Don't worry, we're not at a funeral. Yet.
This time around, my trip to Muxia and Finistera is pain-free. Two years ago, though, Day One after Santiago was one of the toughest days. When we arrived, we had to walk another ten kilometers through the city. A city worth seeing, by the way. I didn’t get any rest, but we could sleep longer since Santiago is the final official checkpoint and the folks in albergos are more sympathetic. Naturally we took advantage of that and set off from Santiago at noon. We had our usual morning pick-me-up: coffee and Coca Cola. However, the heat is up to eleven at noon, which means it takes 13 minutes to walk a kilometer, while it takes three minutes less when the conditions are normal. You sweat from everywhere, which means your body has more work cooling you down, which means more used energy. No ibuprofen and no magical creams helped that day. The pain was unbearable. The shoes were too tight, so I put on my Teva sandals to bring back the circulation. But that didn’t do much, as the pain in my feet was the one felt by Christ when he was nailed to the cross. Pain that makes you puke and cry at the same time. So, I put on flip-flops, also in vain. My stick suffered for it, since I threw it on the floor in agony and hurt. We decided to make a stop at the next bar and take five. The only thing I needed was someone to try and bum a cigarette off me. Just like home, people want to “borrow” a cigarette from you, since they cost one euro more than in Slovenia – almost five euros. And when a “non-smoker” tells me they’re unhealthy anyway, I tell him to shut it. He’s just cheap, but he asks for a smoke now and then the same. GTFO! It rubs me the wrong way. So, I told Tina to give him some tobacco, since it’s cheaper, and we got some hash in return. HA! We rolled one immediately, hoping it would kill the pain. Alas, no luck. We did chill so hard we missed every vacant bed yet caught a store. I was starving, and the only thing left were the fucking sweets, some kind of rolls. For the first time on Camino I ate, or rather devoured that industrial crap. They both asked me if I’m mad, but I couldn’t answer them; my mouth was full of rolls, like a bloody hamster.
Since we couldn’t find a free bed, we had to sleep outside. But first, we had to find a suitable place. My body was uncooperative, and I had to yield. Henry and Tina were still mobile, but I was not. When I saw a graveyard, I told them that was my cue. They glared at me oafishly when I told them I didn’t care it was a graveyard – if nothing else, no one will bother us, and we could sleep there as long as we wanted to. No rustling bags, no snoring and no farting. Peace on earth. I somehow persuaded them to lay down with the dead. Fight fire with fire. But that night didn’t turn out peaceful either. The rolls fucked up my stomach and in the middle of the night, I had an emergency diarrhea situation in the middle of a graveyard. Life prepares you for a lot of things, but dysentery always comes unannounced. The only thing I could do was to relieve myself among the tombstones and pray nobody sees me. The shits followed me for the entire week. Body is a machine and it will work until the adrenaline drops, even if that means going into overdrive. One of the purposes of my Path was to find the limits of my body. I was quite happy with the result and my doggedness.