jaunty presence. Soon we came to a small, old house and he gestured me inside. I ducked my head through the low doorway and stepped into a low-lit room mostly filled with a long table spread with bread and jam and milk. An elderly woman, small and rotund, stood to the side chatting with a couple German peregrinos. She puts out the breakfast each morning for the pilgrims, and sets a small dish to the side where people can leave donations if they like. The stamp she used to stamp my credencial read “Felisa” (her name?), and then below, “Higos, Agua y Amor” (figs, water and love).

After a couple miles, Lino and I came into the heart of Logroño, one of the larger cities on the Camino. I stopped him, and pointed up a street towards the Catedral Santa Maria de la Redonda. I made a circular motion with my hand and said in Spanish that I wanted to see the town. He nodded yes, he understood. We shook hands and he said “ciao.” I said I might catch up with him in Najera, where he planned to spend the night, but we both knew this was unlikely.

It rained most of the rest of the day, and I stopped in Ventosa, five miles short of Najera, and stayed in a lovely albergue and had that fabulous dinner at the Meson San Anton.